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Debunking Aviation Myths

By Steven Evanne Heinstein

If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you find yourself 30,000 feet above the rest of the world quite often. There are avid flyers who fear nothing but in-flight meals, and there are avid flyers who fear anything their mind can conjure up. I spoke with a British Airways pilot who wishes to remain anonymous as he debunks some of the greatest aviation myths. And we added some personal questions too, which would explain this choice BA pilot’s request for anonymity. i-94 loves British Airways, so put your chairs back in a reclining position and enjoy the flight.

A jumbo jet can fly on one engine.

I wouldn’t know. I fly 737's! I do know however that it could quite happily lose one engine and still fly across the Atlantic! No singular failure can be catastrophic to a plane. That is the philosophy of how they are built.

The flight crew has access to the belly of the plane where the pets are held.

Well yeah, but on the ground. I don’t advise going outside at 36,000 feet.

As long as there’s wind and a hydraulic system, 875,000 pounds of metal will stay in the air.

We don’t use lbs in the UK, but yeah that is essentially true, you could keep a heavy 737 (60 tonnes or so - work the lbs out for yourself!) gliding through the air with a steady and controlled rate of descent, even without the wind and hydraulics. As far as an Airbus goes, I think you would need some computers still working as they are fly-by-wire, whereas the good old 737 literally has some mechanical links to the controls in case all else fails!

The A-380 is the largest commercial jet. When the idea to build such a massive plane was presented, the first concern was the high number of fatalities (500+) in the event there were an accident.

Well of course it is a consideration I am sure, but new airliners, flown by professional pilots simply just don’t crash nowadays. The safety margins, the back-up systems and technology are just that sophisticated.

Pilots only “fly” the plane 3 minutes after take off and three minutes before landing, whether on route from London to Tokyo, or NYC to Boston.

Not true for me, although it’s customary to put the autopilot in for most of the flight as it frees up your capacity to concentrate on other things. You can and quite often do fly it for as much as you like - especially take off and landing, they are the best parts! You would normally put the plane into autopilot in the cruise, though that is just as boring as driving on a freeway.

Pilots are tested for alcohol before each flight.

Random checks are allowed and happen fairly frequently. But before every flight? No.

Commercial pilots must have 20/20 vision.

Pretty much, although glasses are allowed to achieve the required vision standards. Things like colour blindness aren’t allowed though. “Red” means stop after all!

Ground maintenance at European airports is better than that of the US.

I wouldn’t have the foggiest, although I am sure both sides of the Atlantic have perfect maintenance!

Of course you have the foggiest! Aren’t you from London? Ok, the chance of a plane crash is 400% greater when flying within Brazil than it is when flying within the States or Europe.

Really?

When a plane is going down, those masks that drop down from the ceiling do not emit oxygen, but rather gas, rendering the passenger unconscious.

Hmm, I wonder what sort of gas! Once again, total myth. The oxygen is provided through a mix of chemicals emitting 100% oxygen. If that makes you pass out then you probably wouldn’t have much of a social life.

A 747 can roll over safely in flight.

I personally wouldn’t recommend that you try. At least not with passengers!

The body of a plane stretches up to 3 feet when in flight due to the hot temperature.

As you go up it gets colder, not hotter! But the wings, when full of fuel can flex the wingtips by a couple of feet, they are designed to be flexible.

The Bermuda triangle. True or false?

Never been there. Definitely false. Maybe.

In the mid nineties, Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page wrote a $10,000 check to cover the FAA “smoking fine” before lighting up in first class.

Never had him on my flight, although I do vaguely remember being allowed to smoke on planes in the past! However, it is an offence to do something against regulations on board an aircraft, so he would have been lucky to have just had a fine if he did it quite so blatantly.

The bigger the plane, the safer the plane.

Depends who is flying it! Oh, and where, according to your Brazil claims apparently!

A passenger tossing a cigarette butt in the bathroom trash bin on a flight to Brazil was the precedent for no smoking on flights. The plane caught ablaze, but safely landed without a roof.

What an extraordinary story! I am not sure a roofless plane is so aerodynamic. Fire on board a plane in the air is a pretty bad idea. When you are quite so high up it takes a surprisingly long time to get an aircraft down. People think planes will just drop out the sky if you turn the engines off when in fact you would still glide for about 10-15 minutes over 100 miles.

Once a plane starts, there’s no turning back. In other words, it’s always safer to get in the air than to abort take-off.

No, not really. It generally is safer to take most problems into the air and sort it out there, but there is a decision speed before you take-off where you can stop for only the most serious of problems like a fire.

Turbulence is generally harmless, tantamount to a car barreling through the wind.

Yeah pretty much. I like to compare it to a boat in choppy seas, though you just can’t see the waves.

We are instructed to lift up the window shades during take off and landing so one can see in the event there’s a fire due to high engine pressure.

Well that I don’t know, but I do know that an accident that happened decades ago would have benefited from the pilots getting feedback from the people in the cabin.

Lovely. Following 9/11, pilots are allowed to have guns in the cockpit.

No, not in the UK anyway. There is no need, as that’s what the “locked door policy” is for. Hijacking a plane is not the best idea, as there are only limited places you can go to, and then your stuck in a long box.

If a bullet hits the side of a plane, everyone will be sucked out into the atmosphere just like in the movies.

It would be a pretty small hole, no? Seriously though, there would be some sucking out of air inside the cabin, as there is more dense air inside the cabin than outside when you are high up. So if the two are exposed to each other, they naturally try to equal out the pressure, probably not quite so dramatically as in the movies though! It would cause a lot of mist though as the new thinner air wouldn’t be able to hold as much water as the old dense air.

It’s silly to make an 84-year old lady from Notting Hill remove her shoes at Heathrow.

I guess anyone can be a terrorist or a drug smuggler, although some discretion should be used. I agree, but everyone is subject to the same rules, including us pilots. If you have been to Europe recently you will know you can’t take containers of liquid over 100ml, and that includes all the crew too. So we can’t even take a bottle of water through security. I think that’s along the same sort of lines as our 84-year old lady personally.

A 100 ml liquid crew? Ok, when fighter jets pull alongside a hijacked plane to “escort” it safely to the ground, they’re really there to blow it to pieces before it flies over a populated area.

I hope not! It has never happened to me before (being escorted, not blown up), but fighters only tend to do that if you are in a sensitive part of the world and they lose radio contact with you or something unusual has happened.

Obese passengers are required to purchase 2 seats.

It depends if they need them I think!

Cessnas and other small planes are always on radar.

There are different sorts of radar. At the very least, their signal would be bounced back to a radar that was looking for it. Airliners use a system that actually broadcast their information to air traffic control actively, as opposed to being searched out by a radar on the ground.

A plane only shifts a few feet when confronted with turbulence due to the balancing system of the plane.

Planes are designed to go where you point them and are very stable. So to an extent, the aerodynamics will usually naturally tend to put you back in the same position. In very turbulent or windy conditions then the pilot will need to straighten it up a bit.

Pilots are under contractual oath to tell the passengers exactly what is happening, be it “we’ve lost an engine” or “beware of the chicken dinner.”

Of course, we never lie.

A bird in an engine can potentially send a plane plummeting to the earth.

No. Nothing short of a wing falling off will make a plane plummet to the earth. A big enough bird can make an engine stop though, so we do try to avoid them. Plus I don’t like killing animals anyway.

What is the perimeter of the British “no fly” zone?

We have one? We have certain points where you are entering UK airspace where you have to be cleared to enter, but it’s not a "no fly zone" as such.

Why are there not emergency landing strips in the water below popular flight paths?

Planes don’t crash. Plus they float pretty well.

Have you ever seen any flying objects other than planes and birds?

Clouds.

Have you had any close calls?

Nope. Not once have I ever been scared. Landing in very windy conditions last New Year (70 mph winds) was fairly sporting, but not dangerous. If it gets remotely dangerous, then you abort the landing and go somewhere else.

If you yawn, and you look at your co-pilot and he yawns, is that trouble or is just coffee time?

Coffee time.

I bet you prefer tea. OK, have you ever been tempted to just keep flying upward?

You would run out of oomph eventually. Plus different planes have different "ceilings" where the air is just too thin to generate anymore lift on the wings, so you wouldn’t get too far!

Sir Richard Branson can pilot a hot air balloon, but can he pilot a 747?

Not that I know of! The 2 are pretty different! In fact a pilot can only generally fly one sort of aircraft at the same time, at least license-wise. And I wouldn’t really have a clue what to do in an Airbus as Boeing. Airbus have very different approaches to flying and different aircraft systems; a bit like being able to drive a car but not pilot a submarine.

That’s a very interesting analogy. And finally, last bit least, as we all want to know. Are you a member of the…? You know that club.

One-World Alliance? Sure.

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