Flights are nerve-wracking for some travellers whether something goes wrong or not. Landing can be a particularly worrying time for such flyers – but is this actually the scariest bit of the flight? Pilot Patrick Smith explained in his book Cockpit Confidential the part that plane passengers should actually fear. Smith pointed out that it’s takeoff which should worry flyers more.
“Inherently, takeoff is the more critical point than landing,” the pilot wrote in his book.
“Here, the airplane is making the transition from ground to flight, and its grip on the latter is much more tentative than it is when it is coming down.
“It’s landing that fearful flyers hate, but in deference to the principles of lift gravity and momentum, this anxiety is misplaced.
“Not that you should be, but if you insist on being nervous, takeoff is your time – from just prior to liftoff through the first twenty seconds or so of flight.”
Smith also explained why it can feel noisy and hectic in an aircraft at this time.
“After breaking ground and taking the landing gear, the pilots follow a profile of target speeds and altitudes at which they retract the flaps – often in stages as the plane accelerates – all the while banking and climbing to assigned headings altitudes,” he said.
“It can be noisy, with multiples power changes, turns, and pitch adjustments.
“If it feels unusually hectic, chances are good the crew is following a noise abatement procedure on behalf of the residents below.
“These can require complicated profiles with low-altitude turns and steeper-than-normal climbs.”
Smith also revealed what he is most afraid of when flying a plane. “For the most part, pilots fear those things they cannot control,” Smith wrote in Cockpit Confidential.
“We are less afraid of committing a fatal error than of finding ourselves victimised by somebody else’s error or else at the mercy of forces impervious to our skills or expertise.”
Smith lists exactly what it is that he is most afraid of due to lack of control.
“I’d put lithium batteries fires, high-speed explosions, bird strikes that take out multiple engines, catastrophic mechanical malfunctions, and ground collisions at the top of my list,” the pilot said.
Passengers have a tendency to look at cabin crew to judge their reactions when they fear something is going wrong but this is not advisable.
“That glazed look in the flight attendant’s eyes is probably one of exhaustion, not fear,” said Smith.
“Nervous flyers are prone to envision some silently impending disaster, with distressed crew members pacing the aisles and whispering to each other in secret.
“In reality, passengers will be told about any emergency or serious malfunction.”
Travellers should also not allow themselves to unduly panic when it comes to announcements from the pilot as they will often say very little.
“Of all front-line employees, pilots are potentially the most valuable for soothing anxieties and explaining the nuances of abnormal situations,” Smith wrote in his 2013 book.
“Unfortunately, customer service training for pilots is bare minimum and one result is a tendency to say as little as possible – a default policy of evasive simplification. This is obviously counterproductive, and never more so than those times when minor abnormalities are made to sound harrowing.”
