I was in an emergency landing (complete with evacuation on the side without an engine fire) in 1990. We didn't have a catastrophic failure like this; there was time to prepare.
What really surprised me was how cooperative all the passengers were. In those days emergency rows were given to people who needed extra room, so the flight attendants told the elderly folks in the emergency rows to change seats and recruited youngsters like me (I was 25) to sit there and review how and if to open the window (I was the last-resort option and did not get to actually do it). They collected all our shoes and checked everybody's practice crash position. There was no screaming (except during the rather abrupt landing). And unlike what you see today nobody tried to take their cabin baggage with them (they'd told us to empty our pockets, though I was naughty and kept my passport, which later made life a lot easier for me).
One thing is unchanged: I was the first one to leave the arrival hall (this was pre-mobile phones so I wanted to find a phone and get a new flight rather than let the airline deal with it like everyone else did), and there was a camera crew there. I was asked "were you on that flight" and when I said yes they asked, "and how was it?" I said, "exciting but I felt safe the whole time" they switched off the camera, looked annoyed, and went back to watching the exit door. sigh.
And I really got a strong lesson in the real purpose of flight attendants.
There’s a great TV series where they show flight attendant safety training for Virgin Australia and it’s very intense and physically demanding. Had a huge fail rate.
Not sure if every country/airline is the same, but it gave me a great appreciation for their role.
Sadly it’s not the case. Some low cost airlines are said to have extremely short training just for minimal compliance. It goes as bad as an Air Asia crew felling the passengers to pray instead of preparing them for the emergency situation.
I seem to remember similar stories, and maybe even a study, saying that people in emergencies tend to behave far more cooperatively and relaxed than one might think/fear.
The examples of disasters that were caused by or worsened by crowd behavior, such as mass panics or people clogging emergency exits, also seem to involve cognitive failures more than selfishness.
I have been in a few minor emergencies and the most striking thing is feeling this absolute calm. It almost feels like a robot with a focus on survival is taking over.
I’ve had a gun at me point blank and my time perception changed completely. I could slowly take my time to figure out the best strategy and it helped me to escape. I think 3 seconds of time felt around 20 seconds. The experience is called tachypshycia and I think some people doing lsd also experience something similar ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachypsychia ).
It happens during our fight or flight response probably due to a combination of high levels of dopamine and norepinephrin.
It would be crueler to butcher or consume them without killing them first? I'm not sure what you're looking for, here. We were talking about tachypsychia.
There is also a known cognitive issue with how a crowd will look to each other for for someone else to take the initiative in an emergency.
at our core we are still pack/herd animals. And if anyone has tried to herd, say, sheep one quickly learn to keep track of the one(s) in front. Where they go the rest of the herd goes basically without question.
> people clogging emergency exits, also seem to involve cognitive failures more than selfishness.
Right, the problem with crowd crush is that the people causing the crush are at the fringes aren't able to see the results that their aggregate forces are causing to people deep in the crowd.
A good citation for this phenomenon is Amanda Ripley's book "The Unthinkable", especially the chapter on the Beverly Hills Supper Club fire.[1] In that fire, entire tables of guests were found dead because they had come to a group decision to remain where they were, while other tables decided to get up and leave early.
People in emergencies only respond effectively if they've received training and can cope, or if they're being competently instructed during the emergency. Otherwise, they become extremely passive and compliant. That's the role of cabin personnel: to be enforcers and make people do what they say.
In relation to this, fire alarms generally aren't as reliable indicators of fire as seeing the fire itself, or at least direct secondary effects such as thick smoke. Yet their function is crucial: they make it socially acceptable to head for the door in a situation where it may not otherwise have been, even with the sighting of actual smoke.
Back in the day they had everyone remove their shoes if they thought the inflatable slides would be used... This article says it is so a heel wouldn't pop the slide or injure someone below them on the way down.
Yeah, I guess the guys who have planned exactly for this, spent years looking at it, and created one of the safest industries in the world did not think of that?
You can't run in heels. And we crossed only a short bit of tarmac before being assembled on a big patch of grass.
I think you're better off running in bare feet than damaging the slide or spearing the person ahead of you. That ramp is STEEP (apparently broken ankles are common).
Sidenote, it's something addressed in close protection training. If the principal is a woman and she's wearing heels, good teams will have some kind of thin flat shoe nearby for her.
Sounds like a design problem. A covering of woven UHMW HDPE would make the slides more puncture and slash resistant, and could take the "collect passenger shoes" item off the emergency checklist.
But that would also make the slides more expensive, so it really all depends on what the airline thinks a dead passenger is worth.
Edit: The structural integrity of the slide is provided by pneumatic pressure on a rubber-like material (neoprene?). The thickness of that material could be reduced somewhat if HDPE fibers were added. You're not trying to make the things bulletproof, just shoe-resistant. The end result would be a lighter slide, but it would be an order of magnitude more expensive.
The probability of the slide being used is low. I expect the slight inconvenience of passengers removing their shoes during an emergency doesn't justify the extra weight on the slide.
And after that from the captain, "they said there's a hole and somebody went out."
The poor pilots might not have even known that the passenger was only partially pulled out the window. It's even more impressive that the captain was able to act so calmly when she might have been under the impression that a passenger had just been ejected from her plane!
Of course you would be calm. Panicking isn’t going to bring the passenger back onto your plane, and you still have your other passengers to get home safely.
I'm similarly impressed with the captain here, but I disagree with your interpretation of what the approach controller was saying in this case.
Pilot: Southwest 1380, we'd like to turn - to start turning inbound.
Approach: Southwest 1380, turn, just start turning southbound there. There's a Southwest 737 on a four-mile final. You'll be turning southbound. Start looking for the airport, it's off to your right and slightly behind you there, and altitude is your discretion. Use caution for the downtown area. Maintain, advise you maintain at or above 2200 per the MVA.
I believe this is the point, 34 minutes into the flight, at which the pilot then turns southbound toward the airport, passing almost directly over downtown Philadelphia:
"The minimum vectoring altitude in each sector provides 1000 ft above the highest obstruction in non-mountainous areas and 2000 ft above the highest obstacle in designated mountainous areas. The MVA is the lowest altitude that meets obstacle clearance requirements in the airspace specified. "
In this the MVA appeared to refer to the controller's instructions for the altitude required to pass 1000 feet above the tallest buildings in the downtown area. Again, the "caution" related to downtown was mentioned in between the controller's statement that the pilot could use her discretion for the altitude and the statement that he "advise[s]" her to "maintain at or above 2200 [feet] for the MVA" in that region.
So in context, I believe the controller was just advising the pilot to attempt to maintain enough altitude to pass safely above the downtown buildings, rather than to avoid flying over the downtown area at all. Again, it appears that she did fly over the downtown area as part of her approach. At the time of its southbound turn, the plane was at an elevation of about 3300 feet and then it passed over downtown at an elevation near 2600 feet or so.
[Edit: I saw another transcript that said "per the MVA" instead of "for the MVA", and I've corrected my transcript above. This makes me even more convinced that the "caution for the downtown area" refers to an established precaution, although other aircraft might not have a reason to come as close to the downtown buildings on a typical approach.]
I always appreciate the ethic of extremely calm radio tone when I hear these recordings. It's clearly something they emphasize, because it's so common, but I think it does a lot to communicate that a pro is on the clock and handling business.
Pilots and controllers are also intimately aware that every word and intonation will be scrutinized in the wake of an accident. They’re generally very well trained, but that’s an added motivation.
Not at all. The fact that you can replay any ATC recording is in no way a motivator.
Listen to some guard frequencies with aviators displaying such a lack of professionalism it may make you question how we’re allowed to fly.
What you’re hearing is hundreds or thousands of hours of flight time; many of which are spent practicing forced landings, and the radio language that becomes second nature.
VHF requires you to be incredibly clear when speaking, a single shared frequency enforces short messages that are to the point.
I can pretty much guarantee neither of the flight crew thought about any potential inquiry until after they had made a safe landing; as that would’ve been their only focus.
Air safety regulators have an enviable record of being focused on what went wrong, rather than who to blame. The industry has remarkable amount of psychological safety for people bringing up and talking about flight safety issues.
The pilot sounds cool, but I'm not sure she's calm. The initial communication with approach complaining about frequency changes (before even identifying) strikes me as odd.
More concretely, many of the transmissions are without identification or readbacks, some stepping on other stations.
The request to minimize frequency changes was to lessen their workload in the cockpit and was probably also meant to convey that they were still a bit busy flying the plane. It's not an unreasonable request.
ATC handling of emergency begins at 11:20. It'd recommend listening with something that shows waveforms, such as audacity, so you can skip past silence easily.
That seems a bit unfair. Both are facing the same tense emergency situation; one while keeping an eye on the auto-pilot, the other while directing multiple inbound flights.
Perhaps I'm overthinking, but to my ear, it's the pilot who's bricking it.
I think you're dramatically oversimplifying things by saying that the pilot is just keeping an eye on the autopilot. There is a lot more going on in the cockpit in these situations than simply programming the autopilot. They're running checklists, troubleshooting, navigating, briefing the approach, communicating with the flight attendants, potentially also briefing passengers, potentially briefing their company/ops folks, etc. There's a lot to manage in these situations.
Similarly, the controllers aren't just managing the traffic in their area. They're also coordinating with their management, other controllers that are managing neighboring sectors, emergency management folks, etc.
Honestly that captain is too calm. Sounds like she's drunk or drugged. I understand calm under fire, but she's talking slower than everyone else on that radio. Seems like quick replies to the point would be better than her lackadaisical speech. Also, she doesn't seem to have a firm grasp on what happened to her airplane, or the damage done to it.
She's inside the airplane. She's relying on her instrumentation. What do you expect her to do, get out and look?
As for her speech patterns, she's trying to be extremely clear and specific with her speech while dealing with stuff like emergency checklists and keeping the plane aloft. As anyone in a life-or-death crisis should be doing. Speaking precisely and clearly is worth overwhelmingly more than speaking quickly and getting something wrong.
This is perhaps the grossest backseat-driving I've seen on Hacker News and I have seen some gross ones.
Also, keeping away from unnecessary (and potentially distracting) communication, trusting colleagues, and maintaining clear separation of responsibilities. That's the sort of thing that needs to be drilled into people, and that aviation does a good job with.
I always like referencing this incident from a few years ago as an example of that:
Good Lord. She's working through how to get a damaged plane onto the ground without further incident, which means that in addition to talking to ATC she's assessing equipment status and going through an emergency landing checklist. Pretty full plate all things considered.
Her calm is impressive. That's what pilots are paid for.
Have you ever been in a crisis anything like that? If you don't panic, you may find an eerie sense of calm as the part of your brain built for the situation starts stripping away all input that doesn't matter and focuses you on the task at hand. Hardly compares, but as someone who once set his yard on fire (and once pulled over to help someone whose car had just rolled multiple times) I can attest it feels a bit like a superpower after the fact.
On the one hand, I'd definitely be happy to see her on my next flight, but on the other, she's a woman so all her responses have to be seen through some mechanism where her emotions have betrayed her.
The pilot has thousands of hours in an F18 fighter jet. She retired from the NAVY and became a commercial pilot. What you're hearing is incredibly effective communication by a very experienced pilot.
Curious if you'd give this kind of scrutiny if the pilot were a man.
Thank you so much! I was wondering about the pilot's background while listening to the ATC tape. A lot of the ex-military folks are completely unflappable. She sounds like she can hang with the best of them. I would fly on her plane any day.
So which would you prefer: a calm pilot speaking clearly to ensure no misunderstanding or a harried pilot speaking incoherently (but urgently!) and potentially risking hundreds of lives due to an error? She handled this perfectly and if you go back and listen to the Hudson landing Captain Sully had a very similar demeanor but, you know, I guess it was ok when he did it.
I think this stems from a common misconception that ATC is “in charge.” Yes, compliance with ATC is mandatory, but in an emergency, priority number one is to fly the airplane. ATC can’t help you there. Communication with ATC is priority number three. ATC cleared the airspace for her and has her on radar; there’s nothing else they can do.
(b) Except in an emergency, no person may operate an aircraft contrary to an ATC instruction in an area in which air traffic control is exercised.
(c) Each pilot in command who, in an emergency, or in response to a traffic alert and collision avoidance system resolution advisory, deviates from an ATC clearance or instruction shall notify ATC of that deviation as soon as possible.
(a) In an emergency situation that requires immediate decision and action the pilot in command may take any action that he considers necessary under the circumstances. In such a case he may deviate from prescribed operations procedures and methods, weather minimums, and this chapter, to the extent required in the interests of safety.
§91.3 Responsibility and authority of the pilot in command.
(a) The pilot in command of an aircraft is directly responsible for, and is the final authority as to, the operation of that aircraft.
(b) In an in-flight emergency requiring immediate action, the pilot in command may deviate from any rule of this part to the extent required to meet that emergency.
I don't think it's correct to say that compliance is "mandatory". The set of circumstances in which a pilot ordinarily must disobey direct instructions from ATC is small, but it's not empty. And ATC rarely gives direct instructions anyway, a lot of what is said by ATC is phrased in terms of permission for the pilot to do things they should probably choose to do. If they respond "Unable" the ATC isn't going to write them up for violating some rule, they're going to look at how to work around this.
A very obvious example where the Rules explicitly tell pilots to disobey ATC is instructions from local technology that isn't co-ordinated with the ground, such as Ground Proximity Warning System and Traffic Collision Avoidance System. If these systems decide that overall "Climb, Crossing Climb, Climb Now!" is the correct instruction, but your controller suggests descending, the Rules are clear that you should all obey the machine and it will probably be fine because the machine is doing its own real time conflict resolution and re-assessing the local situation.
The Rules say you should tell the controller why you didn't obey their instructions but again, not as a greater priority than flying the plane.
I was referring to § 91.123 (a), which reads in part (emphasis added): “When an ATC clearance has been obtained, no pilot in command may deviate from that clearance unless an amended clearance is obtained, an emergency exists, or the deviation is in response to a traffic alert and collision avoidance system resolution advisory.”
I.e. when ATC tells you “turn left heading 135,” unless you have a very good reason not to, you must turn left to heading 135.
The part I didn’t emphasize is of course exactly what you’re saying.
I suppose another way to phrase what I meant is that while ATC is the boss “in the small,” the PIC is the boss “in the large,” and I don’t think non-pilots think of it that way.
That's an axiom, not a law. For example it would be inadvisable to navigate a stricken aircraft through an airport's terminal manoeuvring area without prioritising communication with ATC. Quick way to make things much worse.
Or trying to navigate to a diversion airfield without first communicating to ensure that it is usable.
Not at all; once you declare an emergency, it's ATC's job to get everyone else out of your way. It's obviously better if you tell them what you're going to do, but that takes a backseat to actually handling the emergency.
Last thing a controller wants to do is to get in the way of the pilot flying the airplane in the event of an emergency. I worked a light aircraft that had iced up a couple of months ago, and the only thing I really did was to relay whatever information I had to help the pilot find his way out of the ice.
Or that the captain could use some more urgency and sharpness in responding to the situation, rather than sounding somewhat checked out and slow. Still a pretty petty point.
The captain acted decisively and communicated clearly. I teach firefighters and paramedics how to communicate on the radio. You always want an inverse relationship between the stress level of the situation and the intensity level of your radio transmission. Speaking 20% slower and being understood is much better than speaking 20% faster and constantly repeating yourself.
Former firefighter and 911 dispatcher here -can confirm. There's little worse than somebody screaming excitedly over the air in a way that no one can understand them.
Talking to ATC is far down on your priority list in emergencies. First priorities are to fly the airplane, figure out what's wrong, decide on a course of action and head in the right direction.
Only after all those things are done, should you take time to talk to the controllers. In these situations, you do what's necessary and then, when convenient, you advise the controllers of the actions you are taking.
What would urgency sound like, speaking really loudly and quickly? If so, how would that be better than her measured cadence making sure she and the tower are on the same page?
Maybe this is too much of a meta question, but why was this downvoted so heavily?
As someone with a relevant background, I think it's entirely wrong, but it's presented in an entirely respectful manner. Saying something that is very clearly wrong is good because then we can explain why it's wrong. Or am I missing something?
Because if you have no relevant experience, you shouldn't be making assertions about 'being too calm' since you have no clue what you're talking about. The commenter then digs in further with irrelevant opinions about why he/she thinks the pilot was too calm.
It's like a non-programmer opening up some source code, then leaving a comment that the letter X is used too much because it's not used that much in articles on the NY Times.
but it's presented in an entirely respectful manner.
A "respectful manner" first involves asking oneself, "what are the important aspects of flying an injured plane that I am ignorant of? In light of that, are my criticisms valid?" From where I sit, the original post did none of that. Nope, just "derpy, derp, she did not do it the way I, a person who has probably never flown a plane or handled a radio in an emergency situation, would do it." To put it more bluntly, it came across like someone talking out their arse.
I think it is time to end the mantra of "because I have a platform to say whatever I want, I will just say whatever I want".
I enjoy browsing HN because the conversation are usually of a higher intellectual calibre, and I am here to learn as much as to contribute knowledge that is within my own domain.
Therefore I believe it is a high priority to keep the signal to noise ratio well pegged in the 'signal' zone. Comments like the above are merely 'noise' which is based on ignorant preconceptions and doesn't really elicit meaningful discussion or move the conversation forward in any way.
I rarely downvote, but do so when I think the post does not add significant value to the topic at hand.
I didn't downvote it (though my incredulous reply has been upvoted pretty heavily), but I'll be frank: I don't think this kind of warm-take review of the pilot's radio manner would be made if it was a man. Being respectful-and-gross is not materially better than being gross, and so I'm not surprised that other people came to the same conclusion and tubed the post.
>I don't think this kind of warm-take review of the pilot's radio manner would be made if it was a man.
Every aviation incident discussed in /r/aviation is full of armchair analysts and critics. People on the internet like to put out controversial opinions about what people have done to feel relevant. Much like you ended up doing ascribing this to a sexism issue despite it being based on pace of speech.
Analysis and speculation (even if uninformed) about how they handled the incident is one thing "Why didn't they reduce speed and take a 25 mile approach instead of 20 mile?".... But criticizing the pilot for being too calm and speaking in slow deliberate sentences? That seems over the edge and sounds more like personal criticism.
It's common for downvotes to be given for wrong or incorrect statements, regardless of the manner or amount of respect. Downvotes do not necessarily indicate that someone is being inappropriate. And downvotes are not necessarily bad -- incorrect information should move to the bottom of the thread.
Note also that downvotes don't prevent responding with why something is wrong.
Think of what it means if downvotes are symmetric with upvotes. Upvotes are given for being right, being funny, being respectful, and a variety of other reasons. Nobody really asks why something is being upvoted. But people often take downvotes personally or assume they mean something specific, and people often ask why downvotes are being cast.
Also be aware that the HN guidelines recommend not discussing voting, but your question is honest and you're newer here, so I hope this helps.
And we should all remember to keep our seat belts on. And also seriously you should put your mask on first quickly before helping others. Your ancestors didn't experience a lack of oxygen without excess CO2 so you'll only experience the later as feeling that you're running out of breath. Without oxygen you can become too stupid to put on your air mask[1], then black out and die without noticing something is wrong. And if you're working in a lab with a cryogenic liquid that spills don't try to be a hero, just get you and your lab-mates out of there.
Interestingly, each unit uses a chemical reaction to create the oxygen individually. They have fuel for around 15 minutes. So the moment the plane loses pressure, the pilots need to dive to a safe altitude where the masks are no longer required.
"Two 16-year-old girls with Chinese passports were found dead outside the aircraft soon after the crash, having been thrown out of the aircraft during the accident.[1]:108–110[37][38][39][40] Neither victim was using her seatbelt.[1]:108-110 It is likely that these passengers would have remained in the cabin and survived if they had been wearing their seatbelts.[1]:xii,110"
Not sucked out of the plane is one of the least important reasons to buckle up. The chances of this happening to any one passenger is just astronomical. I can't find any examples in commercial aviation where a seated passenger got sucked out without their seat.
It has happened to a standing flight attendant, and in that case a very large section of the aircraft had suddenly separated.
Of course, buckling up during take offs and landings will certainly reduce your chances of injury/death in the event of a crash. And buckling up during flight will reduce your chances of injury during unexpected turbulence.
British Air flight 5390 had the cockpit window blow out, and the pilot sucked partially out; held in by a crew member, and getting his legs caught in the controls - it says he was wedged in the window for 20 minutes
Much larger windows. Some of the currently unverified info points to this flight being a similar thing. Part of her may have been out of the aircraft but the window was of course to small for the rest of her to exit.
I'm really confused as to the report that the cabin crew was trying to plug the hole with various objects. That just makes zero sense.
I saw another cabin pic and it looked like NO ONE had their oxygen masks on properly. I wish people would actually listen when the stewardesses say "Place over your nose AND mouth and breath normally". Putting the mask cup over just your mouth is next to useless.
Rewatched the video, and you can even see the drawing on the bag showing proper use. I'm sure in a panic you're not thinking but still...I agree, they tell you this stuff for a reason - I fully read the safety card every time: for example, some planes will sink if you open the rear exit in a water landing!
Of course the masks work better with both the nose and mouth in them, but people tend to "gasp for air" in emergencies anyway, so just the mouth would be enough to inhale oxygen.
You essentially won't be getting the oxygen. In reality - those yellow masks are borderline ineffective anyway. You basically need an airtight seal around your entire nose and mouth otherwise the pure O2 will simply vent away. But at the altitudes that commercial aircraft fly at, it is better than nothing. Below about 25,000 feet they provide a little more time before onset of hypoxia, but above 35,000 they would be useless. Best bet if you are at higher altitudes is to hold the mask on as tight as possible and try to eliminate any gaps.
If you notice the oxygen masks that the pilots use (and that fighter pilots use), they are a very different beast, and have secure latching mechanisms to hold the mask tightly against your face with NO gaps at all. (Also a reason why beards are banned for flight crew in the air force - can't have ANY gaps where the O2 can leak out).
My old flight instructor used to fly jets in the Air Force back in the 50's and 60's, when the cockpits were unpressurised, and he said that at altitudes around 60,000+ feet, if your oxygen mask failed, you had about 1 second of consciousness. In fact, he said at those altitudes, the pressure differential was so great that your diaphragm actually couldn't expand to enable normal breathing, and they used to have liquid oxygen pressure fed through their masks. If they wanted to breath, they just opened their mouth and freezing cold LOX (which vaporised almost instantly at that altitude) would be rammed down their gullets...
Even in space you should have ~10 seconds of consciousness before you black out, same as in strangulation that cuts off your carotids. But yeah, oxygen masks are hard.
It seems reasonable that a band of fabric over your lap wouldn't restrain you from being pulled upward out of your seat, unless it was pulled extremely tight.
Washington Post is now reporting one dead, though it's not clear if it's the person sucked out of the window - the article says the person who went to the hospital may have been someone who had a heart attack during the incident, and presumably is the person who died.
> Sumwalt said the death marks the first passenger fatality on a U.S. carrier since 2009.
Skimming a list of aviation incidents, it seems like this ends the longest passenger-death-free streak in US aviation history. Given how much more flights there are it's pretty remarkable how safe air travel has become, this tragic death notwithstanding.
Dying of a heart attack is a serious worry of mine when flying. I have extreme, and I mean EXTREME anxiety (190+ BPM) whenever anything even remotely wrong (turbulence) happens.
I'm not sure how I'll ever get over it. I've tried many things. Short of a tranquilizer shot, I'm pretty sure a failure like this would take my life through anxiety related heart complications alone.
I suggest trying to understand turbulence and what it is and how little harm it can cause the aircraft. (Look at wing bend test videos on how much the wing can flex before failure.) The best way out of anxiety is to convince your psyche that nothing wrong is possible.
> I have extreme, and I mean EXTREME anxiety (190+ BPM) whenever anything even remotely wrong (turbulence) happens.
You're not alone. I have really bad anxiety during turbulence too, and I used to skydive competitively. I've flown with people who have worse anxiety, but mine seems to be getting worse over time. I wish I could control it, because I know turbulence is natural and not dangerous, and it still makes my blood boil. It's preventing me from traveling more.
The things that have helped me most are deep breathing exercises, and noticing what "turbulence" in a car or bus feels like compared to an airplane (as in, often worse in a wheeled vehicle and it doesn't bother me.) I haven't really tried any drugs.
Turbulence used to bother me. Hearing some factoid like turbulence has never (or nearly never) caused a crash (I'm paraphrasing) is what got me over that. Even if a hundred flights had been taken down by turbulence over the decades of modern aviation, those are still great odds. Better than driving, I'm sure.
And the fact that an engine can explode like this and the plane still lands safely makes me feel even less like the plane is a fragile or precarious thing.
Yeah. Imagine normal cruising flight level as a bank account with $35000 in it. Something unexpected happens (severe turbulence) and you have to spend $30 (you drop 30 feet). It barely makes a dent. You wouldn't feel bad about the money. You have a huge buffer against those events.
As long as you are at several thousand feet, altitude will do a lot of work in your favour. There is plenty of time for a trained pilot to do one of many different recovery maneuvers in the unlikely event shit hits the fan. That high up in the sky, the pilot almost has to intentionally want to crash you to succeed.
What personally helps me in the cruise part of the flight is a particular kind of mindfulness. I observe the turbulence, and recognise it for what it is without judging it as good or bad. But since my mind is so strictly sey on judgment, as a substitute for judging each individual event of turbulence, I try to judge the pilots response to it. Do they climb to find a more stable altitude? Do they slow down? Turn to a different heading? And does it work? Is the amount of turbulence, on a larger scale, decreasing? Does it at first increase, and then decrease?
That sort of thing keeps me occupied in a way more disconnected from the evolutionary panic of shit-fuck-I-feel-like-I'm-in-a-free-fall.
This used to happen to me when flying, but years of therapy and xanax has paid off. I used to cry on strangers on planes, and now I can fly without medication. I know you tried some things, but perhaps consider therapy.
Have you tried any of the common anti-anxiety drugs?
Lots of them have pretty tremendous side effects; but they can commonly be used as-needed by folks suffering from specific anxieties -- unlike many other psych drugs.
I would be surprised if you haven't been prescribed beta-blockers. This worked wonders for my performance anxiety. Dropping my heart rate artificially miraculously makes me less worried.
Since it is solely a mental thing, you can work on how you think and how you choose to respond to your environment. If your fear is caused by your unbound imagination due to your lack of knowledge of how planes work, you can work on that. Learn how planes take off, stay in the air, land. There are YouTube videos and offline, on-site courses that explain everything in detail, what each thing does, why it does it, what it looks like, what it sounds like, what effects it has on the plane.
Not sure if this will help anything, but I started to have severe anxiety when flying a couple of years ago, to the point where I almost just left the airport right before boarding. This just happened out of nowhere, I flew long haul before without any issues.
This lasted about 2-3 years, every bump was enough to set it off.
But out of nowhere, since last year it doesn't happen anymore, I can fly again without much worry, even sleep again during flights.
I just want to (anecdotally) note that this does not work for everyone. I had (generalized) anxiety issues and unfortunately weed never helped me, instead it gave me my worst panic attacks. I can rarely handle trace amount of weed in social occasions (say, one puff) but anything more immediately fractals into a 911 call. I probably have an extreme case, but I know at least 3 other people that weed makes them anxious. This is Bay Area, I also tried "high CBD low THC" strains without any luck.
Marijuana can actually trigger anxiety disorders in some people. The fourth time I tried marijuana it kindled a panic attack which led to OCD. My life was completely ruined for three years, and I still haven't fully recovered to how I was before.
I hate when people act like weed has zero risks and tout it as the cure for anxiety. Based on my experiences with several different psychiatrists and therapists, it seems that anxiety problems caused by marijuana are fairly common in the patients that they see.
Edit: if you actually want something safe to treat flight anxiety, ask your doctor about a medium acting benzo or a beta blocker. These medications have been well studied by the medical community, and pharmacies ensure that you will receive the exact dosing required. This self medication stuff is complete crap.
When my kids were little and we flew somewhere, we'd treat the turbulence as though it was a roller-coaster - I'm sure the other passengers appreciated "wheeeee" a whole lot more than crying, frighted children. I have no idea whether this helped them as adults or not but I can tell you that my son was more frightened when his (then) fiancee flew back to Malaysia skirting several war zones than when the two of them flew on their honeymoon.
Is "wheeee" level turbulance normal in transatlantic flights? I semi-frequently (once every other year) fly Europe <--> West Coast and never experienced a turbulance that felt like rollercoaster. The worst turbulance I remember felt like a ~4 earthquake that went on about 5 minutes which made me pretty anxious. It was above Greenland.
Summertime after 1600 at the airport where this plane landed - it's very common for there to be thunderstorms nearby from May to September. I've been in some very interesting weather patterns in the Denver CO area and from March to November there are afternoon thunderstorms many days in Tampa and Orlando. The kids were flying on vacation so Florida during Spring break was pretty common.
The only turbulence I've experienced over the Atlantic was more than twenty years ago - we hit completely unexpected turbulence and I actually caught a flight attendant as she flew by (all those years of gymnastics came in handy).
I'm get the impression the person who died was the woman who got struck by shrapnel. I don't think anyone got sucked out of the plane or even was in real danger of being sucked out.
The article has since been updated with many additional accounts and details. Previously these seemed like two potentially different individuals:
Another passenger, Marty Martinez, said that a female flier suffered a heart attack in the chaos.
“Someone on the plane had a heart attack, and it looks like an engine blew out, then a window was blown open,” he said on Facebook. “We are still on the plane and they are trying to revive a woman on the plane.”
>A wave of malfunctions has plagued Southwest in recent years.
Considering the amount of flights Southwest operates, three major events over the span of two years seems like a tremendous success -- Especially since nobody has died!
This accident is undoubtedly traumatizing but extremely rare. Is there any meaningful substance to this?
Just the single incident of an engine coming apart like this is considered a serious problem. They spend a lot of money inspecting them to prevent such things.
The most interesting comparison is probably between maintenance facilities that work on comparable planes. So if there are some that don't have any incidents, you maybe conclude that 3 is really bad.
I'm certainly not saying it isn't serious. I just wouldn't plaster it as a historical recurrence.
Wikipedia suggests Southwest has at least 700 aircraft running 6 flights per day, implying 4,200+ flights per day, implying about 1.5+ million flights per year.
1-3 flights with major incidents out of 1.5 million? I would hardly call that a "wave of malfunctions" as it stands.
But I do agree comparing maintenance facilities would be interesting.
No. Their duty cycle per plane is 3-4x what other airline companies do. Their aircrafts undergo a lot more stress than other airlines, so the fact they have so many more flights isn't impressive, it's the CAUSE of their problems.
Several years ago they had a case of their fuselage ripping open midflight, and the reason was that the stress of taking off and landing puts a lot more stress on their planes.
Doesn't the FAA approve aircraft maintenance plans? As far as I know, they consider cycles in the plans.
It's surprising that the FAA would allow them to have an interval 4X that of other airlines. Well, perhaps more surprising would be if other airlines would do 4X more maintenance checks than Southwest if they could get away with less.
A flaw with the engine is typically in the hands of the engine manufacturer. If your (if you are General Electric or Rolls Royce) engine breaks that's a big problem and you want to figure out why, because it could ground entire fleets. Similar things happened when there were problems with the A380 and the Dreamliner - one airline has an issue, and other airlines ground their planes until Boeing/Airbus come up with fixes.
A reasonably common model is that the airline effectively leases the engine, or at least contracts out maintenance to the manufacturer who also receives telemetry during flights.
Saying it's an airlines fault doesn't mean much, assuming they've kept to the prescribed maintenance schedule (which may well be mandated by the manufacturer). Southwest was fined in 2008 for poor maintenance practice, but that was a decade ago now.
It could be high or low -- need to compare to other airlines's incidents/mileage/flights.
The article is junk editorializing narrative-building, though. They could have written "only three major events over the span of two years" like you did, and readers would have no way to judge if "only" is correct or not.
27 hours before the flight, a cockpit window was replaced. Unfortunately, 84 of the 90 bolts used by the maintenance crew had a diameter 0.66 mm less than the documentation called for, so the window was not held in place as strongly as it should have been.
On top of that, this plane had a design flaw. Its windows were bolted on from the outside, not the inside, meaning that the bolts had to hold against the force from the difference between the pressure in the pressurized cabin and outside. Bolts on windows bolted from the inside only have to deal with much smaller forces, such as wind during takeoff and at low altitude, and then only until the pressure difference gets high enough to take all of the force off the bolts.
So...window pops out, and pilot starts getting sucked out. His legs got caught on the flight controls, and a flight attendant was able to grab the pilot's belt and hold on. The pilot was getting blown all around by the wind, and the guy holding on was getting bruised by all the motion, and was also getting frostbite. They could also see the pilot's face hitting the window, and saw his eyes were open but not blinking. They assumed he was dead, but decided to keep holding on, out of concern that if they let the body go it might get sucked into an engine and they already had enough problems (pilot's legs were still tangled in the flight controls, and they also could not hear the radios because of the noise from the wind).
They did manage to get down OK, and everyone was surprised to find the pilot had survived. He had frostbite, shock, bruising, and broken arm and wrist on one side and thumb on the other. The flight attendant who had held him the most had a dislocated shoulder, and frostbite damage to his face and one eye.
This incident was covered in the documentary series "Air Disasters" ("Mayday" in Canada, "Air Crash Investigation" elsewhere). Here's the Wikipedia article on the accident for complete details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_5390
I always wear my seatbelt when sitting. I also try not to be seated close to the engines since I'm familiar with the damage that an exploding engine can do. What got my attention from these photos is that at flight speed, the shrapnel from an exploding engine is more likely to do damage far back from the point of the explosion. I hadn't considered that before.
Statistically sitting in the back is a bit safer than in the front.
After that there are also specific cases where sitting in the middle you are for example more likely to be injured by trolleys or falling luggage. Also sitting close to a door can be important in case a quick exit is needed.
I was on a JetBlue flight from Vegas to NYC years ago, coming back home from a bachelor party. On takeoff I heard a loud pop and just knew, from years of flying, something not-so-great just happened. I was sitting next to a good friend who didn't love flying so I was keeping my cool for him. Long story semi-short, you could tell we were flying in circles pretty quickly. The crew didn't communicate much. It was absolutely fascinating to witness how panic spread throughout the plane, even in mostly silence.
Before you knew it, this indescribable wave of anxiety just hung like a cloud. People started looking around, so others did the same. My friend began his descent into full panic attack mode. The college aged girl in front of me started crying. My buddy soaked through his shirt in sweat. People were trying to call and text loved ones to say what might be their goodbyes. There were a few "get me the fuck off this plane right the fuck now!!!!" freakouts. I think they actually helped the situation a bit because most people who were freaking felt better about their lesser level of freak. I don't remember how long it took the crew to tell us what happened, or the partial story. The hydraulics system went down, they said. But we were too big and full of fuel to land at Vegas, so we had to do circles above the desert to burn gas before we could land. I couldn't get why they didn't just go to LAX or something like that.
5 hours we were in the air. The turbulence above the desert is not great. So, you have lack of information, a faulty plane, and the inability to land all happening at once. So...much...vomit.
You know what was cool, though? The older gentleman in front of me consoling the college girl. Hugging her, holding her hand, asking her questions about her life to keep her mind busy. Then, pill bottles. That's what I'll always remember. People were passing around their downers for anyone who felt they needed 'em!
Finally, we were walked through emergency landing procedures and we went in for the landing. Nobody knew what to expect. I caught a glimpse of all the emergency lights at the far end of the runway, where we were headed.
The landing wasn't that bad. We survived. JetBlue told us they'd take care of everyone; cars, hotels, food. Then they told us there was another flight leaving soon for NYC and they automatically rebooked us all on it. Up to us if we took it, though.
I've never seen a group of people move that quickly towards the bar. We all did shots. Laughed, told dumb jokes. A crew rented a van to drive back East. I told my panicked buddy that, statistically speaking, he will never take a safer flight in his entire life than this next one. (Joke's on him, I'm a marketer, not a statistician!) We slept like babies on the flight, got into Brooklyn at 7am, hugged and kissed my girlfriend.
Edit: Forgot the part where the flight attendant (who was awesome) from the doomed flight ended up sitting in front of us on the next one. We asked her to give it to us straight and she basically said we lost 2 (of 3, if I recall correctly) hydraulics systems, then something else I can't remember. She said in her 17 years of flying it was the closest she ever cam to going down, believing it was a real possibility.
Do you think the crew did the right thing, hiding the incident from the passengers, or should they have communicated clearly from the start to head off anxiety (and unlocked the entertainment system to distract everyone)
It would have been nice if they communicated a bit earlier, but I won't pretend to know the right thing to do in such a situation. What I can tell you is that the fear of the unknown is often (mostly?) worse than reality. The mistake they made was letting the unknown linger long enough for the fear to set in.
Not all planes have the ability to dump fuel midair. A bit more info here [0] but it really just comes down to the model and exact options ordered at manufacturing time. My understanding is that fuel dump systems are rarely used and add a lot of maintenance overhead & complexity, extra regulatory things but most of all, unnecessary added weight.
Dumping fuel has environmental impacts though, and could be a disaster if happened over a populated area. Maybe they decided it wasn't worth it considering the plane could safely be kept in a holding pattern.
Particularly this image https://youtu.be/4yG2h1aDB6k?t=133 which shows the "person" partially sucked out when the whole window went - eerily similar to the description of the woman in the window seat.
Children under 2 can fly free on a parents lap, but my wife insists on buying our 4month old his own seat for safety reasons. There will be zero chance I talk her out of this now.
Some (not all) car seats are also rated for use in aircraft, and they have some notes about that on the label. We planned for it, so both of ours were, even though they were enormous. I humped them into and out of every flight when our two kids were small. The flight crews never complained.
Its basically the difference between seat belts that work, and seat belts that don't work. There's plenty of space in between perfect landings and crashes that kill everyone onboard. Seat belts matter in that in-between space, as today's incident shows. For us, the peace of mind was totally worth it.
That is not the case in the U.S., we had an unpleasant (and highly patronizing) conversation with an airline steward who tried to tell us that FAA regulations prohibited such a seat belt and that "the safest place for an infant is in their mom's arms".
That requirement, if it exists, is either pretty new or must vary by airline and/or by country. I've flown multiple times with small children not in their own seat, within and to/from the US, on various US-based airlines, within the past ~5 years, and that was never a requirement.
We were looking at this this morning. Apparently they (WestJet) will refund you the cost of the seat if you provide proof of age up to a week later. I assume this may only apply if your child is close enough to 2 that they feel a need to verify, and you don't have proof of their age with you.
WestJet website doesn’t say anything about this. Actually mentions purchasing a seat as an option but no refund. Any update on this or with other airlines?
There is also zero chance of the same situation presenting itself again in our lifetimes. It's much better to invest extra money to protect ourselves from things that are likely to occur, like car accidents.
Not sure why you're getting downvoted. Our kids always flew in their car seats. The airplane's lap belt goes over the car seat in slots that are designed for this purpose, and the kid is strapped into the car seat's 5-point harness. The whole thing works great, aside from having to haul the car seat down the airplane aisle during boarding and deplaning.
I regret posting this comment now that the article states a woman died. It looks like I'm no longer able to edit/delete it. Originally it was told to be a dramatic but otherwise inconsequential event.
There was a study[1] where a plane was deliberately crashed into the Sonoran Desert, and in it they found the front of the cabin experienced much higher g-forces than those in the rear.
There's also an interesting blog by a UK Professor who studies the safety of crowds in various disaster scenarios:
http://fseg.gre.ac.uk/blog/
He found that the closer you are to an exit row, the marginally better your odds of survival.
Back of the plane is last off; but also technically the safest (and bumpiest during the rest of the ride). Statistically speaking; I just look for the most legroom.
On both Aloha 243 and United 811, it was the first-class cabin that broke apart. In both cases seatbelts kept passengers from being sucked out of their seats. Aloha 243 lost a flight attendant who wasn't buckled in... but United 811 lost two whole rows of first class seats, passengers and all. And at least one passenger was sucked into the engine. So maybe being behind the engine isn't so bad.
It's a common trope that the rear of the aircraft is safer, since it usually crashes nose-first. Back when the rear rows were the designated smoking section, one would always hear a few rounds of "smoking saved my life!" after a fatal plane crash.
This may be Southwest's first passenger fatality, ever.
I say "may" because if a person dies on a flight from a heart attack, it doesn't count in the safety statistics. I suspect that it doesn't count even if the heart attack was plausibly brought on by an in-flight safety incident. But if the woman who was partially sucked out is the one who died (unclear at the time I write this), then it's the first one in corporate history for Southwest. That's impressive.
Any updates, on this amazing landing? One news source reported a man used his back to partially cover up the blown out window. Does anyone know if this was true and if so who was he? If true he risked his life to save others and I'd like to know who he is. Should any of us ever run into trouble on a plane heres hoping we have a pilot as competent as this woman. Great save!
Yup, this. If you're belted in, the entire chair would have to detach. Something that doesn't typically happen in a depressurization event, no matter what Hollywood would have you believe.
If you're sitting in a window seat it's entirely possible to be sucked into the window enough where you'd be dead even with your seatbelt on. I'd imagine most adults would get stuck at the shoulders, which would only take about 1ft of wiggle room. Also, she may have received fatal head trauma from the engine cowling entering the plane.
So, I think it's premature to say that she would have lived even if she was wearing her seatbelt(was she?). But generally I agree it is a good idea to strap in
I have to stoop over so low to see out windows, I doubt that more than my arm and shoulder would make it through. Of course my head hitting the wall could kill me too...
Crew did a great job with a textbook handling of the situation. It’s a testimaent to the training of the crew that this didn’t turn out worse. Obviously a lot of people are going to be taking a very close look at the engine and what happened there but sounds like the crew did a great job here.
Remember what we always say when there is a news article - especially local news! - about anything technical. Don't forget their tenuous relationship with logic and facts when reading this article.
> A Southwest Airlines flight landed safely in Philadelphia Tuesday after the jet violently depressurized when a piece of an engine flew into and broke a window, according to passenger accounts
Violent is relative.
> The plane descended by more than 3,000 feet per minute until the pilots leveled out around 10,000 feet.
3000 fpm is nothing crazy, especially for an emergency descent with a depressurized cabin. I'm glad they included the following line:
> Arthur Wolk, an aviation expert, said that is a modest rate of descent and indicated that the pilot had control of the aircraft.
The plane was never "going down" as one passenger is quoted saying.
Indeed, "rapid" depressurization would be the preferred term. (I'm an instructor.)
I try to be empathetic of the flying public when reading about in-flight emergencies. For passengers, a shredded engine and a broken window are terrifying. The deck angle at 3000 fpm is steeper than they've ever seen. I can understand why a passenger might use the phrase "going down."
Obviously for pilots, engine failure and rapid depress are so textbook as to be boring. The captain practices responding to these emergencies every time she's in the sim.
I don't envy the reporters. Balancing these two perspectives has got to be a hard job. And I can see how it's easy to get swept up in the emotionality.
I can't find solid numbers, but what I found suggests Southwest flies twice the number of flights Ryanair does. Don't know about this specific plane though.
Southwest has 511 737-700s (what 1380 was), and 712 planes total. Ryanair only uses 737-800s, and has "over 300 aircraft in operation"[0]. Close, but still different. Ryanair operates ~600k flights yearly to Southwest's ~1.25 million.
The math gets pretty bad when you try to average all that out but if you ignore that and do it anyway (science!) then you get 1,743 yearly flights per plane for Southwest and 1,503-1,993 for Ryanair (fleet size of 301-399 respectively). So they're likely very comparable, which makes sense because neither airline could likely afford to have its planes sitting around idle for any more than absolutely necessary.
And on the engine, which was likely the point of failure in this incident. Although you have a different cycle count for engines since you can run it up without taking off.
If we get to use this when a plane's window breaks, what do we say about the Byford Dolphin incident?
> Hellevik, being exposed to the highest pressure gradient and in the process of moving to secure the inner door, was forced through the 60 centimetres (24 in) diameter opening created by the jammed interior trunk door by escaping air and violently dismembered, including bisection of his thoracoabdominal cavity, which further resulted in expulsion of all of the internal organs of his chest and abdomen, except the trachea and a section of small intestine, and of the thoracic spine. These were projected some distance, one section later being found 10 metres (30 ft) vertically above the exterior pressure door.
We're nearing the ceiling of available acronyms with "violent." I guess "catastrophic" could apply?
Not necessarily! I thought the route you were going down was that, relatively speaking, this was near the "maximum decompression threshold" of the context - airplanes. As in, "it doesn't really get more 'violent' than this for airplanes, so violent is the right word."
Thanks for giving me more diving nightmares though lol
Well, considering that most airlines operate at around 5-8psi (to reduce stress on the pressure vessel), I could argue that hundreds is still a valid measure.
But that would just being pedantic; it is an exaggeration.
You aren't living too long with your internal organs "explosively" removed from your chest. From the wikipedia article:
>Hellevik was about to close the door between the chamber system and the trunk when the chamber explosively decompressed from a pressure of nine atmospheres to one atmosphere. One of the tenders, 32-year-old William Crammond of Great Britain, and all four of the divers were killed instantly; the other tender, Saunders, was severely injured.[10]
According to wikipedia, the difference between explosive/violent decrompression and rapid decompression is if the air is able to safely exit the lungs. On an aircraft that means that decompression that takes less than half a second (or a tenth of a second depending on the pressure differential).
Sidenote, I've noticed a lot of "wrong word" choices when I read through my posts here. There's no reason for it as far as I can tell... native english speaker, usually posting with a keyboard, hell I have a creative writing degree.
But I keep catching slipups like that. Super weird.
Probably pretty unnerving nonetheless, but here's some fun(1) nerdery. If you convert the probable horizontal airspeed (500 MPH ballpark) into feet per minute, it's about 45,000. Which means the plane went about 15 feet horizontally for each foot it dropped vertically. (Just very rough here, gimme a break.) The slope of its path would've been around -0.067 which is like a 6.7% highway grade. This is allowed on state & federal highways in mountainous areas of the US, though a "steep grade" warning sign is typically required for trucks' sake. The angle of descent would be 3.8º off the horizontal.
EDIT for additional nerdery: NYC and Philly are about 80 mi apart, so keeping that assumption of an airspeed of roughly 500MPH, they were in the air about 10 minutes.
(1)YET ANOTHER EDIT: Just heard somebody on the flight died, so using the word "fun" above isn't quite right to do. But I'm leaving it, with this note.
> The plane was never "going down" as one passenger is quoted saying
- they lost an engine
- the cabin depressurized rapidly
- there was unknown damage to the slats
- there was possible other structural damage to the aircraft
- someone nearly got sucked out of the plane
Given all that it seems like a major exercise in backseat driving to conclude that the plane was 'never going down', at that point in time passengers should be excused for thinking that might happen.
After all the only reason you are writing this is because you know that they landed more or less in one piece but that wasn't a given at that point in time.
Losing an engine in an airliner is as close to a non-event as you can get and still declare an emergency. It's practiced literally every time a pilot steps into a sim. It's practiced very often in actual planes if you're not flying something as expensive as an airliner. If you're flying a multi-engine prop plane, there's a better than 50/50 chance your examiner/instructor will cut fuel flow to one of the engine and not say anything to you about it.
The only reason I wrote that is because I think it helps us to keep in mind that journalists don't necessarily know any more about this subject than they do about technology, although there are no glaring issues with this article in particular. Just take any technical/engineering/process points with a grain of salt, that's all.
The plane's engine didn't lose power, it exploded and breached the hull.
The journalist didn't say the plane was going down, the person on the plane said it and the journalist quoted them, accurately.
Since this article yesterday there have been many more quotes by passengers on that plane who thought they were going to die.
There's zero reason here to claim shoddy journalism, not for this article specifically, nor any reason to bring up journalism in general. Yes journalists are not engineers. The flip side is also true -- engineers are bad at relaying the big picture story because they nitpick details that are misleading or unimportant, and completely miss the primary points as they relate to other people. I'm guessing you are not a journalist? This wasn't a modest event, and this wasn't a non-event, so as far as I'm concerned the only grain of salt here is being reserved for you.
Violent seems entirely accurate, the pressure was enough to pull someone halfway out the window, and the poor woman is in critical condition. It was literally violent.
> The plane was never "going down"
If I were on a plane that experienced an engine explosion, hull breach, and depressurization, I'm sure I'd assume it's going down. It was terrifying enough to give someone a heart attack.
It's also hard to claim definitively that the plane was never going down. Multiple safety systems failed, and the hull was breached. This could easily have brought down the plane. They were lucky it wasn't worse.
> Don't forget their tenuous relationship with logic and facts when reading this article.
I don't see any tenuous logic or facts here... everything quoted appears accurate. I doubt the expert commentary from the ground that the situation was modest is much comfort to anyone who was on the flight.
> 3000 fpm is nothing crazy, especially for an emergency descent with a depressurized cabin.
Definitely not. Some quick googling suggests that 7000 fpm is not uncommon in emergency situations, and really you are only limited by the comfort level of the passengers (as you come back to a lower pressure-altitude). If they drop spoilers and go for ground you can probably be on the ground within 5 minutes flat, assuming a nearby airport.
(and with a depressurized cabin, the damage is really already done in terms of passenger comfort)
A friend was on a flight where a passenger had a heart attack in-flight, he said it was like being on an elevator and his inner ear was screwed up for days.
There’s 5200 feet in a mile, so they’re descending about 1/2 mile per minute, or 30mph in the vertical direction—-a little higher than school zone speed. Considering the jet would be flying 250-500mph at that point, it doesn’t seem too drastic.
To compare, GA (small) planes typically descent at 500-700 fpm (my wife complains if I descend faster than 1000 fpm :) ). Jets usually do 1000-1500 fpm. Elevators in skyscrapers can go up to 1500-2000 fpm. The limiting factor is that for many people feeling partially weight-less causes nausea. Not to mention the pressure change (especially for kids and sick/old people).
It's terrible that she died. Facts don't change because of a medical outcome and I resent the implication that we should be less critical of factual errors (of which there were none) under any circumstances. I was simply providing more context, which most people here seemed to appreciate.
I don't understand what you mean. The premise of his argument was that newspapers/articles exaggerate events. Nothing seems exaggerated in this case, a person actually died.
Was the cause of death "violent" depressurization?
If a piece of shrapnel flies through the window and impales the person on the other side, you can have a fatality at sea level, no depressurization needed.
Someone just went through an experience where, during a flight, they heard a loud bang, then a window exploded and a woman was partially sucked out of it. They'd be forgiven for thinking that was violent.
Jeez, I read this morning that she didn't make it. Terrible tragedy. I knew this would be the least of her problems, but I was rooting for her survival considering previous incidents (several described here) where passengers and crew survived decompression events.
Thoughts are with her family and friends at this sad time.
CFM are going to have to move fast on this one. Catastrophic engine failure like this could seriously dent people's faith in air travel (also, the CFM-56 engine has quite a history of blade failure leading to extreme engine damage[0]).
I guess you can say "this is one of the reasons" but the overwhelming motivator is turbulence and passenger control. I'd suggest the odds of getting hurt by exploding material are way more likely and dangerous than getting sucked out of a completely shattered window, regardless if you're wearing your seat belt. Getting hurt because the plane makes a sudden drop on the other hand can virtually be eliminated by wearing your belt.
This is going to sound stupid, but every time I flush a toilet on a plane I have the visceral feeling of the plane being depressurized and rather dislike it. I know the plane is safe and it's a fine mechanism, but still...
Same. I even skip y regular coffee if it's a little before a flight just so that I won't need to use the bathroom on the plane... I don't know why I just jump everytime I have to flush it.
I wish reporters would get this right. It's blown, not sucked. Vacuum doesn't exert a force on anything; there's nothing there. It's the high pressure air inside that does the work.
The distinction in use between 'blow' and 'suck' seems to be the direction of travel.
If items are moving away from some centralized point in random directions, we refer to them as being 'blown'. As in blown up.
If items are moving TOWARDS a single point, we refer to them as being sucked.
As all the items in the plane -- including the poor passenger -- were momentarily being impelled towards a single point (the window), the use of 'suck' is appropriate.
If you want to split hairs: It's the pressure differential that's creating the air flow. I doubt the plane was flying in actual vacuum with a turbofan engine.
What really surprised me was how cooperative all the passengers were. In those days emergency rows were given to people who needed extra room, so the flight attendants told the elderly folks in the emergency rows to change seats and recruited youngsters like me (I was 25) to sit there and review how and if to open the window (I was the last-resort option and did not get to actually do it). They collected all our shoes and checked everybody's practice crash position. There was no screaming (except during the rather abrupt landing). And unlike what you see today nobody tried to take their cabin baggage with them (they'd told us to empty our pockets, though I was naughty and kept my passport, which later made life a lot easier for me).
One thing is unchanged: I was the first one to leave the arrival hall (this was pre-mobile phones so I wanted to find a phone and get a new flight rather than let the airline deal with it like everyone else did), and there was a camera crew there. I was asked "were you on that flight" and when I said yes they asked, "and how was it?" I said, "exciting but I felt safe the whole time" they switched off the camera, looked annoyed, and went back to watching the exit door. sigh.
And I really got a strong lesson in the real purpose of flight attendants.