Flying on holiday soon!
This video contains some fairly worrying confessions from actual pilots, including one who’s afraid of heights :shock:
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I’ve never been in a plane and never will be, God knows there are enough risks to life on the ground without willingly sticking your neck out in the clouds, but as they always keep telling us, “It’s the safest way to travel’ So bon voyage, and may your God go with you.
T’aint as safe as a Submarine, under water, or a Black Cab on the streets of the Capital.
This is a very mis-quoted statement and one designed to bamboozle and befuddle the Sheeple. Planes ARE dropping out of the sky every year in their 100s. Just browse through this air crash database.
http://www.planecrashinfo.com/database.htm
The science and art of flying are by no means completely understood, nor completely controllable, nor are the risks involved managed and mitigated as much as they could be. Our old friend money plays a large part in all this.
Let’s deal with this stupid statistic first. “Flying is the safest form of transport”.
What this means is that per flight, per journey, there are less accidents than other forms of transport such as travelling by car or train. It might well be a true statistic, but the REAL QUESTION is,
“is this a useful or helpful or appropriate statistic for the consideration of the preservation of human life?”
I would submit the answer is No. It’s entirely the wrong statistic. The reason is because the statistic deals ONLY with the volume of incidents rather than outcome of incidents.
Let me pose another statistic or metric.
The number of times a person is massively injured or killed when the engine of the vehicle or mode of transport they are using, fails.
When your car engine sputters and fails, most times you will coast to the side of the road and call a company for help. No-one will be remotely injured let alone killed.
On a train, if the engine fails, the train will come to a halt and whilst passengers will be inconvenienced, they will nevertheless be unhurt.
On a ship, if the engine fails, you sit there bobbing in the water, again unhurt and sat waiting for help.
On a plane . . . you plummet 30,000 feet in a few minutes of hellish realisation that you are about to die horribly while the pilot struggles frantically for some kind of control. In the end, you can be fairly certain that the seat in front of you is going to be rammed into your face at 500 mph!
In those minutes, the statistic of “more planes arrive safely at their destination than cars” becomes quite meaningless.
The one and only thing that counts in ANY form of transport is this:
On the assumption and acceptance that some kind of mechanical failure WILL OCCUR at some point, what measures are in place to ensure passengers are not injured or killed when it DOES happen?
As I have said, the mechanical failure of a car does not result in it hurting or killing people (it can do but most times does not). Regardless, manufacturers plan and accept that such events WILL happen and build in solutions including crumple zones, roll bars, air bags, and all manner of other safety equipment, at cost. It’s not prevention planning, it is ACTUAL solutions for when things do go wrong.
On a ship, we have life jackets, life boats, tenders, life buoys, automated distress transmitters and so on. Again this is not prevention planning, they are real solutions for when something does go wrong.
On a plane, you have a seat fantastically designed but still relatively useless if the plane is diving out of control from 30,000 feet at 500mph ! There is a myriad of prevention planning in place, hoping and praying that things won’t go wrong. But when they DO go wrong, there is little in the way of real solutions to protect you from a 30,0000ft fall.
Why does this crazy situation exist? Why does the air industry, unlike any other transport industry not have in place, multiple solutions to deal with mechanical failure? Why is there not one single solution to deal with the plane falling from the sky?
The answer is simply money. Greed, profit, money.
Did you know. . . . there has long since been a proven system that can be built into every plane which deploys a set of parachutes in the event of failure which results in the plane floating harmlessly to earth just like the lunar module floated back to earth on its descent?
This would seem abject common sense would it not? By all means invest in the PREVENTION of accidents, do everything to ensure one won’t happen, but in the end you HAVE to accept that accidents WILL happen and thus you MUST have a solution in place for when it does. The air industry does not plug this gap. That, and that alone is the statistic that counts. That is why flying is not safe. That is why I no longer fly.
So why aren’t all jet liners equipped with this parachute system?
Simply because of money.
Greed, profit, money.
For the sake of maximising their profits, airlines essentially force passengers to play Russian Roulette in a system that does all it can to prevent an accident but which, when actually faced with an accident, will likely result in you being killed or horribly injured.
I like flying. I used to fly gliders and light aircraft. With power off and planning it easy to land safely.
There is a system on some light aircraft for parachutes to help in emergencys. I saw this on TV recently.
All aircraft will glide. Some faster than others.
I hate flying . I’ve done it because I’ve wanted sunshine . I travelled back from Australia /Singapore , was falling asleep when woken hearing the engines revving , I looked into the eyes of my friend for a second , such fear went between us both thinking something was wrong , as it turned out we were climbing above a storm . I’ll never forget that moment of utter fear. I don’t want to fly again .
My son is an air steward , been one for 18 years , says he feels safe. When he was very new , been flying 6 months or so , taking off and strapped into his seat at the rear heard a loud crack. He immediately felt something was really wrong, phoned captain and told him of the loud crack, captain had no choice but to return to bristol airport . They flew above and round for about an hour and eventually landed , my son worried sick that he was mistaken and would be in real trouble .
Upon landing , fire engines etc waiting the airplanes tail was cracked , had they continued there would have been serious consequences . The pilot shook his hand , as he had no idea that they’d had a tail strike . My son was commended for his quick thinking and received a letter of thanks from the company . He shrugs his shoulders when I mention it and says it’s just one of those things you do . But admitted he was worried as time was going by he was mistaken .
However he laughs at my fears , I hate flying , fear it immensely and don’t intend to renew my passport .
Yep I’m sure it is, but let’s be truthful here, when you go gliding you simply fly around a gliding school/airfield. You never stray far from that landing zone, so yes, it’s easy to come back down.
A passenger airliner could be anywhere and it’s ability to be controlled with engine failure is limited and the time you have even when “gliding” is short as you are losing vertical height constantly. You’d be supremely lucky to just happen to have an obliging airfield nearby when the engines failed.
You could be half way over the Pacific or Atlantic.
A parachute system and accompanying self-inflating buoyancy aid system could ensure that the aircraft floats harmlessly down to the ocean and stays on the surface until rescue arrives.
As it is, profits don’t allow for it, and the real results are catastrophic. There are numerous videos of it happening. A wing tip inevitably digs into the water and the plane cartwheels and disintegrates, pretty horrific and yet so totally unnecessary. All for a little investment in parachutes and inflatables.
The first time I took a plane flight I said to the cabin stewardess I was amazed how high we were, the people down there look like ants.
She said they were ants we have not taken off yet
Nice one Bazza.
lets try and keep this in proportion from scaremongering here. There are thousands upon thousands of airflights per day throughout the world - on major international flights there are several crew men/women in the cockpit - 3-6 hostesses on the plane. they do it everyday for a living and seem to enjoy it?
I have made many international flights and many local flights in OZ and have always felt confident of the staff flying and providing service on the planes. We can walk down the street and get knocked over by a car. come on lets get real and not realist!!
The Dreamliners decor is certainly very calming…
It all looks very impressive, but you can charge your phone and watch TV almost anywhere so what’s the big deal mentioning that? Do they throw in a free jumbo parachute seeing there’s only 8 to a cabin?
Usual marketing drivel Jem, but at that price I would want a jet pack instead of a common parachute
Seriously?
1, 'Planes are not dropping from the sky by the 100’s.
Look at your own link. It lists about 35 each year!
2, A parachute large enough to hold a fully laden Boeing 747 would need to have an area of over 22 acres! Not to mention the difficulty of deploying a 'chute at over 500mph.
3, Falling from 30000feet does no harm.
Hitting the ground is a different matter.
All I know is that flying these days now carries more man made dangers than it did in the past.
Too many idiots around intent on causing intentional mayhem for it to be considered safe. Bringing down a plane full of people is now considered sport.
We can all understand mechanical failure but when another human is intent in blowing you out of the skies, that is a bit hard o accept.
Great, the video wasn’t there anymore… Bummer!
After binge watching all of Manifest, no way would I get on a plane. Hang on, I never have anyway. I am scared of flying.
subject dug up from 8 years ago and already discussed. No need to revive it
Wasn’t me who revived it, actually. I hadn’t seen it before, at least I don’t think I had.
What is Aerophobia? | Diagnosis, symptoms, triggers, treatment.
Last updated on 28th April 2023
Aerophobia, a fear of flying, is a relatively common specific phobia in the UK. Although many phobias go undiagnosed, it is estimated that between 2.5% and 5% of people in the UK experience aerophobia. This equates to between 168,000 and 336,000 people.