Airline Safety

Try not to think about it.

Recently an Orlando TV station website featured a news story that begins:

"Passengers boarding JetBlue flights to and from Orlando rubbed blessed oil on the plane’s exterior following the recent aviation accidents across the U.S." There's a short video showing a woman applying oil to both sides of the airplane door as she boards her flight.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking: "Really? In the year 2025, in the United States of America, we're counting on 'blessed oil' to keep us safe on commercial airline flights? WHERE CAN I GET SOME?"

I don't blame you for being scared. It seems as though every day there's another scary airline incident, like the Delta regional-jet flight from Minneapolis to Toronto that landed upside-down. Fortunately everybody survived that terrifying ordeal, and, as a Delta spokesperson noted, "on the plus side of the ledger, it was easier to retrieve the luggage from the overhead compartments once they became underfoot compartments."

Nevertheless the flying public is rightly concerned about airline safety. But is "blessed oil" the answer? In the words a leading aeronautical engineer: "I hate to burst anyone's bubble, but dabbing some supposedly holy liquid on the fuselage isn't going to prevent a plane from crashing. You need to apply it under the wings."

To understand why, let's consider the physics of airplane flight, which unfortunately many laypersons do not understand because instead of paying attention in Mr. Heideman's Physics class at Pleasantville (N.Y.) High School in 1964, they and their friend Joseph DiGiacinto were testing the effects of gravity by furtively dropping objects from the window of the Physics classroom, which was on the third floor.

Or maybe that's just me.

In any event, the reason an airplane is able to fly — this is not my opinion; this is coming directly from the Internet — is: forces. There are 12 forces acting on an airplane in flight: Lift, Drag, Heft, Thrust, Parry, Hope, Inflation, Gravity, Degree of Difficulty, Treble, Humidity and the Federal Reserve Board. When all of these forces are in perfect balance, an airplane is able to remain aloft, at least temporarily, as shown in this diagram:

So the science of airplane flight is well understood. And although lately we’ve had some well-publicized mishaps, the truth is that commercial aviation is actually the safest mode of transportation ever devised that involves hurtling high above the earth at 500 miles per hour in a crowded metal tube. In the words of a leading aeronautical safety expert: "The statistical odds of your being in an airplane crash are effectively zero, assuming you never get on an airplane. I certainly wouldn’t."

And here's another reassuring thought: Air travel in foreign countries can be a LOT scarier than it is here. Years ago I wrote a column about a flight I once took in the Bahamas:

I was aboard a two-propeller airplane owned by an airline with a name like "Air Limbo." As we sat on the runway, getting ready for takeoff, I could not help but notice that an important-looking fluid was gushing out of the engine on my side. This made me nervous, so I was relieved when a man wearing shorts and flip-flops came over to take a look. He studied the fluid, which was really pouring out, then he turned toward the pilot and made the "OK" sign. I was thinking, "OK? WHAT DO YOU MEAN, OK??" And while I was thinking that, we took off. We did make it to our destination, but I'm pretty sure we were followed the whole way by a pack of hungry sharks thinking, "That thing can't stay up there much longer!"

That’s a true story. Here’s another one: I was aboard a single-engine, eight-passenger commercial plane on the runway of a tiny airport in Costa Rica, and as we were taxiing, the door — this plane had only one door, on the right-hand side — suddenly flew wide open.

So I tapped the pilot on the shoulder, which was easy because he was sitting literally right in front of me. He looked back, and I pointed to the open doorway.

He frowned. "Did you open that?" he said.

"No!" I said.

So he reached over and pulled the door shut. That was it; he did not, in any way, examine the door. Then he turned back around, and — Safety check complete! — we took off. The flight itself was uneventful, although I imagine the pilot had to compensate for the fact that all eight of us passengers were crowding like a herd of panicked sheep against the left side of the aircraft.

While I'm on the topic of airline-travel horror stories: There was a disturbing one recently on the website of an Australian TV show called A Current Affair. Here's the headline:

Man forced to sit next to corpse for hours after passenger dies on long-haul flight

The story states that after a passenger passed away on a Qatar Airways flight from Melbourne to Doha, airline personnel moved the body to a seat in the same row as an Australian couple. The woman was able to move away by changing seats, but the man had to remain in that row for four hours. The story quotes the couple as saying they were "traumatized."

I have no doubt that they were. Although as a person who has been on many, many commercial flights, I have to say, if I’m being brutally honest, that there were some that would have been less unpleasant if at least one of my row-mates had been replaced by a corpse.

Is that an insensitive thing to say? Maybe. Let's see how you paying subscribers feel about this, by means of a scientific poll.

To digress for a moment: Note that I say "tuna sandwich," not "tuna fish sandwich." To me, adding "fish" to "tuna" seems redundant. It's like saying "trout fish," or "shark fish." Granted, we do say "swordfish," but that makes sense, because it's the name of the fish. We don't say "swordfish fish." At least I don't.

And while I have your attention: The English word for the creamy frozen dessert made with fruit juice is "sherbet." It's not "sherbert." There's only one "r." Please make a note of this. Thank you.

But getting back to our main topic: Airline safety is a major concern, and we all need to think about it. Although I personally am done.

Now here's another scientific poll: