I have an irrational phobia of flying, I know all the stats about how flying is safest way to travel. I was wondering if someone could explain the why though. I’m hoping that if I can better understand what makes it safe that maybe I won’t be afraid when I fly.
Edit: to everyone who has commented with either personal stories or directly answering the question I just want you to know you all have moved me to tears with your caring. If I could afford it I would award every comment with gold.
Edit2: wow way more comments and upvotes then I ever thought I’d get on Reddit. Thank you everyone. I’m gonna read them all this has actually genuinely helped.
In: 7227
Ok, I worked in this space for 8 years as an engineer (not directly on planes but with engines).
Air travel is on its face dangerous, obviously so. Therefore since day one we’ve been working our asses off to make sure that we think about every possible failure. I’ll go over a few with the engines:
1. Blade off Failure: In general, fast spinning object that’s suddenly unbalanced = bomb. So when plane engines are designed and tested. One engine is selected as the sacrificial engine (during the design/testing phase you only build like 4 total so it’s a big deal to lose 1). That engine is fitted with a shape charge, run to full power and a single blade is blown off the engine. The must contain the explosion and prevent any debris from going out the side (i.e. toward the plane). Here’s a video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHU7PBIezB0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHU7PBIezB0)
2. Main Bearing Seizure: Again following the principle of fast spinning thing. If a fast spinning thing tries to stop spinning quickly, it will try to keep spinning (imagine trying to grab a car’s wheel at full speed). To account for this, the engines are connected to the plane using what are called “shear pins”. If the main bearing of an engine seized, the entire engine will keep trying to rotate and it will break those shear pins which will drop the engine off the wing (think Donnie Darko). While this would be scary as fuck to witness, it saves the plane’s wings and the plane can safely land.
3. Engines are completely rebuilt every so many hours and then run up and tested before they go back on a wing so that none of the above happens.
4. Bird strikes.
Yes, they fire chickens out of a cannon at engines to see if the engine will survive. It makes a huge mess.
Now the fun fact part of that, is that in Russia, they believe that it’s important that the chickens be as fresh as possible. What this means is that there is a pen of live chickens in the test cell and in the words of my Russian (former) colleague “A man with a heart of stone grabs the chicken, breaks its neck and puts it in the cannon and fires at the engine”.
EDIT: Point 4
No one in the airline industry is fooling around.
Pilots literally have a “Gripe Sheet” where they list any of the little nuisances experienced during flight. This list is then looked over by the team of people specially skilled to fix airplanes, and then those gripes are either addressed or commented on.
Pilots also have a lot of controls and readings in their planes so that the pilot can respond to any emergency in real time. These are hopefully rarely used, but all pilots know enough about their planes to know what switch to flip if certain events occur.
Speaking of which, a lot of things on the plane have a backup system. And if the backup is used, that can sometimes be considered an emergency, even though the backup can safely do the job of the main system. Because the backup system being used due to the primary failing means the primary system has failed.
Pilots also tend to have copilots and even have a second set of pilots for long flights. This makes it so that a pilot who is falling asleep can be quickly replaced.
The routes of planes are pre-planned and managed so that they don’t come NEAR hazards, including other planes. Once you’re up in the air, you are pretty much away from literally everything.
Planes also fly fast enough and work such that if something DID happen, like a bird gets caught in an engine, the plane can safely land using just its current momentum and strategic positioning of wing flaps and dropping the landing gear. Hell, one pilot landed a plane WITHOUT the landing gear. (Not reccomended)
On top of all that? Planes are designed and tested such that they can be completely evacuated in 90 seconds. This is not optional, and not taken lightly. There’s literally a test for any new planes where they load them with passengers and evacuate using ONLY the emergency lights.
In the rare event of a crash, airplanes are also one of the few modes of travel that have professionals on the scene to manage the post-crash aftermath. Which is another reason why the job of a passenger is ONLY “get to safety”. Flight attendants will provide instructions to the passengers to get them to a secure location. Then someone will be very upset that their plane is not checking in or arriving, and the plane’s pre-scheduled route will be used to start looking for it.
But if you thought those were the only precautions, THINK AGAIN!
Airplanes have hazard protocols for hazards coming from INSIDE THE PLANE. If a hazard occurs, you simply alert a flight attendant, who’s primary job is actually managing the cabin (They only serve snacks and drinks because it’s convenient for them to do so). The flight attendant will manage it in a way that prevents either panic or harm. Probably by taking it to the bathroom. Which can be vented separately from the cabin if Bad Gases are generated.
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So in short – you don’t need to be scared, because some very capable people are paid to act on paranoia for you.
If it helps OP I also read all the statistics about air flight and that did nothing to help my phobia until one day I realised that I can’t die in a plane crash because I’m just not important enough.
Same reason I don’t expect to win the lottery or start a successful youtube career etc the odds are so not in our favour that it would be a miracle to happen.
The kind of flying that is so safe is something called ‘part 121’ of the FAA rules and regulation. Part 121 defines how mainline carriers operate, so your Delta’s and United etc. It is a damn nightmare to get part 121 certified, it is cheaper to buy a failing airline that is already certified than it is to seek new certification. Part 121 defines training and operating standards, simply put, everyone involved in pat 121 operations are full on professionals.
For example, if I go fly my little Cessna 172 I can just jump in the plane and fly as long as I am legal. A 121 carrier has to file a specific flight plan, they have to have two pilots, they need to keep specific records, all the mechanics need to keep meticulous notes on everything they do, they need to have emergency plans that makes sense, the list goes on. A part 121 flight has a whole team of people monitoring, from ATC to dispatchers, all the way down the line. Now they even have little monitoring bugs on the planes that send real time information to the manufacturer of the plane and engines and they have engineers that monitor them.
The basic answer is professional crews, persnickety maintenance, and strict training standards. I could go on, but basically the culture of safety for part 121 carriers is a model that could really help other industries with safety. When your margin for error is razor thin, being detail oriented pays dividends.
Pilots are highly trained. Air travel is highly regulated and every route is planned out.
People in cars are just fucking idiots who got their license 30 years ago, or are kids with 6 months of driving lessons thinking they are mario andretti driving like morons.
Streets are small. One-dimensional small. Collisions happen all the time because all the cars are along the same line. They’re also driven by people who were first trained as teenagers and basically never retrained.
Air is big. Three-dimensional big. Collisions basically never happen because there’s so much space for planes to be in. The only place collisions do happen is when planes get down to one-dimensional takeoff/landing pathways, and in that case you have multiple highly-trained people paying very close attention to exactly where every plane is at all time.
Limiting this to commercial flights, as your question is about travel and not hobby flying. There are many aspects to airliner safety. Here are a few of them:
* The pilots are professionals. Unlike cars on the road, the only people flying your airliner are people who’ve gone through rigorous training to get their license in the first place, have to maintain their license through experience (enough flying hours) as well as repeat training throughout their career. Compare that to your uncle Joe at 60 who got their license at 18 and has 40 odd years of bad habits built up and no training on changed driving rules or driving environment over the past 4 decades.
* Pilots are trained for specific planes. Your uncle Joe learned to drive in a small 4 door sedan, but is now driving a huge Dodge Ram truck, without instruction in how the much bigger truck behaves differently compared to the small sedan.
* The pilot has a copilot on deck who can correct the pilot if he misses something. Uncle Joe doesn’t have a designated co-driver whose duty is to watch for mistakes.
* The pilot has mandatory rest cycles. Uncle Joe can drive all the way from Miami to Seattle without anybody stopping him to take a rest.
* All incidents are reported and especially major incidents get investigated, continuously improving safety features, be it in procedures and checklists or technical features. If uncle Joe gets into an accident, nobody is forcing him to learn from the situation and adjust behaviour to improve overall safety.
I worked at an airline for 20 years before retiring. I would occasionally have a customer call me and ask a similar question. I told them, truthfully, that I would have someone call at least once a year to say they got in a car accident on the way to the airport and need to cancel their flight. I never once had an airplane accident on my airline in all my years there, and never lost a passenger. “So,” I would finish with, “now that I’ve made you afraid to drive, do you want to book a flight?”
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If I could be so bold, I’ll add my $0.02.
I spent most of the late nineties/early two thousands flying around the world. My home airport was Boston, Massachusetts in The USA. I would regularly fly to Singapore, Hong Kong, and all around China – loved flying during that time.
Fast forward a few years. Due to a series of unfortunate events culminating with the ’08 real estate crash, I was in a very bad place financially. I was asked out to a job interview in Ohio. Late-night flight, very small plane. I will not go into the gory details, but I had a panic attack of pretty massive proportions. It messed up flying for me and I have still not fully recovered. I say this because, yes, I have a ‘fear of flying’ as well. Yours very well could be exactly that. BUT, I would suggest that you check on things like claustrophobia or other things like that (fear of heights) as opposed to purely flying. Hopefully you solve the issue as not flying is a bummer. The world is big and it is awesome. Flying cool places is one of the great pleasures of modern times. Good luck, stranger!
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