WHEN you are on board an aircraft, “This is the captain speaking” may well sound more reassuring than a message from the first officer. Yet crashes happen far more often when the captain, rather than the co-pilot, is flying the aircraft. This is counter-intuitive, since captains almost always have more flying experience than co-pilots.
The reason, says New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell in an alarming chapter of Outliers, is cultural. When the captain is flying, the first officer tends to defer, even when he or she suspects danger, while the captain does not hesitate in seizing the controls from…
