Flying High:

In and Out of the Cockpit with Dan McCarron

Dan McCarron, ALM '94, inside a Northwest aircraft's cockpit

Rising at 4:30 am, Dan McCarron, ALM '94, accosted a sleepy Egyptian cab driver and arranged a trip to the edge of the desert. On that quiet journey in the clear night air, Dan experienced the enormity of the Egyptian sky, far more expansive, he decided, than even the big sky of Montana. He could see so many, many stars.

Arriving at their destination--a primitive home with a dirt floor and almost no furniture--McCarron experienced a moment of doubt, thinking how easily he could be mugged. "What am I doing here?" he asked himself. Except for his host, a total stranger, no one on earth knew his whereabouts at that moment. Asked by gestures if he wanted something to drink, he followed his host into the living room, where he encountered a camel sleeping in the dirt. "Of course," he said to himself, "anyone in this region owning a camel has a most important possession. He must guard it carefully."

The host served water to his guest and beast, followed by fresh hay for the animal. McCarron mounted the camel and, with his host, rode into the night. Again, he felt the enormity of the desert sky as he progressed toward his goal. Standing still, totally alone except for his quiet guide and the breathing of the camel, he watched in awe as the sun rose over the pyramids. At that moment, he experienced a deep appreciation of antiquity and the vastness of human history.

Days later, McCarron sailed down the Nile, but again not in the style of a typical American tourist. Riding on a boat operated by someone else simply would not have given him the experience he sought. In inimitable fashion, he captained a primitive sailboat himself, managing the helm in much the way he imagined our ancestors might have navigated the mighty river.

To share lunch with Dan McCarron is to enjoy such tales from all over the world. A first-rate raconteur, he is also a senior pilot with Northwest Airlines. He lives in New Hampshire and spends four months a year "on the line," flying commercially around the globe. For another four months, he lives a very different life, on the ground in Minneapolis, commanding a flight simulator for testing and training pilots. In the simulated cockpit, he trains new crew members or assesses the status of experienced pilots. For the final four months, Dan observes pilots on the job, not in the simulator. He evaluates them while transporting passengers and freight to their destinations.

In the latter role as an in-flight examiner, McCarron rides all over the United States, assessing the pilot, co-pilot, and flight engineer, otherwise known as the captain, first officer, and second officer, respectively. He observes them from departure to arrival, performing a quality-control function and determining if the aircraft is being operated according to Boeing, FAA, and Northwest's standards. As he explains, the atmosphere of the cockpit changes when he enters the cockpit, introduces himself, and says, "This is a live check."

There are, of course, countless technical details to be considered, as well as more mundane issues. To guard against the disruption of food poisoning, for example, all three members of the cockpit crew must eat different meals at different times during the flight.

On a recent excursion from Miami to Memphis, Detroit, and beyond, examining pilots at their work, McCarron arranged a layover in St. Louis in order to experience a piece of architecture that has fascinated him since childhood. Quite different from the Egyptian pyramids, the Gateway Arch, a stainless steel catenary curve, displays the wonders of modern architectural achievements. Peering down from the very top of this glorious arch, hundreds of feet in the air with no visible support directly below him, he found himself motionless and speechless. Despite his extensive background at high altitudes, those first moments took his breath away. Into his mind flashed a series of psychological experiments from his graduate work at Harvard. He felt like the older babies in the famous visual-cliff experiments, fearful of moving at all.

His moment in that unique arch caused him to wonder once again how a commercial airplane, approaching a one-million-pound take-off weight, can fly. Every pilot asks this question over and over again, he explained. Despite McCarron's diverse interests in meteorology, electronics, aerodynamics, physics, and flight physiology, he and his colleagues ponder how human beings can travel at subsonic/supersonic speeds in a totally uninhabitable environment, all the while sipping wine and munching peanuts.

McCarron views his graduate studies in the ALM Program at the Harvard Extension School as "frosting on the cake," describing his concentration in psychology as helpful in addressing an age-old question: "What makes people behave as they do?" He finds the psychological studies most helpful in his teaching role, especially in the simulator, where he attempts to increase student learning under highly stressful circumstances. "We can never know enough," he adds emphatically.

In his search for greater understanding of people and their cultures, McCarron once journeyed to a remote Peruvian village on the banks of the Amazon, again traveling alone except for an interpreter. As usual, there was no formality to this visit--no tour company, no vouchers, no tickets, no cost even. Through an interpreter, he had arranged to visit a group of people whose ancestors were cannibals.

In that village he immediately found himself surrounded by the natives--a man with an owl on his shoulder, kids eating bugs, a monkey on the rotisserie, and so forth. When it began to rain, no one paid any attention; they wore few clothes to get wet. As he gazed at the villagers and their unfamiliar customs, he thought how very odd he must look to them.

One tribesman, through the interpreter, explained the operation of his blowgun, which fired darts tipped with curare. He demonstrated its astonishing power and accuracy by hitting a special place on a distant tree. Then the interpreter remarked to McCarron, "He wants you to try it."

McCarron thought about the vastly different diets he and his host pursued, and the distinctly different microbial colonies that inhabited their mouths. Showing much appreciation, he declined the invitation. After further discussion, the interpreter turned back to McCarron. "He insists." "No," Dan responded, "I insist." And the interpreter added: "He'll be very offended if you refuse.... Remember, with dart in tube, don't inhale!"

"I'll die," McCarron thought, blowing weakly into the tube. Observing the feeble result, the disappointed tribesman insisted McCarron try again. This time he blew mightily and surprised himself with the speed of the dart. Afterward, he refrained from wiping his mouth--for fear of insulting his host. Though he did not expire, he did return home with a skin disease and dysentery.

He consulted an American physician, who was puzzled by his symptoms. When McCarron explained that he had just returned from the Amazon, the doctor promptly pushed his chair three feet backward, citing many healthcare issues in
the Amazon about which we know nothing, much less possess a cure.

Ruminating on such experiences, McCarron emphasized: "There's something vital about knowing yourself." He explained that his travels and his studies in psychology both serve this purpose. "They help you to know yourself as an individual," he observed, "your strengths and your weaknesses."

For his ALM thesis, McCarron studied the vertical-horizontal illusion, one of the most reliable phenomena in visual perception. He examined this reaction among pilots, artists, and the general public, identifying the changes these groups experience in response to subtle changes in the vertical-horizontal stimulus patterns. Pilots and artists, for very different reasons, have obvious interests in this nearly universal human distortion of the external world.

"I am fascinated by the world around us," McCarron smiled, "and also by the world inside us."

Photographer unknown.