Captain Steeeve Takes A Video Down

I notice that a popular airline pilot who has a YouTube channel with 309,000 subscribers, Captain Steeeve, was forced to take down a video that covered the September 29 Reagan National collision:

We recently took down a major video that we had put up on the channel, and many of you have noticed that, and I wanted to address that topic. I'm an active pilot for a major aiirline in this country, and I have to be sensitive to those concerns in my life as well, and all of us are aware of the recent events in aviation, they are headline news still to this day, and I just want to let you know at this channel, we're monitoring those events.

But that one video in particular I was asked to take down, and I gladly took it down. Now, over the years I taught a course in the Navy on leadership, and one of the lessons I taught in that course was, never forget about the"whos" behind the "whats". Now, what does that mean? That means that there are people and relationships and things associated with the "whats", the tasks, the things in our lives. A video on a YouTube channel is just that. It's a thing. It's something that you can post, it's something that you can take down, it's something that you can look at, it's something that you can view, but at the end of the day, it's nothing more than a thing.

There are alwaqys "whos" associated with the "whats" or the things in our lives, and the "whos" are much more important, so shortly after that video was posted, many of you watched it, I was approached and asked to take the video down out of concern for the "whos", and you know what, it was easy for me to say yes to that, because I will always, will always care about the "whos" more than the "whats", and so now you know.

He's said in almost as many words that some powerful people, some "whos", saw his video, a "what", didn't like it, and were in a position to threaten his job if he didn't take it down. Since he liked his job, and the video was just a "what", he took the video down. It sounds to me as though the "whos" talked to another "who" at his airline, and the airline "who" gave the ultimatum. As they say,

From the pilot’s perspective, the chief pilot at a big airline is like the school’s principal.

If you can go your whole career without the chief knowing your name, you’re probably doing something right.

Pilots usually only get face time with the chief if something goes wrong and they’re in big trouble!

It sounds very much to me as if the chief pilot spoke with Captain Steve. I saw the video at the time, and oddly enough, someone copied it, and it's still out there. A Facebook user has another copy. As they say, the internet is forever. Here it is:

The key item that seems to have the "whos" all riled up is at 2:10:

This is not the final word on it, but what I think happened was, it was at night, there's several airplanes lined up, there is that Blue Streak 5342, which is the CRJ that they ran into, right behind them just a few miles is American 3130. Everybody has their lights on as they're coming in, I believe the helicopter looked at the American 3130 and said, "I've got the traffic in sight", and they never saw the CRJ, the airplane that was right next to them. That's my conjecture on what happens.

If you think about it, this is pretty mild stuff to start with -- all he's saying is the helo crew made a pretty understandable miatake, and he isn't singling anyone out or directly blaming anyone. Beyond that, he's on perfectly solid legal ground, he's made it clear this isn't the final word, this is his conjecture. But even beyond that, nobody in the helo has standing to sue for defamation, because they're all dead:

Under common law and according to the definition of this defamation, deceased individuals cannot be defamed. Defamation is defined as an act or statement that damages one’s reputation. The dead do not have reputations to damage. The memory of a deceased person can be damaged, but this is not addressed under the tort of defamation.

But there's another puzzle here. I linked to Juan Browne's February 3 video update on the collision in this post. That video is still up, but it's far more directly critical of the helicopter crew. As I quoted in that post, Browne said,

So just within some 16 or so seconds of the collision, once again, PAT25 confirms that he still has the CRJ in sight. requesting visual separation. They're just saying this automatically, "request visual separation have him in sight", as if it's a normalization of deviance, it's like this is the way they've been doing it all the time, and he's convinced that he's got tthe correct aircraft in sight, when in fact he does not.

What he's saying isn't much different from what Captain Steve said, the helo didn't actually see the CRJ, but he characterizes it as "normalization of deviance", much harsher than anything Captain Steve said. But apparently Juan Browne's chief pilot hasn't been on his case, even two weeks after that video. Why not?

• Maybe the Lobach family couldn't discover which airline Browne flies for. Unlikely.
• Maybe Browne's chief pilot has Browne's back, unlike Captain Steve's. Credible, but I'm not sure.
• Maybe Browne answered you can't defame the dead, and threatened to countersue the Lobachs for tortious interference. Well, maybe. That's what I'd do, but that's just me.
• Maybe Browne's chief pilot told him he can keep the video up, but don't post about the collision again. Probably this is most likely.

On one hand, the reality for the Lobachs is that the collision and Rebecca's role in it is so much in the news that trying to stifle commentary is going to be like King Cnut trying to sweep back the tide. They couldn't even get copies of Captain Steve's video taken down, even if they got him to delete the original. Beyond that, other videos like the one I linked in yestrerday's post, are even harsher than Juan Browne or Captain Steve -- that one yesterday says it's doubtful the NTSB can be trusted to make an unbiased report.

This is probably a correct assessment, given the Lobach family is apparently able to find out who certain YouTubers work for, talk to their employers, get the employers to listen, and threaten their jobs. They are probably as aware as anyone that they can't threaten everyone. For instance, I'm retired, and even if they threatened to go after my pension or my bank, I'd simply have my attorney explain to their attorney about tortious interference.

But that's me. A lot of oher people will just get the mesaage to keep quiet, and that's what the Lobachs want. Nevertheless, I do get the feeling the Lobachs took Captain Steeve as a good first target pour encourager les autres -- he seems like a nebbish to me.