Understanding success is impossible if one cannot understand its converse, failure. Success comes after one learns from their failures and improves upon them. After a long string of airline crashes Korean Air, formerly known as Korean Airlines, was able to rise up to being among the safest airlines in the world. Korean Air has had a spotless safety record since 1999 (182). The crashes were a result of a cultural issue surrounding Korean Air. The captain was supreme. Gladwell quotes a former Korean Air employee, ‘the captain is in charge and does what he wants, when he likes, how he likes and everyone else sits quietly and does nothing’ (214). Rather than giving up, Korean Air took steps to put its past behind it. Korean Air hired David Greenburg from Delta Air Lines to manage flight operations (218) Greenburg took several steps to correct the cultural issue of inferiority that was prevalent among Korean Air pilots. Greenburg determined the problem with Korean Air was language. The Korean language has several ways of addressing someone. Gladwell states they are, “formal deference, informal deference, blunt, familiar, intimate and plain” (214). Greenberg ‘…set up a program to assist and improve the proficiency of aviation English’ (218). By changing the language Korean Air pilots spoke, Greenberg was able to eliminate the different forms of addressing someone and allowed pilots to communicate effectively in plain English. Because Korean Air was able to learn from its failure, Air Transport world awarded it the Phoenix Award (182).