I've been flying internationally for a mere 30 years, and although have had flights in which I was .. ahem... concerned... I've never felt I was in danger...
1. Flying from Guangzhou to Guilin circa 1978. Some sort of Turbo-prop with all of the notices in Russian. The vibration were so bad rivets were popping off. The oddest thing whereas the flight to Guilin was like 3 hours, the flight back was like five. Never figured that one out.
2. Landing in Chicago the runway was coming up fast when the engines started screaming and we began to go up, not down. Up up up... then gently turn around. No announcements, no explanation nothing. The plane landed and the stewardesses (no such thing as "flight attendants" back then...) feigned surprise that anyone should think anything was unusual. OK...
3. Taking off out of Anchorage, pitch black, and feeling as though we are corkscewing up and up, which is think is normal, but the engines were screaming and moaning like they were not going to make it.
Now of course, landing at old Kai Tak was too amazing to ever allow for fear.
Three crashes in a week a few weeks ago have people nervous. Here a pilot puts it in perspective...
Read the whole article for some remarkable stories.
And I would note this is another example of no government, but plenty of governance. The system is safe even though no one is "in charge," it is all voluntary association . Cuba and USA gets along when it comes to flying.
Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
1. Flying from Guangzhou to Guilin circa 1978. Some sort of Turbo-prop with all of the notices in Russian. The vibration were so bad rivets were popping off. The oddest thing whereas the flight to Guilin was like 3 hours, the flight back was like five. Never figured that one out.
2. Landing in Chicago the runway was coming up fast when the engines started screaming and we began to go up, not down. Up up up... then gently turn around. No announcements, no explanation nothing. The plane landed and the stewardesses (no such thing as "flight attendants" back then...) feigned surprise that anyone should think anything was unusual. OK...
3. Taking off out of Anchorage, pitch black, and feeling as though we are corkscewing up and up, which is think is normal, but the engines were screaming and moaning like they were not going to make it.
Now of course, landing at old Kai Tak was too amazing to ever allow for fear.
Three crashes in a week a few weeks ago have people nervous. Here a pilot puts it in perspective...
Go back to the year 1985, for example. In that twelve-month span, 27 — twenty seven! — serious aviation accidents killed almost 2,500 people. We had the JAL crash outside Tokyo with 520 fatalities; the Arrow Air disaster in Newfoundland that killed 240 American servicemen; the Air-India bombing over the North Atlantic with 329 dead, etc. Two of history’s ten deadliest disasters happened within two months of each other!
That’s a bad year.
Three crashes in a week? How about two in 24 hours. In the same place!
Read the whole article for some remarkable stories.
And I would note this is another example of no government, but plenty of governance. The system is safe even though no one is "in charge," it is all voluntary association . Cuba and USA gets along when it comes to flying.
Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
1 comments:
John; please don't publish articles like this, you scare me and I may not want to fly anymore!!
Larry
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