The Mystery of Being Airborne

Planes fly because they have to. Apply certain forces to them and they fly. Just because you can’t see where the forces come from doesn’t mean they’re not there. It seems to me that people are more likely to accept the laws and facts of space travel than the much simpler laws of flying. And what about boats why do they float?

It is Magic?

If air were visible instead of being invisible everything about flying would seem much more normal. In fact, if water were invisible people would have misgivings about floating  25000 feet above the Romanche Trench which sits between the two Atlantic ridges. Seeing is believing and everything about flying confirms that viewpoint. There are detailed explanations about how planes fly in the Premium Membership Level, but sufficient to say that we know that planes fly so we can’t deny it. Try diving into an apparently empty swimming pool without wondering about the laws of physics! It’s the wings that allow a plane to fly … the engines just make it go. In my book ‘Feel the Fear and Go Flying Anyway’ there’s a very good explanation of why my garden shed doesn’t fly despite being very much lighter than a jumbo jet. (It’s the wrong shape … fit some wings and it might fly.)  And the weight has nothing to do with it either … if it’s heavy the designers give it bigger wings. Think of gliders, birds and the space shuttle … they all fly without engines.  People worry about flying at night, or over the water or in a cloud … they ask, what do you do if the engines stop? It’s a very big if … but if they were to stop, we’d glide. From cruising height, how far do you think a plane would glide? The answer is about 140 miles.

It is not Magic?

The main reason that fearful flyers are anxious about flying is that they think that flying is not normal. But flying isn’t balanced on a knife-edge. You are not, and you never are ‘seconds from disaster’. You are safer in a plane than a boat. When passengers get on a boat do you think they ask the question “How on earth does this thing float?”  So why do airline passengers ask about how a plane flies? They also ask questions like

• What do you when something goes wrong?
• How many seconds are there for the pilot to react?
• What is depressurisation?
• Can a plane take off if one engine stops?

There’s a whole section in the Premium Membership that answers over 400 questions that will help you to overcome your fear of flying. Planes fly because of science, mathematics and engineering. They fly because of gravity not despite it.  And you’d be amazed at the quiet, unhurried systematic approach pilots use to deal with what you want to call emergencies but which we call non-normal operations. Forget all the nonsense you’ve heard previously about flying, and learn the facts here and on Premium so that you can go flying without fear.

Best wishes, Captain Keith