Malcolm Gladwell's riveting book The Outliers peels back the mystery of how culture, parenting, ethnicity, nationality and a hundred factors buried in our histories affect our daily performance. None is more influential than the process of what linguists call "mitigated speech." At best, mitigated speech keeps us artificially comfortable. At worst it can be disastrous. Consider the 1990 crash of Columbian Avianca jumbo flight 052, up-bound from Columbia to New York's Kennedy airport. Today that disaster is a flight school case study.

Flight 052 had endured three holding delays due to weather; the last of which has the airplane circling in a 45 minute hold over Atlantic City. Fuel is becoming critical. Actual cockpit transcripts show the impact of "mitigated speech." Captain Laureano Caviedes and first officer Mauricio Klotz are on the recording with New York ATC. It isn't until the third holding pattern the crew tells ATC they don't have enough fuel! From the exact transcripts co-pilot Klotz is on the radio trying to find out when they can land:

CAVIEDES: What did they say? KLOTZ: I already 'advise' him that we are going to attempt again (four seconds of silence pass). CAVIEDES: Advise him we are in an emergency.

Four more seconds of silence pass. The captain tries again: Did you tell him? KLOTZ: Yes sir, I already 'advise' him. Klotz starts talking to ATC again covering routine details. The plane is running out of fuel. KLOTZ: One-five-zero maintaining 2,000, Avianca zero-five-two heavy.

The captain is clearly on the brink at this point: Advise him we don't have enough fuel! Klotz responds via radio to ATC: "Okay, climb and maintain 3,000 Sir, and, uh, we're running out of fuel."

There it is again. No mention of the magic word "emergency." To New York ATC, "we're running out of fuel, sir" at the end of a sentence preceded by the mitigating "uh" does not alert a life or death situation. If this weren't the prelude to a tragedy writes Gladwell, it would resemble the old Abbot and Costello comedy routine. If you're counting errors, the crew is in double digits.

CAVIEDES: Did you tell them we're running out of fuel? KLOTZ: Yes sir, I already 'advise' him. ATC: And Avianca zero-five-two heavy, ah, I'm going to bring you 15 miles northeast, then turn you back onto approach. Is that okay with your fuel? KLOTZ: "I guess so. Thank you very much."  I guess so? Thank you very much? Tanks are sucking fumes.

The flight engineer points to empty fuel gauges and makes a throat-cutting gesture, followed by "flameout on number four!"

Caviedes says, "Show me the runway," but the runway is 16 miles away. 36 seconds of silence pass. ATC calls out one last time: "You have ah, enough fuel to make it to the airport?" The transcript ends...

Following Avianca, KAL, and other crashes, the NTSB launched probative research into the effect of mitigated speech in plane crashes. Counterintuitive but true: planes are less likely to crash when the captain is not flying the plane. Depending on culture, nationality and experience, a subservient first officer is less likely to be blunt, IE "Captain, if we don't land in the next 15 minutes we'll crash." In numerous crashes, had the captain been sitting in the co-pilot seat, he or she'd have ordered immediate action through a direct command averting disaster.

Day to day in less critical situations, mitigating speech can cloud communication, suppress results, and short-circuit important decision-making.