KevinNM
Contributor
There are several classic examples used for the concept of normalization of deviance. One is the Challenger disaster. I first encountered it in a discussion of the black hawk shootdown over Iraq in 1994. Two helicopters loaded with very senior officers and officials were on a trip into the no-fly zone. They were monitored by an AWACS. Running a patrol of the no-fly zone was a pair of F-15s, which were controlled and monitored by the very same AWACS. On one of the helicopters was the fiancee of the intel officer who briefed the F-15 pilots about expected air traffic prior to their flight. The F15s shot down the black hawks, killing all 26 people on board, largely (but not completely) because the pilots had NO IDEA that there were friendly helicopters over Iraq that morning. The story about how this insane disaster came to occur takes a while to explain in the book Friendly Fire, but it is another classic example of a situation that slowly changed from very safe to absurdly dangerous without anyone understanding that anything had changed. Friendly Fire: The Accidental Shootdown of U.S. Black Hawks over Northern Iraq: Scott A. Snook: 9780691095189: Amazon.com: Books
