Boy aged just five finds error in pilot training manual and gets VIP tour of airline
By: Noora Mykkanen - Metro News
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Boy aged just five finds error in pilot training manual and gets VIP tour of airline
William Hines, five, from US, spotted an 'error' in Southwest Airlines' pilot training manual after going through it for hours.
The world's youngest aviation expert put a budget airline to shame after he spotted a discrepancy in its manual.
William Hines, five, was leafing through Southwest Airlines' manual when he saw that something didn't match up on the pages teaching pilots about the aircraft.
The eagle-eyed boy, from Colorado, US, was reading the manual brought by a pilot family friend when he said two graphs didn't look the same.
He was drawn in by the details, spending almost two hours going through what most people would reluctantly glance at if they had to.
William said: 'I discovered that two monitors did not match, they did not match at all.'
Mum Amber added: 'One was very, very zoomed out while the other one was zoomed in.
'He was able to identify the fact that these should look the same, but they looked different because one was drastically zoomed out from the other one.'
The pilot took William's findings all the way to the top, and informed the Southwest's boss, Robert Jordan.
The CEO of Southwest Airlines, one of the biggest airlines in America, surprised the young plane enthusiast and his sister by inviting them for a VIP tour of the company's headquarters.
However, the airline was quick to clarify that there was 'no error in the training manual,' but a slight discrepancy in the way the terrain was shown and how zoomed in they were.
William, who dreams of becoming a pilot one day, got his first taste of the job in a cockpit simulator.
Despite his young age, William has also spent hours at his local Rocky Mountain Metro Airport in Colorado spotting aircraft. He also enjoys memorising materials and plane models.
William's mum described him as 'really mechanically inclined.'
'So it was a natural progression to want to know about more fascinating things,' she told WVUE-TV.
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Wish NT had more stories like this, but it's as hard diverting obsessions as it is being green.
After reading it a couple times, it looks like the airline was doing a PR stunt using a smart 5 year old who is an aspiring pilot. The difference in the manual wasn't a mistake, it showed the monitor could be zoomed in or out according to the pilots needs.
So in your opinion this was a "set-up" by the airline as a promotion to boost sales? There are other possibilities. It could be a set-up by the kid's parents as well. Or, on the other hand, it could be a genuine situation. Who cares? it's a little bit of entertainment on a Social News Site that is drowned in politics.
No, not the airline at first and yes it did start with the child's parents and pilot friend who brought the manual. First they were astonished that the boy even picked up the manual and started leafing through it, mind you he is 5 years old with very little if any reading comprehension, so he is looking at the pictures. In the manual, the instrument panel is featured multiple times to explain different functions and there, no doubt, was differing views of the video monitors which he picked up on and the change was maybe several pages apart and he remembered it. If you were the parents and friend, wouldn't that, to you, be fascinating and what the airline did be considered a proper reward for the boy and a bit of positive PR for the airline. Win-win.
Agreed.