All really good points. I would add, that you should eat or drink too much, except for water and if you are anxious there are some very good OTC medications that will calm you down and help you sleep. Most Pharmacists will help you.
That is just good advice for flying in general! Iâm not a nervous flier at all (I used to pester local pilots at an airfield near my house as a kid to take me for a spin in their light aircraft) but Iâll always do that. Aircraft are fkn noisy.
Thanks everyone really appreciate it. <3
Ohh, and if you are on an Airbus A320, youâll definitely hear a strange noise as you taxi out. Donât freak out about that.
Yeah thats happened before haha.
I dont freak out just feel a little bit uncomfortable on them, which is strange for me because I love to travel, and literally nothing else invokes these feelings for me.
Air travel is awesome though, I guess I just need to get over it.
Talking about it helps. Again thanks everyone.
Advice from my cousin who is a pilot for Qantas International:
Stay hydrated. Air circulation is important so have the vent above your seat open. Try to get a window seat so you can see out, if you feel queasy look at the horizon (helps with the balance sensors in your inner ear telling your brain one thing vs other stimuli in the cabin telling your brain something else.) If itâs dark and you canât see the horizon try to focus on the stars instead.
Some people recommend noise-cancelling headphones, others find it comforting to hear the engines and know that theyâre working. Trust the physics; as long as the engines keep generating thrust, the shape of the wings (flat underneath and curved on top = high pressure underneath and low pressure on top (opposite to a carâs spoiler, whose objective is to push the car downwards onto the road)) ensures the plane will continue to generate lift and stay in the air.
Bring something (book, podcast, playlist, tv series, movie on your phone etc) that lasts the duration of the journey to distract you. You can start reading\watching, and know that by the time the movie is over you will have landed. That way you focus on finishing the movie instead of counting down the time to landing.
Turbulence (bumps) is normal; itâs the plane flying through clouds\pockets of air at different pressure\density\temperatures. Itâs not a problem with the plane. Itâs similar to your car driving over slightly different road surfaces. You might feel a slight bump at the change, it might feel or sound slightly different than the previous surface you were driving on, but your car is fine. Try to get a seat forward of the aircraftâs centre of mass (typically forward of the wing;) apparently you feel the turbulence less.
Your ears popping is normal as you change altitude as you ascend and descend, itâs not the cabin de-pressurizing. Yawn\swallow\chew something\pop your ears to equalize the pressure.
The plane has a weather rader, as well as a whole lot of help from Air Traffic Control. Although the planes are fine to fly through storms (and cope with lightning strikes,) in the interest of passenger comfort they will do what they can to avoid it. Theyâll either go around or over them. You might feel a bump or two when going through a cloud, but it shouldnât last too long. Itâs not likely that a storm will spontaneously form around the plane with 0 warning.
Routes are planned in advance, and the planes carry more fuel than they actually need for your journey in case they need to go into a holding pattern\fly around a storm\divert to another airport further away than your destination. Pilots will periodically check in with ATC regarding their fuel status, weather etc, and routes (and altitudes; you use different amounts of fuel at different altitudes) can be adjusted to make sure you make it safely with fuel to spare.
There are multiple pilots on board, and (on longer flights) they make a point of eating different meals in case one gets food poisoning.
There is a metric tonne of maintenance done on planes before they are allowed to take off.
Let me know if you want more; I donât want to try to provide assurances to things that werenât originally worrying about.
9 Likes
My wife has been on hundreds of flights and still gets nervous so has a couple of scotchâs before flying.
Iâve flown on thousands of flights and have never been in a serious accident. Several aborted takeoffs and landings and some aircraft malfunctions that necessitated unloading and a swap out aswell as some pretty cool diversions.
I do prefer aircraft with reverse seating and will always choose that over a forward facing seat if possible. I always have a meal and a few drinks before reading, surfing the net or watching a movie
People counter that by saying that the back of a plane isnât the part that crashes first. If l am on a longer flight say overnight into or out of Melbourne, l prefer to sit at the back somewhere, there are often more empty seats, it is usually quieter, and l can sleep for longer.
All this talk reminds me of an incident l had while flying many years ago. I was on my first o/s trip, and had managed to find my way to Penang, where l had a does of food poisoning one Sunday night, still the worst night of my life. A couple of days later l decided l wanted out and booked a flight to Medan, Sumatra en route to the wonderful Lake Toba. By now my stomach had settled down enough to make a flight no big deal. The flight takes about one hour. As we came into land at Polonia airport the plane flew down the length of the runway. It then banked off to the right. Good l thought, we are going to do a gentle 180 turn and land. Next moment the 737 flipped violently to the left, the whole plane was shaking under the strain of the turn, every rivet in the airframe would have been shuddering under the g force loads. At that moment l looked down the wing, below us was a gentle water buffalo, it was looking up at me unperturbed by what was going on, we were at an altitude of maybe 50 m, far too low for a move of such violent force. With the ultra-tight turn finished, the pilot flipped the plane back to horizontal at the end of the runway, and brought us into land. My stomach handled the flight better than it had handled the food poisoning. As l was gathering my overhead luggage the pilot walked out of the cabin. I nearly burst out laughing when l saw him. He was the spitting image of Jimmy Edwards, the Brit comedian, complete with huge, handlebar moustache. I imagined him being an ex-RAF fighter pilot and him imagining that the 737 was his Spitfire or Hurricane.
2 Likes
Are you the type that gets confidence from knowledge?
Dig into something and convince yourself it is safe. Things like why wings flex so they are safer. How a plane can fly home on one engine. Find a detail and get your head around it to the point you trust it.
May help. But not everyone can logic their way out of that emotion.
1 Like
1 Like
Russian airline Azur had a compressor stall on one of its 767âs by the looks. Was just about to takeoff from Phuket and head to Moscow when it had an engine surge and takeoff had to be aborted. Returned to its bay shortly after and passengers disembarked safely.
Due to poor maintenance and unavailability of parts there are a heap of ticking time bombs out there and itâs only a matter of time
1 Like
Time for the pilots to buy a lotto ticket!!!
1 Like
Wrong topic?
1 Like
Some more images
The front of the aircraft was destroyed in the subsequent fire. Itâs quite intact after the crash.
2 Likes
An expert interviewed on the radio said the safest seat is the middle seat in the row next to the toilets.
Now I get the pancaked down thing, I suppose being so low is what saved these guys, still incredibly lucky.
1 Like
The evidence so far seems to suggest that they were flying at low level and may have kissed the terrain so basically skimmed the ground.
2 Likes
Depending on aircraft type of course.
1 Like
I dream of dying in a plane crash or watching a plane crash many times a week, all my life. I watch accident videos on repeat, listen in to voice recordings and read transcripts of accidents, research all the ways it can happen, and try to understand where the responsibility was.
So, I treat it like a videogame to cope.
I get to the airport and pretend itâs a save screen. I make things right as I can, complete as many quests as I can, park my Thestral Mount/horse in a safe place, make sure Iâm full health, free of vampirism, weapons stocked, goodbye letters written for my loved ones (seriously), and stay grateful for the gameplay so far. IF I get to come back and continue on itâs a bonus.
I give myself something to focus on. Airport coffee. My goal is to drink an iced double-shot almond latte with hazelnut flavoring in every airport in the world. I get consumed by my desire for one, and spend more time focused on finding the nearest Starbucks.
For long flights, I try stay up ~24 hours beforehand so that I can collapse into a nap straight away. Or, I read the flight program in advance and schedule a movie marathon of movies Iâm genuinely excited to watch.
There is something rather thrilling about being in a magic bus with welded on wings at 38000ft. On the good days, I get to take a moment and appreciate how cool it is.
TLDR Ten degrees of pitch
3 Likes