Isn’t it amazing no one died? would be an unacceptably low bar in any other industry.
Isn’t it amazing no one died? would be an unacceptably low bar in any other industry.
H aving boarded my first flight of 2024, to calm my nerves, I suggested to my husband that we play “20 Questions.”
I went first.
“Is it a man?” Nick asked.
“Yes,” I said, having had visual confirmation of this just moments before.
“Is he famous?”
“No.”
“Does he live in New York?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is he married?”
I didn’t know that either. That’s when the sickening realization kicked in.
“What’s the matter?” Nick asked.
“We don’t know anything about the person flying this plane.”
This thought has unnerved me ever since. Here we were in a winged tube about to be shot across the sky, and those in charge of this audacious enterprise were total strangers. In a matter of minutes, our lives would be in their hands as they defied gravity, even nature itself.
Why should we trust airlines to get us to where we need to be safely? One obvious reason is that if we didn’t, we would never fly, and some of us have arranged our lives around the ability to speedily cross vast geographical distances. Speaking as someone with family scattered over two continents, refusing to fly would be seriously life-limiting.
This is worth remembering: The aviation industry depends on trust from people whose lifestyles depend on flying.
Of course, even so, we get on planes only because we believe (with statistical basis) that they’re relatively safe. We trust that those flying commercial jets are qualified, experienced, and ready for anything, even the worst. I for one feel comforted when flight attendants go over emergency-landing protocols, oxygen masks, lifeboats, etc., if only because it lends the impression that in “the unlikely event” that something goes wrong, I’ll still have a fighting chance.
Those “unlikely events” do happen, after all. And when they do, I follow them with morbid interest. Consider some recent examples.
On January 3, Japan Airlines Flight 516 took off from Sapporo and landed at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport. As it landed on the runway, it collided with a Japan coast guard De Havilland Dash 8 plane that was traveling to Tokyo to provide relief to people suffering from the recent earthquake. Tragically, five of the six crew members on the coast guard plane died. In part because the public cannot relate to coast guard personnel as easily as to passengers on a commercial jet, the deceased were not the focus. Despite the airliner being on fire, and some of the doors being blocked, all 379 passengers and crew members onboard the Airbus A350 got out safely in a matter of minutes. The story was: What a miracle!
Two days later, on January 5, Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 left Portland, Ore., bound for Ontario, Calif. Shortly after takeoff, a door plug — a panel between the cabin and the outside — blew out because of loose bolts, leaving a hole in the side of the plane and causing an uncontrolled decompression of the aircraft. By a stroke of luck, no one was sitting in the window and middle seat. Oxygen masks descended, the pilots and crew conducted an emergency landing, and everyone survived. Another miracle!
The FAA subsequently grounded all 737 MAX 9s, the plane’s model. “On top of this,” Alaska Airlines CEO Ben Minicucci said, “we’re now putting our own extra oversight on the production line in Boeing,” the plane’s manufacturer. Oh, good.
Of course, if there had been people right next to the gaping hole, things would likely have ended differently. Like in 2018, on Southwest Airlines Flight 1380 from New York to Dallas, when an engine gave out, shattering a window and killing Jennifer Riordan, a married mom of two, who was partially sucked out.
The professionalism and courage of those faced with imminent danger in these situations is often inspiring. After “the miracle on the Hudson,” when on January 15, 2009, pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger safely landed US Airways Flight 1549 on the Hudson River after the jet struck a flock of geese, Captain Sully said of this critical moment in his 42-year career: “I’ve been making small, regular deposits in this bank of experience, education, and training. And on January 15, the balance was sufficient so that I could make a very large withdrawal.”
Nevertheless, it is strange that in the aftermath of these “incidents,” the argument often made is that, counterintuitively, the catastrophic or near-catastrophic incident proves how trustworthy airlines are. Really? Isn’t it amazing no one died? would be a low bar in any other industry.
As an aerophobe, I suspect people react this way in part because, deep down, they sense as I do that there is something deeply strange and unnatural in having humans hurtling past each other through the air. And especially so many of them at the same time. For more on this, please see the New York Times report on how “near misses” of planes not quite colliding with each other happen more often than you’d think — though be warned, it’s terrifying.
I’ve come to think of flying as analogous to surgery. Generally safe, but advisable only when necessary due to the small risks of complications and, yes, even death. If only there was an anesthesiologist on hand before takeoff.