The sun was gleaming through clear Denver skies as United Airlines flight 232 bound for Chicago took off on the afternoon of July 19, 1989. All aboard expected a routine trip. And so it was, until 3:16 P.M., when the tail engine suddenly exploded. Passengers rocked forward and attendants plummeted to the floor as the huge DC-10 pitched downward.
With the two remaining jets under the wings, the plane still had power enough to fly. But power wasn’t the problem. The blast had demolished the aircraft’s hydraulic system, causing a complete loss of control of the rudder, wing flaps and ailerons, The 296 passengers were trapped at 37,000 feet in a plane with no steering, Captain Alfred C. Haynes had some fast thinking to do.
The situation called for an emergency landing, but the nearest strip was at Iowa’s Sioux City Airport, 70 miles away. Although the steering was shot, Haynes found he could maintain some control by alternating speeds of the two wing jets. For 41 minutes, he and his three-man crew struggled to guide the disabled plane closer to the airport. On approach, Haynes shouted through the intercom, “Brace! Brace! Brace!” Moments later, the highly unstable aircraft somersaulted to the ground. Miraculously, 184 survived, many without a scratch.
For landing his plane against staggering odds, Haynes was commended for his exceptionally clear thinking and called a national hero, a label he had a hard time accepting. “There is no hero,” he said. “There is just a group of four people, four people who did their job.”
Perhaps, but by some standards Haynes is overly modest. “If you look at heroes in the movies, it’s always the person who knows the right thing to do,” says psychologist Dorothy Tennov, Ph.D. “Superman not only had great strength, he knew how to use it,”
While most of the important decisions we make in life are made in less dramatic circumstances than Captain Haynes’s, or Superman’s for that matter, there are lessons for all of us here. The most important one is that no amount of training can compensate for crystal-clear thinking. Whether your decision concerns an investment, a job, a new house or which set of parents you’re going to visit for Easter, clear thinking can help you make the best one.
Clear thinkers aren’t born that way. They work at it. Before making important choices, they try to clear emotion, bias, trivia and preconceived notions out of the way so they can concentrate of the information essential to making the right decision.
If your thinking isn’t always as focused as you’d like it to be or if you find that you often make choices you later regret, especially if you have to make them quickly, it’s time for a course in clear thinking. Here are a few lessons from some of the best-known people in the business.