Ever hear of a plane backing into a mountain?

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Legit chuckle.

How pissed should I be with united? Fly sea to Chicago tomorrow, selected last row window starboard side. Get a text message saying to select a new seat due to a aircraft change.

Only seats available are economy plus which is $60 more

I assume you mean that only seats available that aren't middle seats are economy plus?

I don't think they can make you pay 60$, so you'll end up getting an assignment at check-in that I suppose would have to be in economy plus if those are truly the only seats left.

If you mean they are jamming you in a middle unless you pay, then that equals a sternly worded tweet and letter, but not much you can do about it.

No like the only seats available are middle seats in economy plus.

I'm more pissed about getting stuck middle, I'm a tall dude and I selected this flight based on the ability to not have a middle seat.

Ask nicely at the counter, but it looks like you're heading for a middle seat experience. At least you'll get a couple extra inches of leg room.

I better get some vouchers for this ****.

I would gladly pay the $80 to upgrade to first class but none are available

Only $80 for first?

That's what the site says.

$80 on top of what I've already paid

If you had a cheap seat reservation, you should have no problem getting E+ for free. Just be nice at the counter. A middle E+ is more comfortable for a tall person than a standard window provided there are no overweight folks on either end.

Thought of something last night. What's the impact like in an emergency landing? How much can the pilot do to lessen the impact?

Thinking of the Sullenberger thing, but I suppose it might be landing gear failure or any of a number of things.

While I was thinking about it, at first I thought it must be like a car crash, but then I thought maybe not, as passengers are not required to wear three-point belts or safety harnessess.

The impact is not necessarily any greater than the impact of a normal landing, which can range from gossamer smooth to bone jarring. (I've made both kinds of landings and everything in between.)

An American Airlines flight aborts a takeoff at ORD due to an engine fire. Story below shows a passenger's view of the escape of the burning aircraft.

http://wgntv.com/2016/10/28/video-sh...irlines-plane/

I was involved in a fear of flying discussion recently and someone called to my attention this thread which I've been reading every day so I could get caught up and ask my questions. I'm still not sure whether this thread has helped or increased my fear. On one hand, I feel like if you were the pilot of the plane I was in I probably wouldn't worry nearly as much because you come across as very knowledgeable and conscientious which is what I think anyone would want from the person responsible for getting them from point A to point B safely. I find it hard putting my trust and safety into the hands of a stranger. In addition, I never put much thought into everything that's involved in flying before and it just introduced more things in my mind that could go wrong. It's a double-edged sword for me.

Anyway, on with the questions.

1) IIT you wrote "And the airplane will never "nose dive," even if you lose all engines (for whatever reason)." Does this just depend on the actual issue with the plane? Because I've read accounts of accidents where the plane did just this.

2) I understand what you're getting at when you talk about not throwing multiple emergencies at a student in a SIM, but based on the accounts of different accidents, there's usually more than one thing going wrong at the same time which overwhelms the crew. Wouldn't it be a good idea to train for this? Otherwise even the best of pilots might not be prepared for such situations.

3) With the addition of tablets in the cockpit, do you think it would make sense to put the checklists on there? I've read through this thread and it seems more than once there was discussion about something on a checklist getting overlooked/skipped. I am picturing these as paper checklists that someone has to check off manually, but if they were digital, wouldn't that lessen someone forgetting something important, particularly if the tablet could be programmed to sound an alert if a step was skipped? The one that comes to mind most is forgetting to set the flaps before takeoff. Now I feel like I need to be checking out the window for that myself!

4) When I'm on the road just outside O'hare (ORD) it appears to my untrained eye that the planes lining up to land aren't spaced out more than 30 seconds apart. Does that satisfy the 1000 ft separation and give them enough time to land and clear the runway, or is it possible that even though from my perspective they are on the same path they are really landing at two different runways?

5) On post #6803 you wrote - "The challenge on the descent, approach and landing is to make it all so smooth that passengers don't notice any big changes." What do you consider a big change? The thing that scares me the most is when the airplane starts banking shortly after takeoff. This happened to me last year as we were flying out of Chicago (MDW) to Orlando (MCO) on Southwest. I have no idea what altitude we were at other than it was definitely below 10,000 feet since that's when the seat belt sign went off. I don't particularly love when the plane banks at all but I understand it's necessary. I just hate that it seems to happen most during takeoff and landing when the plane is closer to the ground (which my anxious mind interprets as dangerous).

6) On post #6804 there was discussion of wake turbulence in relationship to this accident - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americ...nes_Flight_587 . It's just hard for me to imagine a pilot being able to break off a critical part of the plane with just their inputs but that's what the conclusion of the investigation says. How easily could this occur again in the same model plane? My takeaway from the article is nothing has changed on the plane itself since it was a training issue.

I hope this wasn't too long but I had so many questions coming to me as I read through all these posts. I find flying very interesting, although admittedly only when I'm NOT in the plane. I am flying soon to see family so I've been trying to educate myself and get over this fear. It's helping a little to pull up Flight Aware and see just how many flights there are in a given day (and no accidents). I just wish I could truly enjoy the experience instead of being on edge the entire flight and merely get through it. I hate that feeling like I just escaped death every time we land. I really envy people who not only love it but fly for a living. I'd love to know what that feels like!

In any case, thanks in advance for answering my questions (and all those before it). This thread is awesome. And I wish you a speedy recovery so you can get back to the career you love.

It sounds like there are two main areas for your discomfort: (1) the human component and (2) the mechanical or aerodynamic component. With regard to the human part, it's true that anything involving people carries with it some randomness. You're putting your trust in the skill and judgment of a pilot. But, wait, the good news is that there are two pilots up front and that brings a much higher level of safety to you. There's the constant cross-checking that comes with the crew concept and, in addition, there's an often overlooked, but very real, benefit of the desire to look good in front of a fellow professional.

As far as the mechanical aspect, you mention your concern about all the things that could go wrong. What I've tried to stress in this thread is the redundancy built into the systems of an airplane certified under FAR Part 25 (i.e. airliners). One of the main areas of redundancy is in the powerplant and everything we do is predicated on having one engine fail and still being able to safely land the plane.

The chances of both engines failing at the same time is considered so statistically insignificant that no training time is spent addressing this kind of emergency. About the only way the engines could both independently fail at the same time would be due to a fuel issue (either running out of fuel or having the wrong kind of fuel put in the tanks) or sabotage.

I did once actually ask my sim instructor to let me try to land the 757 with both engines out and I'm happy to report that it was actually kind of boring (humble brag ). At a point 90 miles east of San Francisco, cruising at 35,000', I shut down both engines by cutting off the fuel. I set up the best glide speed (equal to the Flaps 30 approach speed + 80 knots, iirc) and flew directly to SFO. Descending at something less than 2000 ft/min, it took over 15 minutes to glide to the airport, and I landed. The real trick is that you only get one shot at landing so you can bet I'm constantly cross-checking distance from airport vs. altitude.

You've packed a lot of questions into your post and I'll address them each in separate responses...

I'll stand by what I wrote: loss of thrust (i.e complete engine failure) won't result in a nose dive. The airplane will certainly descend, but it won't nose over into a dive without input from the pilot.

If an airplane does actually "nose dive" it would have to be because of a malfunction of the flight controls, namely the elevator/horizontal stabilizer. What conceivable scenarios are there for this? Well, there was one accident kind of like this in an Alaska Airlines MD-83 (January 2000) which was caused by a failure of the mechanical actuator for the horizontal stabilizer. The Denzel Washington movie Flight incorporated a similar type of flight control failure. I can't think of any other "nose dive" accidents so if you can cite a specific instance I could comment on it.

It's a sad fact that some mechanical design flaws have led to fatal accidents over the history of aviation. The McDonnell-Douglas DC-10 had some early problems with the cargo door that resulted in at least a couple of major accidents (American Flight 91, 1972; Turkish Air 981, 1974). The good news is that these accidents result in design changes to address the specific failure and this knowledge is carried forward in future designs.

Sully tho.

The flight training in the simulator covers normal procedures (e.g. flight profiles for ILS approaches, visual approaches, entering and exiting holding patterns) and emergency/abnormal procedures, which is a pretty exhaustive list of things that can go wrong. Every major system failure is addressed, e.g. engine fire after takeoff or complete electrical failure. An engine failure then leads into practicing the abnormal flight profiles such as a single-engine precision or non-precision approaches and single-engine go-around. A hydraulic failure could lead to a no-flap approach which is more serious than you might think due to the much higher approach and landing speeds. During training, there is no compounding of the system failures.

Another component of training is Line Oriented Flight Training (LOFT) and its corresponding check event called the LOE (Line Oriented Evaluation). During the LOFT and LOE they still don't compound major failures but they do add distractors, such as the flight attendant calling with an issue in the cabin while we're dealing with an electrical failure and diversion to an airport with crappy weather.

If, in real life, we do get multiple emergency/abnormal system problems, we would simply use our best judgment and experience to prioritize them, always keeping in mind the major dictum of all flight:

Aviate Navigate Communicate

1 out of how many thousands and thousands of flight, maybe several hundred thousand?

Statistical insignificance, ftw.

Exactly.

I read an automobile crashed once too. I think it was somewhere in France.

I'm so glad this thread is still going! It took me a couple of months to catch up on the whole thing after I found it, and I admit that some of the more technical posts had my eyes glazing over, but overall I LOVE how much I've learned from this thread. Thank you, W0X0F!

I saw the movie Sully a few weeks ago and am about 1/3 of the way through the book Miracle on the Hudson (survivors' accounts). Sully's own book is next on my list.

For those who have seen the movie or read the book, I was surprised about the FAs chanting "Brace! Brace! Heads down! Stay down!" after Sully had made the PA about bracing for impact. I saw it in the movie and figured it was Hollywood drama, but the book confirms it (and pax talked about how creepy it was).

The simplified version of what I always tell people is, odds are the pilots don't want to die so they are going to do everything they can to keep you and them safe.

I was wondering how often pilots of large jets come close to running out of runway on the landing? I've been on flights where it seemed like we were over the runway for a LONG time before the wheels touched down, and then there would be a hard braking that feels like the pilot jamming on the brakes because he was running out of room.

Also on the flip side, do pilots ever get a bad feeling that a plane isn't going to get airborne in time on takeoff?

First off, thanks so much for addressing my questions. Your responses give me peace of mind and I will be thinking about them when I fly in a week.

I was thinking of this particular accident, but as you already mentioned above, changes are made in response to prevent future accidents.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USAir_Flight_427

I just read this article about Allegiant.

http://www.tampabay.com/projects/201...al-breakdowns/

Seems for an airline that typically only flies once a day out of a hub they should have less incidents, not more. But on the flipside I did think about the redundancy you have mentioned throughout this thread and clearly it's beneficial seeing as how there hasn't been a crash on this airline yet. That being said, I wouldn't fly them! Not just because of their poor track record, but also because their flight times are inconvenient. Personally, I would rather pay more for a ticket and know the airline is investing the money in safety than pay only $88 (like someone in that article's comments bragged about) and worry whether they are cutting corners to turn a profit.