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Fear of flying


Jolfa

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Also, I don't think I would be surprised by the figures about how many people carry parachutes with them on normal passenger flights. My guess would be approximately none and to be fair I would hope that security would stop anyone from flying who was carrying one because in my mind that would mean that f**ker is planning on leaving the plane mid-flight for some reason...

So many people that the issue can usually be found in airline FAQs, see

http://www.ryanair.com/en/questions/can-i-bring-a-parachute

for an example.

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But I mean it's not like if an engine goes out they can just open the door and let you jump out. In the minute chances of you actually being in danger on an aircraft, there's only a tiny % of that original tiny percentage of situations where having a parachute would save you. You're probably more likely to die from banging your head when packing the parachute than a situation where one could have saved you.

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Indeed, totally rational.

As for 'landing' on water, yeah that happened on the Hudson and in rare other cases. As far as I know there's no recorded incident of a wide-body commercial airliner landing on water like that though...

Has there been any recorded incidents of a wide-body commercial airliner crashing into water?

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I was genuinely asking. The video shows a hijacked plane which is a different situation.

I was always under the impression that planes were designed to land on water if they had to.

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What gave you that impression?

Landing on water is extremely difficult. Also planes crash into water during bad weather etc... I'd say that very few pilots could land a big jet on water. Interestingly the manual provided with the 747-200 (which, in paper form, consists of many volumes) does have a ditching in water procedure. It doesn't actually provide that much information - I think generally it's all a bit theoretical. Which makes the life vests a bit of a joke, but then as we've seen, they have been used in certain cases.

Also the hijacked plane ran out of fuel - that could happen on a flight over the ocean. Planes have run out of fuel before for various reasons (such as mechanical malfunction and human error). A plane will still glide with the engines shutdown but as that video shows, unless it hits absolutely level on calm water, you're probably f'cked.

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So a guys asked if anyone has any advice to help him with a fear of flying, and your response is to try and convince us all that you're hugely unlikely to survive a crash on water. Nice, great idea, I bet that'll really help him with his fear. The fact is, the lifejackets and evacuation procedures provided for crash landing on water have been used to save lives and have proved their usefulness and necessity. How likely the situation is to occur is a bit irrelevant, they're there for a reason. It's like saying what's the point in providing lifejackets on a ship sailing in the north atlantic, even if you can float you'll probably freeze to death, it's a completely nonproductive discussion that helps no-one.

Personally I wouldn't have said that a fear of flying is rational. It's completely understandable, natural and expected, but not rational. The definition of rational is 'based on or in accordance with reason or logic'. Both reason and logic are emotionless ideas, and can only really go off statistics and proven data, which as we all know, suggests that flying is a much safer activity than a lot of actions we consider mundane and normal. The rational reaction to flying is to be completely calm, more so than on the drive to the air-port. But yeah, the natural and expected reaction is fear.

I'm afraid I haven't actually got any advice to help with a fear of flying, as I grew up going on light air-craft fairly regularly, and still consider it exciting/fun rather than scary, but it sounds like there's already been some sound advice that I hope helps.

Edited by RobinJI
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Perhaps you missed my first post where I explained how I used to be petrified of flying. Finding out about how aircraft work and why accidents have happened has helped me. There's no point glossing over that stuff - knowing about how things work allows you to make an informed decision on whether or not you want to do something that you perceive to be risky.

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Yeah sorry, it had been a few days between posts, so that was purely in response to your last post, your earlier posts did seem good. I know what you mean, it does definitely help with fears in general to understand the mechanism behind the danger you're faced with, but when you re-read your last couple of posts, they're far from reassuring, I'm all for full disclosure, but it's the sort of topic that I'd expect to be worth putting across in a slightly more reassuring manner.

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