Cockpit Confidential (31 page)

Can I cure
your
fear of flying? That depends more on the nature of your fears than my skills of explanation. I'm not a psychologist, and not everybody's fears are rational. In a high percentage of cases, what fearful flyers actually fear has little or nothing to do with flying itself and cannot be dispatched by explanations, statistics, or straight talk. They don't need a pilot; they need a counselor or a mental health professional.

A certain level of fear is normal, whether you're a first-time flyer or a seasoned crewmember. I can't be surprised that millions of reasonable people find it hard to reconcile the notion of traveling hundreds of miles per hour, far above the Earth, inside pressurized tubes weighing hundreds of thousands of pounds. Such an activity is not natural for human beings, and while it doesn't quite violate the laws of physics, it does seem to violate any and all common sense. Technology has made it work, but while airplane travel isn't statistically dangerous,
inherently
it's another story.

As for stats, Bill James, the baseball academic, likes to say, “Never use a number when you can avoid it.” Normally he's right, and I don't enjoy dishing out numerical platitudes. We're so used to abstract validation of air safety that it no longer makes us
think
. A few statistics, however, are worth our time. For example, this one, which you can almost visualize: each day, in the United States alone, about 25,000 commercial flights take to the air. Globally, extrapolation yields about 50,000 daily trips. That's every day, every week, every month. The ten most popular airlines alone make close to six million flights per year. Of these, the number failing in their attempt to flout gravity can be totaled in astonishingly short shrift.

How short? Here in the United States, we are riding strong amid the safest-ever stretch in the history of commercial aviation. As this manuscript is being prepared in 2013, we have not seen a large-scale crash involving a major airline in more than eleven years. That's a record dating back to the advent of the jetliner itself. Our last catastrophe was that of American Airlines flight 587 near Kennedy airport in November 2001. Since then, the only major-carrier fatality was that of a young boy killed when a Southwest Airlines 737 overran a snowy runway in Chicago in 2004. The boy was in an automobile struck by the skidding plane. Granted, there have been several nonfatal incidents (Sully-upon-Hudson, to cite one) and a handful of tragedies involving regional planes, but even with these included, the nation's fatal accident rate has fallen 85 percent since 2000. From 2008 through 2012, the odds of being in a fatal accident were approximately one in 45 million.

This, despite the industry's unprecedented fiscal woes. The fallout from September 11 gave us thousands of layoffs and four major carrier bankruptcy filings, then came the 2007–08 fuel-spike crisis, followed by a terrible recession. Say what you want of customer service, but even though our largest airlines have been reeling financially, they've remained impeccably safe.

Here's more: In a 2003 study published by
American Scientist
magazine, University of Michigan researchers reevaluated the old flying-versus-driving contention. To be as conservative as possible, their technique calculated probabilities based not on kilometers covered, but on numbers of takeoffs and landings, when more than 90 percent of air crashes occur. And they considered highway data only from rural interstates—one of the
safest
driving environments. Their data showed that if a passenger chooses to drive rather than fly the distance of a typical flight segment, that person is sixty-five times more likely to be killed.

Elsewhere around the globe, the statistics are no less impressive. There are twice as many commercial aircraft worldwide, carrying twice as many passengers, as existed in 1980. Yet, per passenger-miles flown, flying is an estimated five times safer. Narrowing it to the past ten years, the number of people who fly annually has increased by roughly 20 percent, to just over two
billion
. Over that span, the number of fatal accidents has held steady at around twenty per year. According to the Aviation Safety Network, 2012 was the safest year globally since 1945.

Getting to this level wasn't easy. Mainly it's the result of better pilot training, improved cockpit technology, and the seldom-acknowledged collaborative efforts of the airline industry, regulators, pilot groups, and international organizations like ICAO. (ICAO—
Eye-kay-oh
, the International Civil Aviation Organization—is the aviation directorate of the United Nations and sets global protocols on a wide range of safety issues, from runway markings to approach procedures.) Not long ago, as air travel was beginning to expand rapidly in places like China, India, and Brazil, experts warned of a tipping point. Unless certain deficiencies were addressed, we were told, disasters would become epidemic, at a rate of up to one per week. Fortunately they
were
addressed, most notably in the area of crew training, and the end result is that we've effectively engineered away some of the most common causes of crashes.

Maintaining such high standards, however, is going to take some effort. And while I shouldn't have to say it, here goes: At some point our luck
will
run out. There
will
be another catastrophic accident. Affirming this today is a good way of reducing the shock later on. It's not to suggest that we let our guard down; it's to recognize the inevitable and acknowledge that no system, no matter how good, can ever be perfect. And when it happens, we should probably brace ourselves for the reaction. The amount of media attention given to minor mishaps, precautionary landings, and harmless malfunctions in recent years is a depressing precursor of what's to come when something legitimately serious happens. The worst thing about the next big crash will be the loss of life. The second worst thing will be the overreaction and hype.

This is a tricky one. The mere suggestion that a pilot “dreads” a particular scenario is enough to convince the already-nervous flyer that it's about to happen. The last thing I want to do is scare the bejesus out of the person who has turned to this chapter for comfort. Just the same, it's a fair question and one that deserves an answer.

For the most part, pilots fear those things they cannot control. We are less afraid of committing a fatal error than of finding ourselves victimized by
somebody else's
error, or else at the mercy of those forces impervious to our skills or expertise. I'd put lithium battery fires, bird strikes that take out multiple engines, catastrophic mechanical malfunctions, and ground collisions at the top of my list. We talked about birds in chapter two (
see bird strikes
), and we'll get to collisions later in this chapter. “Catastrophic mechanical malfunction” is a catchall for things like flight control failure (loss of rudder, elevator, or aileron control), uncommanded reverser deployment, and other worst-case terrors that can render a plane unflyable. Improbable as these things are, all of them have happened once or twice.

As to battery fires, high-energy lithium power packs—both lithium-ion and the lithium-polymer types found in many laptop computers and other devices—are susceptible to a phenomenon called thermal runaway, a chemical chain-reaction causing them to rapidly and uncontrollably overheat. The danger isn't a small fire in the passenger cabin, where it can be readily put out with an extinguisher, but the possibility of a larger, unseen fire in a baggage or freight compartment. Frighteningly, tests have shown these fires to be resistant to the Halon-based cargo compartment extinguishing systems used on commercial aircraft.

The FAA has recorded more than seventy incidents involving lithium battery fires since the 1990s. The two most serious were the fatal crash of a UPS 747 near Dubai in 2010 and a nearly fatal fire aboard a UPS DC-8 in Philadelphia in 2006. Both blazes are believed to have been touched off by large shipments of lithium batteries. And in 2013, all Boeing 787s were temporarily grounded following a series of lithium battery fires in the planes' electronics bays.

The bulk shipment of lithium batteries is now prohibited aboard passenger planes, as is the carriage of loose (i.e. spare) batteries in checked baggage. The possibility always remains, however, of a shipment sneaking through. If a lithium fire strikes you as a very small possibility, you're right, it is. But it's healthy, I think, and in the best interest of safety overall, that as pilots we keep certain things in the back of our minds.

That glazed look in the flight attendant's eyes is probably one of exhaustion, not fear. Nervous flyers are prone to envision some silently impending disaster, with distressed crewmembers pacing the aisles and whispering to each other in secret. In reality, passengers
will
be told about any emergency or serious malfunction.

And most nonserious ones too. If you're informed about a landing gear snafu, pressurization problem, engine trouble, or the need for a precautionary landing, do
not
construe this to be a life-or-death situation. It's virtually always something minor—though you'll be kept in the loop anyway. With even an outside chance of an evacuation in mind, you
have
to be kept in the loop.

On the other hand, a crew will not inform passengers of small malfunctions with no legitimate bearing on safety. Being blunt about every little problem invites unnecessary worry, not to mention embellishment. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is the captain. Just to let you know, we've received a failure indication for the backup loop of the smoke detection system in the aft cargo compartment.” In this example, passengers come home with, “Oh my god, the plane was on fire.” Not that people aren't bright enough to figure out what is or isn't dangerous, but we're dealing with jargon and terminology that begs to be misunderstood.

This topic brings to mind the unfortunate saga of jetBlue flight 292, an Airbus A320 that made an emergency landing in Los Angeles in 2005 because of a landing gear problem. Although only a minor incident from a technical point of view, the entire affair was caught on live television, engrossing millions of Americans and needlessly scaring the daylights out of everybody on the plane:

Moments after liftoff from Burbank, California, the pilots realized their forward landing gear had not properly retracted and was cocked at 90 degrees. Unable to realign it, they would have to make an emergency landing with the tires twisted sideways. The pilots and jetBlue's dispatch team agreed to a diversion to Los Angeles, primarily to take advantage of LAX's long runways. But first came the matter of the plane's gross weight, which was several thousand pounds above its maximum allowable heft for touchdown. The A320, like other smaller jetliners, does not have fuel dump capability (
see fuel jettison
). This meant three hours of leisure flying over the Pacific until the poundage was down to the appropriate amount.

Those three hours are what allowed this relative nonevent to be catapulted into a full-on network spectacle. The California news outlets, out and about in search of the usual car chases and traffic accidents, had only to tip their cameras upward to catch the Airbus as it circled. On board, 146 souls readied for what, according to the commentators, could very well be a devastating crash. Grown men were seen weeping. Others scribbled good-bye notes to loved ones. Words like “terrifying” and “harrowing” would later show up in interviews with those who “survived.”

Those of us who knew better weren't nearly as alarmed. We saw a jetliner with a mildly threatening problem preparing for what would be a telegenic but perfectly manageable landing. And that's what we got. The plane touched down smoothly on its main tires, the nose gently falling as speed bled away until the wayward gear scraped sideways into the pavement, kicking up a rooster tail of sparks. There were no injuries.

As if the live-action saga hadn't been enough, the media spent the next three days choking on its own hype and melodrama, showing slow-motion replays, interviewing passengers, and generally giving jetBlue all the free advertising it could possibly hope for.

For those who'd been aboard, jetBlue's seat-back TV screens helped induce panic, beaming in reckless live coverage from the networks. What the passengers needed was a calm and accurate explanation of exactly what was going on, and what was likely to happen at touchdown. What they got was sensational commentary from people who had no idea what they were talking about. The whole thing set up a weird and distasteful voyeuristic triangle: the terrified and transfixed passengers assumed they were watching themselves, where in truth they were watching
us
watch
them
. And all along there were better things on TV.

As a rule, airlines in America do not use safety as a marketing tool. All employ the word in a vague and general fashion, but seldom with regard to specific programs or innovations. To do so would be, on one hand, statistically manipulative, and on the other hand, a potential form of market suicide, undercutting the presumption of air safety in general. Not to mention the humiliation a given carrier would endure should a disaster transpire. For airline A to sell itself as safer than everyone else, there needs to be a presumption of danger aboard its competitors. This would entail some dubious statistical maneuvering. Since the terror attacks of 2001, American Airlines has had one fatal accident; the other network carriers none. For United or Delta to brag of having a better record than American would be, even if mathematically accurate, a little underhanded.