Hi Ross ... thank you for your offer to answer members' questions about their fears of flying. I have added today's posts on to an existing topic which has been inactive for a few weeks, so that all info and discussion can be viewed in one single thread.

Thanks again
David

Hi Ross J

Have reieved a letter yesterday that our flights times have changed from EMA to Rhodes.

Really looking forward to our hols and seeing our friends but not looking forward to the flight.

It made me feel ill all day as I knew the flight was going to happen, I know it sounds silly but if I don't think about I feel OK.

I also hate take off but love the landing, probably because we are down safe.

We had a terrible flight last October to Rhodes, we flew through a storm (I think).

I thought I was going to die. It was also the first time I had left my son at home and gone on holiday without him, so I don't think that helped.

We are flying this year with British Midland (according to our flight numbers) but something concerns me.

Why is the outboud flight 4hours 5 Mins but the return flight is 4hours 30 mins.

We had to stop to refuel in Italy when returning from Kefalonia. We flew with Island Flug from EMA, but the fear of taking off was twice as bad.

I am so scared I went to the docs in October to get tablets but they didn't seem to work.

I know you and your fellow pilot's wouldn't take a plane up if you thought it would be unsafe, but in the back of my mind I hate all the noises and movements.

I make myself do it every year sometimes twice but as I get older the worse I seem to be.

Regards
Sarah

They do smoke on cargo flights not all of them but a few do. Reason being there only 2 pilots on the aircraft and they never carry passengers.

Hi Galleon

Reason why the flight times vary around 25 minutes from the outbound and return journey is to do with the route itself. We use what are called airways they are like the motorways of the sky and have points along them where we join and exit the airway.

Believe it or not some of these airways are one way only and some are closed on weekend. So your route can vary a little bit and add 10 to 15 minutes from the time it took you to get to your holiday destination.

Another thing to consider is that in general the wind is traveling from the west to the east meaning you get a tail wind along your route outbound so you have a higher ground speed, but on the return it turns into a headwind so your groundspeed is less.

Flying British Midland you will probably be flying on the Airbus which has a strange sound that passengers do comment about. If you sit close to the wing you may hear a sound that is just like a dog barking or someone sawing through wood. It is a PTU or power transfer unit to give it it's full title and what it does on the ground is a self test and you can hear it wizzing away, once you get airborne you will hear it again once the landing gear has been raised but should not hear it for the rest of the flight.

The PTU looks after the hydralics and should we loose hydralics from one system the PTU will use another source of hydralics to supply the systems we would have lost.

Aircraft are very strong I know they don't look it when you fly through rough weather and you can see the wings flexing all the time. Those wings can take some serious stress, I watched a film with them testing the wings on a Boeing 777 and they bent the wings to such a upward angle that the wing tips from both wings touched each other before the wing snapped and there is no way on earth you can get the wing stressed that much regardless what you do to it in flight.

Hope that helps Sarah.

Hello Ross. Many thanks for your very imformative and very useful replies.

In reference to the aircraft suddenly going quiet not long after take off, I notice the aircraft also goes very quiet just before landing....as you come down through the clouds. To me, I get the impression that the captain has turned off all the engines and that the aircraft is simply gliding into the decent.

If possible, could you explain that please.....sorry I appreciate its a wee bit but your posts are fascinating. I mean how many of us humble holiday makers actually get to 'speak' with a real life Airline Pilot? I kn ow it used to be when Cockpit Visits were allowed, but obviously they are a thing of the past now following 9/11.

When we begin our decent what we are aiming for is to get from our cruise altitude down to the runway with as little engine thrust as possible.

You can call it energy managment, basically we need to work out when we should start our decent so that we don't overfly or end up being to fast on the approach. Jet aircraft are not very good at loosing height and speed at the same time, so sometimes you may hear the landing gear come down a little earlier than normal this is because the pilots are finding themselves high or fast because air traffic have given them a short cut on the approach and they need as much drag as possible to loose speed and height, at speed below 250 knots the speed brakes on the upper surface of the wing are not very effective.

The general rule for working out our decent point is that you take your altitude and multiply by 3 then add 10 on top of that to slow down, for example if we are at 40,000 feet, we knock of the last three zero's so it's 40x3=120 miles, then add 10 miles to slow down so we need approx 130 track miles to decend and be at our approach speed on landing.

You will need to make some adjusments in the decent due to winds not being as forcast or air traffic control gives us a short routing or may not give us a continuious decent but with practice we should be able to make a decent all the way down to the approach without the use of speed brakes and with the engine thrust pretty much at idle thrust all the way down, only if air traffic control ask us to level off should you hear the engines increase thrust and of course on final approach some thrust is used to maintain our speed.

Hope this helps.

Hi Ross

Thank you for explaining all that.

Would it be possible for you to sit next to me on my flights and explain it all again. lol

I'm sure if I could sit in the cockpit for the whole journey I would be OK because even though I am scared the whole process facinates me.

Never mind that will never happen.

Thanks once again, I'm feel a little better now.

Regards
Sarah

Ross,
this may sound hysterical to you but...
If the IFE flickers or the overhead lights cut out and come on again, does this mean there are any problems with the rest of the aircrafts electrics?
TIA
Marie

Marie it is totally normal no need to worry.

What is happening is that the electrics are being changed from the apu (auxillary power unit) generator to the engine generators or vice versa and as a result you will see a flicker in the lights as the power changes over from one generator to the other.

Ross
You are doing wonders for my overactive imagination!
Marie

which areas are the best to sit in on the plane , front middle over wings and rear of the plane , does it really make any difference to the effects of flying and different snesations when flying.

If you don't like the feeling of the aircraft swinging about in turbulance or landing the best place to sit is in the centre over the wings. This is the point where the axis of the aircraft in pitch, roll and yaw is centred.

For example if the aircraft was yawing (swinging from left to right and vice versa but not banking) you would not notice so much as if you were sat at the rear of the aircraft because the effect of yawing is greater at the rear than the centre. To help get an idea, if you were to take a long thin strip of paper and stick a drawing pin in the middle and then rotate the paper back and forth, you would see that as you move towards the edge at either end of the paper you would see the amount of swinging increases compared to were the the drawing pin is located.

It would be handy if I could draw on the forum and it would be easier to explain.

If it's strange noises you don't like just sitting behind the wing might help because normally when you hear these noises it normally means we are operating a device on the wings like the flaps for example and if you look out the window when you hear these noises you probably see the flaps or spoilers being deployed.

I have a question which I am hoping is such a stupid ridiculous question that I already know the answer to but wanted to check. One of my boyfriend's friends was an air steward in America doing cross country flights. He told my boyfriend that the brace position is not to help you but to snap your neck if you crash so you die quicker. Personally I think he is wrong but I just thought I'd ask. Now he says that if we are ever (hopefully not!) in that position then he won't adopt the brace position. Please help me persuade him that he is being stupid!

You know men when one of their friends tells them something...that suddenly becomes the absolute truth!

He's talking complete cr!p.

As I thought. Excellent!

On Discovery Channel there is a prgramme called Mythbusters where they look at urban myths. A few weeks ago they looked at the brace position one and did a number of tests with dummies and themselves in asircraft seats. In all cases the braces position was found to be the safest position to sit because it disperses the force of your head moving forward into the chair in front or the force of the chair moving into your head. They were very thorough and totally Busted the myth.

Its also important to note that legs should not be infront of you, under the seat infront, they should be bent and under your own seat. The British Midlands incident back in the 80's would have had many more survivors if that was the case. People survivied but had broken legs and couldn't escape the fire that broke out. The recommended brace position is definately the one that I'd be using in case of emergency (perish the thought!).

Thanks for all your comments Ross J, you've been very informative. I really miss flight deck visits, especially at night seeing everything lit up. I'd loved to have had a jump seat ride, I was never offered one of those!

There's a great website for fear of flying, have a look at fearofflyinghelp.com. It was produced by Captain Stacy Chance over in America. There's a video to accompany the course which is excellent (I would say that though, I'm one of the contributing photo/videographers!).

Darren

If you are very nervous what you should do is notify the cabin crew and tell them you are nervous. Ask them if it is possible to pop into the flightdeck before departure, we always like visitors to pop in and we will always try and help with your nerves and answer anything you care to ask about, as long as we have time

.

Ross, surely even that is not allowed? I would have thought that such a practice would have been a huge security risk? In my humble opinion, NO one but the Flight Crew should be allowed anywhere near the Cockpit area of an aircraft. Especially in the light of 9/11. The implications of letting JOE PUBLIC into such a sensitive area of an aircraft must be massive.

For nervous flyers, or those that have never flown before, then surely a proper organised session which involves a small flight would be the answer? Most airlines can arrange this can they not?

Seats to be avoided? I always understood that the rear seats of an aircraft are the worst places to sit in the event of turbulance etc. I've always been advised that in the unlikely event of a crash, stastistics have proven that the rear seats are the worst seats to be in. You are unlikely to survive a crash if you are sat in the tail of an aircraft. Now how true that is I have no idea, but I always try to avoid rear seats if at all possible.

Most of the fatalities in the Kegworth Disaster were sat in the rear part of the aircraft. In the tail.