Richard Littledale's
Views on the News: April 2008

Plane ethics?

Tragedy strikes. An executive jet, with a pilot, co-pilot and five passengers on board, plummets out of the sky and lands on a housing estate in Kent. A plume of acrid black smoke rises above the wrecked houses, bodies lie in the smouldering wreckage, and a wreath is placed by local residents. Eyewitnesses tell their tales too. A local resident talks of leaping up from the lunch table just in time to see the plane crash. Another describes the terrified faces of the plane's passengers as it passed just above the houses. Yet another, a child, describes how she saw the pilot and co-pilot frantically waving to her and her friends to get off the field where they were playing football lest the plane should crash on them.

In 1966 Episcopal theologian Joseph Fletcher published his book, Situation Ethics, in which he highlighted the moral complexity of our decisions, and argued that in each case we should weigh up the pros and cons of our actions, rather than abiding by any immutable law. His book provoked a veritable storm of books and papers which continued the debate. In one of them, the writer described a theoretical situation where a plane was about to crash. Should the pilot, he asked, land it on a playing field full of children, where the passengers might be spared, or in a dense forest where the children might be spared?

It is unlikely that the pilot in Sunday's crash had even read Fletcher's book, or the article I have mentioned. Even if he had, the few seconds it took for the plane to descend would not have allowed him time to run through the options. In such a situation, it is our instinct, including our moral instinct, which takes over. Like the passengers who reputedly overpowered the hijackers in Flight 93 over Pennsylvania in 2001, or a person who pushes a child out of the path of an oncoming truck and dies in the act, there is a noble instinct in human nature which can override our natural caution. At such a moment, clever philosophical and theological debate gives way to something deeper and more innate.

Most tragedies give rise to heroes, and Sunday's crash will doubtless be no exception. Of course, this will be of little comfort to those who are bereaved, but the human race in general is ennobled by such acts. Self-sacrifice is an aspect to human nature of which we should be proud.

Debates about the extent of God's imprint on the human race will probably continue until that race itself is no more. What exactly does it mean that we are made in the image of God? There are many answers to that question, but as the smoke rises over Biggin Hill, I like to think that at least in part his image is seen in our acts of true and selfless goodness.