Fear of flying

[Astro14]

Originally Posted by Jarlaxle
Originally Posted by E150GT
flying is fine. Its all the bull that goes with flying I hate. The airport waiting, TSA lines etc.

That. I will hitch-hike before subjecting myself to commercial air travl.


So...

How's that trip to Hawaii looking?

 

[Jarlaxle]

Originally Posted by Mr Nice
Originally Posted by JasonC
I've never flown and never will. Not afraid of it, just no desire to.

What if your wife has family in California and both of you are invited to a wedding ?


ROAD TRIP!

 

[Jarlaxle]

Originally Posted by Astro14
Originally Posted by Jarlaxle
Originally Posted by E150GT
flying is fine. Its all the bull that goes with flying I hate. The airport waiting, TSA lines etc.

That. I will hitch-hike before subjecting myself to commercial air travl.


So...

How's that trip to Hawaii looking?


Electron microscopes cannot detect my interest in a trip to Hawaii.

 

[JasonC]

She doesn't and I usually avoid all weddings.






Originally Posted by Mr Nice
Originally Posted by JasonC
I've never flown and never will. Not afraid of it, just no desire to.

What if your wife has family in California and both of you are invited to a wedding ?

 

[fdcg27]

Originally Posted by gfh77665
Wow, I did not know they cruised so high. I thought most cruised at 30,000-35,000 ft.


The higher zoot bizjets have extravagant service ceilings mainly to allow them to operate above all of the rabble in airliners so that they can more often get direct clearances for any given route. They also typically have ample power to reach those altitudes expeditiously. Nobody buys these things because they're cheap to operate while operating economics matter mightily to any airline.

 

[PimTac]

I guess Greyhound gets a lot of their business from people that will not fly.

 

[spasm3]

While getting to the plane is not that fun. I like flying. I especially enjoy feeling the acceleration of the jet. I'm amazed how fast something that big accelerates.

 

[Wolf359]

Originally Posted by Jarlaxle
Originally Posted by Astro14
Originally Posted by Jarlaxle
Originally Posted by E150GT
flying is fine. Its all the bull that goes with flying I hate. The airport waiting, TSA lines etc.

That. I will hitch-hike before subjecting myself to commercial air travl.


So...

How's that trip to Hawaii looking?


Electron microscopes cannot detect my interest in a trip to Hawaii.


I guess if you're hitchhiking, you can be like this guy, 7 minute abs!

 

[4WD]

Originally Posted by PimTac
I guess Greyhound gets a lot of their business from people that will not fly.



We see quite a few buses coming from Mexico. Drove up to a construction area a couple weeks ago where one had driven into the end of a concrete barrier. All the people were gone and they were hooking up to tow the damaged bus.
Odd I could not find any reports … but no doubt some people were injured or worse.

 

[FowVay]

I'm an inspector for a major carrier and I can tell you that it makes you think long and hard about the reliability of these machines when you see them stripped down to the rivets. A modern commercial jet is an amazing mechanical marvel. They still have the occasional part failure but statistically you simply can't travel in a safer manner. Here is a recent image that you guys may have seen in the news. A JT8D-219 on an MD-88 lost a section of fan blade and this created a severe imbalance which shook the engine so severely that it tore the cooling ducting apart. The #1 bearing was starved of oil and the red glow is from the overheated bearing.

This other picture is old but this is the stage 2 HPT disk from a GE CF6 engine that broke apart on the #1 engine, slammed the ground and bounced back up and lodged itself into the exhaust nozzle of the #2 engine on the other side of the airplane. Thankfully this occurred during a runup on the ground. Theres rarely a dull moment.

 

[Mr Nice]

Failure of any type of equipment will eventually happen, hopefully it's not fatal.

 

[xBa380]

I love flying. As others mentioned, it's more the hassle getting to the plane that makes it a bit less fun (TSA, lines, etc…)

Until recently, only flew domestically. We went to Germany in June though, which was amazing. A big part of that was being able to book from various widebody options. Ended up on a Luftansa 747 to Germany and on the way home, although originally scheduled for a brand new 787-10 back home via United, was changed to a 777-200 after our original plane never made it over the pond due to maintenance, so our flight was delayed 22hrs or so… But I didn't mind, our flight home had only about 25 people on it or so as everyone else re-booked other options, out of 200+ seats! Was incredible! Being able to lay out and go to sleep was really awesome.

But I love flying! I don't mind turbulence, either. I actually like it, believe it or not. One time flying into Atlanta through some weather our plane was bobbing up and down quite a bit, it was quite the ride! But I enjoyed that, too. Planes are designed to handle beyond anything nature throws at it, so fear not!

 

[xxch4osxx]

Originally Posted by Cujet
Originally Posted by JasonC
I've never flown and never will.


And yet there is this:

The view from 51,000 feet. It makes it all worthwhile!

-87F outside air temp? I didn't realise it got that cold that high up in the atmosphere. Planes must have really good heaters to beat that cold.

 

[grampi]

I used to fly all over the world as a flight engineer on C-5s. Of course we didn't have to deal with all of the pre-flight garbage (checking bags, going through security, etc) because we were not commercial flights...it was so much nicer than flying commercial...

 

[Wolf359]

Originally Posted by xxch4osxx
-87F outside air temp? I didn't realise it got that cold that high up in the atmosphere. Planes must have really good heaters to beat that cold.


Sounds about right. It's about a 3 degree drop for every 1000 feet of elevation.

It's nice to go hiking in the summer because of that. It could be 70-80 at the base and then once you're at the top of a 4 or 5 thousand footer, it's 12-15 degrees cooler.

 

[jeepman3071]

Originally Posted by kschachn
Originally Posted by jeepman3071
Not flying itself, but flying on commercial jets. I haven't flown in 10 years. My uncle is an instructor for small planes (Cessnas) and I feel safer in those, mainly because I've been with him when we glided into a field doing an engine stall test. It feels more like a car with wings. I fear the crazy people with motives, the lackluster maintenance from corporations looking to skimp to save a buck, and other things. Is it reasonable? Absolutely not, and I know this. Statistically flying is much safer than driving, but with me it is a control freak thing. 3 years ago my company sent me to a week of training in Baltimore, MD and I drove.

That makes zero sense and is not based on any facts whatsoever. "Statistically speaking" the accident rate for general aviation is about triple that for commercial aviation.

There are many commercial aviation mechanics that will never fly on anyone's GA aircraft.


Of course it makes zero sense, since it is based on emotion and not logical thinking, like many fears/phobias. It's a trust thing, like how so many of us on this forum would not trust taking our cars to a mechanic or have anyone touch it but ourselves.

I never said GA is safer than commercial, like you said it is actually quite the opposite, my post stated that I "feel" safer, just like how I "feel" safer driving a car, even though statistically both are much more dangerous. It's because I feel as though I have more control. Irrational yes, but most fears are.

 

[RooflessVW]

You wouldn't feel safer if you knew how the average GA owner/operator took care of their plane.

I like having a corporate SMS behind me and my decisions.

 

[jeepman3071]

Originally Posted by rooflessVW
You wouldn't feel safer if you knew how the average GA owner/operator took care of their plane.

I like having a corporate SMS behind me and my decisions.


True. To be fair I've only flown with my uncle in his plane, who is a fanatic about maintenance and my cousin (his son) who is a navy fighter pilot.

 

[xBa380]

Originally Posted by xxch4osxx


-87F outside air temp? I didn't realise it got that cold that high up in the atmosphere. Planes must have really good heaters to beat that cold.


Planes have built in heaters... the engines! The exhaust gas temp on a typical jet engine is over 1,000F... Via heat exchangers, the cabin is heated from the waste heat from the engines.

 

[FowVay]

xB, the heat for a commercial airliner comes from the high pressure compressor. This is also what pressurizes the cabin. The high pressure compressor compresses inlet air - all prior to any fuel or combustion has contaminated it. Using the Boeing 767 as an example, the pressure to heat and pressurize the cabin comes from the 8th stage of the high pressure compressor. This air is ducted back to the conditioning packs and is cooled prior to being sent to the cabin. The air to cool the high and low pressure turbine is also ducted from the high pressure compressor. This HPC air is approximately 700ºF and is used to cool the low pressure turbine case in order to tighten the blade gap for improved egt ratio. This is called active clearance cooling.

The fuel in the tanks is exposed to those -80ºF temps so before the fuel is pumped to the combustor it goes through a fuel heater which is simply an oil-to-fuel heat exchanger. The engine oil warms the fuel in a small intercooler looking thing hanging off of the accessory drive module.