I recently learned a few new facts and tips about flying that I wanted to share with you guys. Some of these are things I hope I’ll never need to know, some are things that may impact my next flight.
If you’re a nervous flier, book a morning flight. The air heating off the ground later causes bumpier air and it’s more likely to thunderstorm in the afternoon.
The smoothest place to sit is often over or near the wing. The bumpiest place to sit is in the back. A plane is like a seesaw. If you’re in the middle you don’t move as much. That probably goes for window versus aisle seats as well. The middle of the plane will move less than the sides.
The general flow of air in any airplane is from front to back. So if you’re really concerned about breathing the freshest possible air or not getting too hot, sit as close to the front as you can. Planes are generally warmest in the back. I had read that the safest place to sit on a plane is in the back, but I don’t know if that’s actually true.
You’ll never hear that one of the engines failed. What they may say instead: “One of our engines is indicating improperly.” (They’ll also try confusing you with big words.) Or more likely they wouldn’t say anything and you’d never know the difference as most airplanes fly fine with one engine down.
If all of the engines on a plane fail, the plane can still glide for miles without any problem. The stuff you see on TV with planes falling out of the sky is Hollywood drama. A plane can glide for miles while looking for an open airport or place to set down. At a cruising altitude of 30,000 feet, if a Boeing 747 loses power to all of the engines at the same time, it can glide for roughly 93 miles. That’s plenty of time to find a nearby airport (maybe not a full-sized international airport, but at least someplace with a runway) or to find a strip of highway to touch down on.
I had heard that the Eisenhower Highway System was designed so that one mile out of every five would be straight enough and long enough to land a plane if necessary. This could be used in times of emergency (like engine failures) or in times of war. However, this is not actually true. While a pilot may be able to use a highway to land on (and it’s happened from time to time), there is no Federal law that mandates the layout of the highways to support that possible scenario.
There’s a good reason for everything the pilots and crew ask you to do. They may ask you to put up the window shade so the flight attendants can see outside in an emergency, to assess if one side is better for an evacuation. It also lets light into the cabin if it goes dark and helps passengers get oriented if the plane flips or rolls over.
Most people get sick after traveling not because of what they breathe but because of what they touch. Always assume that the tray table and the button to push the seat back have not been wiped down, though we do wipe down the lavatory.
It’s one thing if the pilot puts the seat belt sign on for the passengers…. But if he tells the flight attendants to sit down, you’d better listen. That means there’s some serious turbulence ahead.
When you get to your seat, count the number of rows to the nearest exit. It’s one thing to be able to see the exit if there’s an emergency. But if the cabin is full of smoke, your visibility may be limited. Knowing that you have to go 4 rows forward or 5 rows back may be the difference between getting out of the plane alive and, well, not.
This is just a snippet of what I’ve picked up. Some of these were drawn from the links below. There are other comments in these links that you may find interesting:
https://imgur.com/gallery/JuWO7
https://imgur.com/gallery/F06HI
https://imgur.com/gallery/7AcdQ
