irrational fear of flying

[monadnocky]

Arriving Spokane on board a B-24.

My greatest regret in life is not shelling out the $600 for a ride in that plane when it was in Keene, NH in 2007.
What an idiot I was.

[Dave Thompson]

Over Spokane in a B-25.

[rwsaunders]

Dave...post those pics of when you flew with Orville and Wilbur...

[Dave Thompson]

Dave...post those pics of when you flew with Orville and Wilbur...

As soon as I find the tintypes.

[claritycycler]

B-24 aka "Flying Coffin".

During a two month period at Davis-Monthan in Arizona, five B-24 planes and complete crews were lost during takeoff and landing practice. The B-24 nickname was justly earned as the so called “flying coffin” by the crews who flew it

By no means an expert by my understanding is it was difficult to fly, when the plane lost both engines no gliding to safety, it fell like a rock.

[gregl]

I lucked into a free ride on a B-17G during August, 2000. It was a truly humbling experience. Cruising along at speeds slower than a Beech Baron, I felt incredible admiration for the airmen of the US Army Air Corps. Going to war with nothing more than .020-.040" of aluminum to protect you from flak and Messerschmitt shells took cast iron cojones.

And the biggest regret of my aviation career - passing up an opportunity to co-pilot a B-17. Summer of 1988, Geneseo, NY airshow. A buddy and I were there for the day, watching a display that included five (5) flying B-17s. Won't bore you with the details, but I will forever shake my head at passing up the opportunity to (a) get three takeoffs/landings to qualify as a VFR-only SIC, (b) fly the bird in an airshow, and (c) ferry it to Denver after the airshow. All I had to do was say yes...

Greg

[holliscx]

Saab have you read William Langewiesche's article on AF flight 447 at Vanity Fair? Harrowing read. I ploughed through it last night trying to get sleepy before the Tar Heel's national title game.

[Saab2000]

OT but Saab have you read William Langewiesche's article on AF flight 447 at Vanity Fair? Harrowing read. I ploughed through it last night trying to get sleepy before the Tar Heel's national title game.

I haven't read it but I'm aware of the accident and the circumstances of it. It's likely not the material I'd choose to read to get sleepy before going to bed unless I wanted horrific nightmares about stalling and crashing into the Atlantic Ocean in a flat spin after flying into a thunderstorm and not understanding what's happening and not being able to get out of the stall. How's that for a run-on sentence? It's one of the accidents from which we've learned that stall awareness training and stall recovery training are necessary even for professionals who fly thousands of hours per year and it's why we train these maneuvers in simulators periodically. This probably belongs in that other thread about irrational fears of flying, but being afraid of falling from 6 miles high isn't irrational at all.

[holliscx]

I haven't read it but I'm aware of the accident and the circumstances of it. It's likely not the material I'd choose to read to get sleepy before going to bed unless I wanted horrific nightmares about stalling and crashing into the Atlantic Ocean in a flat spin after flying into a thunderstorm and not understanding what's happening and not being able to get out of the stall. How's that for a run-on sentence? It's one of the accidents from which we've learned that stall awareness training and stall recovery training are necessary even for professionals who fly thousands of hours per year and it's why we train these maneuvers in simulators periodically. This probably belongs in that other thread about irrational fears of flying, but being afraid of falling from 6 miles high isn't irrational at all.

Two highlights:

Lauber told me about one occasion, when he entered a Boeing 727 cockpit at a gate before the captain arrived, and the flight engineer said, “I suppose you’ve been in a cockpit before.”

“Well, yes.”

“But you may not be aware that I’m the captain’s sexual adviser.”

“Well, no, I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah, because whenever I speak up, he says, ‘If I want your fucking advice, I’ll ask for it.’ ”

---&---

There is an old truth in aviation that the reasons you get into trouble become the reasons you don’t get out of it.

[gregl]

Two highlights:

Lauber told me about one occasion, when he entered a Boeing 727 cockpit at a gate before the captain arrived, and the flight engineer said, “I suppose you’ve been in a cockpit before.”

“Well, yes.”

“But you may not be aware that I’m the captain’s sexual adviser.”

“Well, no, I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah, because whenever I speak up, he says, ‘If I want your fucking advice, I’ll ask for it.’ ”

---&---

There is an old truth in aviation that the reasons you get into trouble become the reasons you don’t get out of it.

I don't have nearly the flying hours that saab has logged, but I ran into "Sky God" syndrome on at least four occasions during my career. In the first two instances, I was not sufficiently forceful in communicating my discomfort to the captains and the passengers never knew how dangerous the situations had become. I came away from those incidents with a conviction to never let myself (and my passengers) be caught in those dangers again. In the next two instances, I was much more steadfast in my communications to the captains and prevented what would very likely become crashes. When I became a captain, I always tried to be mindful of the lessons I had learned and the crew resource management training I had completed. Hopefully I didn't cause any discomfort for my seconds-in-command... other than my bad jokes and incessant blathering about bikes.

Greg

[j44ke]

Flight 845 from Barcelona now cleared for landing on runway "Irrational Fear of Fying".

Thank you for flying VSalon Airwaves. Please do not place sealed air sickness bags in the overhead storage.

[jclay]

A question about airflow in the cabin: Is it of down-flow design? I'm only certain that air is introduced via each seat's overhead vent and I presume (hope) that the return is via the apparent intake louvers along the cabin floor/fuselage interior trim junction. Is that correct and pretty much the functional entirety of how air is introduced into and extracted from the cabin on it's way to the filtration and pumping systems? Surely some serious thought was put into minimizing bulk mixing and longitudinal plug flow of exhaled air in the cabin; and if it is then that's a very good thing and I feel better.

As to Greg's comment, I have less than 100 hours, mostly gliders...and very old hours at that but I was raised in a multi-generational Naval aviation family, extended family and community, and absorbed pretty serious sensibilities about flying. I find it extremely annoying when the guys up front try to communicate, via their control inputs, that they're hotshots or tail-hook qualified; or when they're flying, for whatever reason, many seconds behind the airplane. ATMO, and I don't think it's wrong, modern aviation is far more about mature judgement, SA, and systems management than stick'n rudder skill. The skipper of the Titanic and a certain deceased B52 driver I can think of were skilled "professionals"....by definition but certainly not by behavior. Smart folks, particularly when it involves others, stay out of trouble; the dumb ones try to get out of it.

My definition of professional? Doesn't take unnecessary risk.

Tangentially, and as an "ain't that effing amazing" comment: Every time the power levers get advanced to take-off EPRs I just think turbine blades, ball bearings and the thousands of little micron-machined pieces-parts (and lubrication schedules, and wiring protection) that have to do their jobs in order for that thing to fly. I've had a hand in building aircraft, started building a Woodstock 12m glider (sadly not finished), am (was) more than passingly familiar with aeronautical engineering and it BLOWS MY MIND that these things fly. I was born into this stuff and my head still spins on every take-off roll. Every. Single. One.

[bcm119]

I'm in a flight path for a lot of long haulers going from SFO to Europe, mostly 777s, 787s, and the occasional A380. But a French Bee A350 caught my eye the other day, headed to Paris, and a google search on this airline yielded this mildly disturbing article about an incident last summer on this exact route. Confusion and poor communication in the cockpit on a highly automated aircraft reminded me a bit of AF 447. Luckily this one had a happy ending, but it didn't do much to ease my irrational fear of flying!

[Mabouya]

this mildly disturbing article

I'm not a pilot, but that sure sounded like a circus, and not a funny one.

[rwsaunders]

[rwsaunders]

Who needs flying lessons?

https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/p...mpaign=website

[Scott G.]

Who needs flying lessons?

https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/p...mpaign=website

"Can you fly this plane?" from "Zero Hour"

[j44ke]

"Can you fly this plane?" from "Zero Hour"

“Don’t call me Shirley.”

[Dave Thompson]

Scoping out olive orchards in Florence Italy.

[rwsaunders]

Coming into O’Hare this morning and I was looking out the window to see if Saab was in the sky….nope. So we did a go around just to make sure and I got to see the city skyline twice, plus the other plane that we were racing made a really nice landing.