This video starts at The New England Air Museum at Bradley Airport near Hartford, CT.
Everything you do and everything you don't do has risk. As we discussed in the past DVDs, there is far more risk to many other things in life than flying. Capt. Bunn reminds us that some of this may cause anxiety, at first, as he discusses some things about flying specifics, but to stick with him because ultimately, the goal is to ease the anxiety. The more you learn about flying, the more you limit your imagination and the more you limit your imagination, the less anxiety you'll feel. Sounds good to me. Lets do this! :)
Capt. Bunn says that if you were to go to a movie about some sort of airplane disaster with a pilot, you might be anxious during the movie while the pilot would likely be bored because the stuff that Hollywood makes up simply doesn't happen. This is how I feel when watching TV shows depicting childbirth. :)
Left Brain, Right Brain
Left brain processes words while the right brain processes images. Emotions are controlled in the right brain. The left brain has sequential logic, the right side has intuitive logic. The left brain can process words and can understand why a plane stays in the air. The right brain says, hey...that's just a lot of words...what I know is that something heavy is floating in the air and nothing is holding it up! The left brain understands statistics and how unlikely it is that a plane will crash while the right brain sees the ONE crash and focuses on it.
Capt. Bunn then takes an imaginary billboard and fills it with 10,000,000 imaginary blocks. If it's a 1 in 10,000,000 chance of a crash, that block would be a pencil dot in the middle of the billboard. That's how the left brain sees it anyway. The right brain sees the ONE and fills up the entire billboard with that ONE crash. We have to control that right brain imagination and as we learn more about airplanes, we'll be able to do that! Good...because my right brain is VERY active! ;)
F100 Verses 707
Capt. Bunn is standing in front of an F100 which is the plane he flew in the Air Force. He discussed this plane in an earlier CD. He then has a model of a Boeing 707 which was the plane he flew for Pan Am airlines. He shows the difference between the two planes and explains there are backup systems on commercial planes.
People Only Suffer From Imagination
As discussed in prior CDs...we suffer from the imagination, not reality.
Limiting Imagination
Much of what we fear about happening on airplanes, can't happen.
The goal here is to show what can't go wrong with an airplane, what can go wrong with an airplane and then what can be done about those things.
Plane is a Glider
This was an important point that I took away from the book. If the engines quit on a plane...the airplane is still a glider. The engines just push it forward, they don't hold it up in the air. So, if the engines quit at 30,000 feet...you take the 30 (in 30,000) and multiply it by 3 to get 90. The airplane will glide for 90 miles in any direction and there is likely 10, 20, or 30 airports that you can land at in those 90 miles.
In cruise, there is hardly any risk. Pilots can't even conceive of any risk. But people afraid of flying see this as terrifying because they can't see anything holding the plane up.
ATC (Air Traffic Control) and TCAS
Planes fly at different altitudes and ATC puts an imaginary electronic "egg" around each plane in all directions and doesn't let another airplane into that "egg". IF the planes do happen to enter each other's space, a report is sent to the FAA in Washington and discipline takes place. However, pilots felt as though there needed to be more control for them so they lobbied Congress to get a device put on the plane which makes sure that even if ATC makes a mistake, the pilots wouldn't run into another plane. In 1991 it became law to have a device on all US Airlines called TCAS which tells a pilot when a plane comes within 5 miles (plane turns from green to yellow on screen) and another withing 1 mile (plane turns from yellow to red on screen). If the computer and TCAS realize there may be a concern for collision, it tells one airplane to climb and another to descend so that there's no chance of collision. Before TCAS there were two collisions between an airliner and private plane. Since TCAS, there have been none.
Turbulence
Okay...here we go...this is when my heart starts to race a little...
Pilots have no issues with turbulence because they know that turbulence is no problem for an aircraft.
Reasons for turbulence....
* The sun heating up the earth causing air currents (get these more often in the desert like Phoenix and Las Vegas)
* The sun causing moisture in the air to build up in to clouds. Because of the build up of moisture, there is a circulation of air going up and down in the clouds and if you fly a plane through that when you go into the part going up, the airplane gets bumped up and when you come out the other side where the air is going down, you get bumped down.
* When there is a strong wind going across the surface, it rubs by trees and buildings and the earth. When you take off and fly in to that type of air you get some turbulence.
NONE of these are a problem!
One kind of things associated with turbulence, wind shear, CAN be a problem, BUT now we have doppler radar and if the wind shear is of a magnitude that it could be a problem for the airplane, they simply shut down the airport until the problem goes away.
CAT (Clear Air Turbulence) and Earth Rotation
How is CAT created. At the center of the earth is the widest circumference...about 25,000 miles. New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco are north of that, and countries in South America are below the equator. At those points, it's less than 25,000 miles. The earth rotates and there is centrifugal force. The air which is held against the planet by gravity is spun away from the planet, by the centrifugal force. At the equator, more than any other place, the centrifugal force causes the air to go away from the planet. But then it loses it's momentum and wants to come back down but it can't come down at the equator because there is always more coming up, so it migrates north or south. At the equator, the speed of the air is roughly 1,000mph (which is roughly the equator's speed). More northern or southern elevations may have air spinning at 800mph. When the faster air, hits the slower rotation, it causes a jet stream. The jet stream goes from the West to the East in the Northern Hemisphere and there's a second stream in the Southern Hemisphere. But it isn't straight...it sort of looks more like a roller coaster. If you're flying from West to East, pilots will try to get into the jet stream because it will get the plane to the destination more quickly and more economically. If you're trying to go West, you try to stay north or south of the jet stream in order to not run straight into the winds going the other direction. If you're right IN the jet stream, the air is smooth, but just outside the jet stream when there is fast air moving against air that is not so fast, that's where you get turbulence. Pilots try to fly higher or lower to get out of turbulence.
Holy smokes....that's awesome information for my brain!!
Fast and Slow Moving Air
The air in the middle of the jet stream is all moving at the same speed. The air just on the edge of the air stream is being made turbulent. Capt. Bunn shows an example of the air creating sort of ball bearings and so when the plane flies into it, it gets bumped up on one side and bumped down on the other side, but over and over and over...but ONLY A FRACTION OF AN INCH even though it may seem like a lot more. It usually doesn't even register in the cockpit.
Up Down
Capt. Bunn draws a diagram that looks like a mountain range with ups and down and peaks at the top of the up and bottom of the down to depict turbulence, but says we probably don't even feel the ups (because whoever got hurt falling up, he says. :) ). We are concerned with the downs and because we don't notice the ups, we just feel like we're falling down, down, down. But in reality, we're still in exactly the same place. The best thing you can do in turbulence is to look for the ups not just the downs. Or whenever you notice an up, expect a down. What otherwise feels like falling thousands of feet is movement of less than an inch.
Fly By The Seat Of Your Pants
One of the things that happens in turbulence is that you get tense and tighten up your body. You put tension into your arms and legs and you press down and without realizing it, you take some weight off the seat and this can make you feel like you're falling. This is SUCH good information for me because I can actually feel that sensation right this minute in my imagination and know how it makes me feel. Ideally this knowledge will help me experience it differently on my upcoming flight. Capt. Bunn's recommendation is to "calibrate our instruments". When you sit in your seat, before the airplane is moving at all, lift up your arms off the arm rests and legs off the floor. Memorizr what it feels like to sit in the airplane with arms and legs lifted and no weight anywhere but in the seat. Then if you're on the plane, feeling as though it's going down, lift up your arms and legs and you'll find that the plane is either slowly descending or flying level but not falling like you think it is.
Dr. Tim Johnson Maneuver
Okay, I found this to be hysterically funny...the Dr. Tim Johnson maneuver is self-titled by Dr. Tim Johnson himself (from Good Morning America). He says that when he gets on a plane, he bounces up and down like riding a horse because that negates the movement of the plane. I don't know if I can do that for four hours. ;) But I can see how it could be useful. If nothing else, I just love that there are other people in the world designing their own ways of feeling better on a plane.
Being Sure in Turb
Planes are totally safe in turbulence. Capt. Bunn suggests checking out the Hurricane Hunters website (hurricanehunters.com/welcome.htm) because these people fly commercially built planes directly into hurricanes and they hold together just fine. Airplanes can take several times the amount of force that any turbulence can produce. Capt. Bunn then tells a story that stuck out to me in the book as well. It was something I had never considered prior to reading his book. He mentioned that it takes 15-20 seconds for the pilot to unbuckle themselves to get out of their seat to go use the first class bathroom. They look for the light they have in the cockpit that tells them the bathroom is free or full...however by the time they get unbuckled, a previously free bathroom may now be full...so when do they go to the bathroom? During turbulence when the seatbelt light is on. Capt. Bunn says he's never had a problem using the bathroom during turbulence in all his years of flying. He did mention that you wouldn't want to use the bathroom in the back of the plane because it moves around more than any other part of the plane.
How Much Does the Plane Move?
Another technique that can be done of the plane to help with understanding how much a plane moves is to go over to the sink, fill up a cup halfway with water and hold the cup over your head with both hands over the sink and as fast as you can, shove your hands down into the sink. Notice that for a fraction of a second, the water will be 2-3 feet above the cup as that's what happens when you pull the rug out from under water.
Then try a similar technique on the airplane. Put down your tray table, take a cup, put it on your tray table, the tray table will go wherever the airplane goes and so will your cup. If the airplane drops a foot, the water is going to be a foot above the cup...if it drops 3 feet, it's going to be 3 feet above your cup. However, it's unlikely that anyone has ever seen anything like that. You may have seen water slosh out of your cup but that's because the plane is moving just a slight amount. I absolutely LOVE this visual. It is a very effective one for the way my brain works! :)
Capt. Bangma
Capt. Bunn tells a story of when he was flying for Pan Am and flying to Tokyo on 13 hour flights. He flew with a pilot by the name of Capt. John Bangma. On these long flights, there's lots of time to talk and Capt. Bangma asked Capt. Bunn what people are afraid of when it comes to flying. He explained that turbulence was the big thing and no matter how much Capt. Bunn explained it to Capt. Bangma, he simply couldn't understand it. So, Capt. Bangma finally said he could fix people's issues with turbulence and explained that when he was a Jr. Pilot, he got the flights no one wanted and those were primarily flying cargo through Central America in the middle of the night with no radar with airplanes that couldn't get above storms. These planes through right through storms and they creaked and groaned and moved about and although he never felt as though they were comfortable flights, because they were simply bumpy, he learned that pretty much, planes could fly through anything. Thus, Capt. Bunn shares this story to give us yet another story to carry in our minds when it comes to turbulence. He says a plane can handle anything nature can provide.
Turb Levels
Light Turbulence is from 1.0 - 1.2 Gs
Moderate Turbulence is from 1.2 - 1.3 Gs
Severe Turbulence is from 1.3 - 1.6Gs
The airplane is built to handle 2.5Gs without doing ANY damage to the plane and up to 5Gs with maybe some bending of aluminum or popping of rivets, but the plane will stay together.
In severe turbulence, the plane is moving up and down quite a bit and you might not be able to read something in front of you, but he also says that it is so rare that he doesn't feel anyone will run across it.
He suggests getting a sticky note and writing "If I can read this, it is not yet time to worry" and put that sticky note on the back of the seat in front of you. You will be able to read it in both Light and Moderate Turbulence and that's likely to be the only turbulence people run into.
Jet Engine Simplicity
Capt. Bunn tells a story to discuss the likelihood of an engine failure. He shares a story of having dinner with about a dozen other Pan Am pilots while they had a layover in Frankfurt. He asked them if any of them had experienced an engine failure. He said all of them had had experiences with an engine with high temperature or vibrations and they had to shut down the engine to make sure the engine wasn't damaged but none of them had experienced an engine failure. Capt. Bunn believes one could talk to 100 pilots and find that none of them had experienced an engine failure.
ETOPS
ETOP is a program that Boeing designed to start building planes with 2 engines because engines had become so reliable, 4 were no longer needed. One of tests was that Boeing required it's 767 fleet to fly 2,000,000 hours with NO engine failures before planes could fly overseas with just 2 engines. At the beginning, the planes always stayed within 90 minutes of land so there was always some airport at which to land, but then they were able to fly further from land.
Capt. Bunn discusses household light bulbs to demonstrate 2,000,000 hours. He mentions that it's very unusual for 2 light bulbs in the same light to burn out at the same time. He says light bulb packages general say that a light bulb can last for about 850 hours and still you never see two burn out at the same time, thus, the chance of 2 engines failing at the same time over 2,000,000 hours is "incomprehensible". And airplanes fly just fine on one engine.
Engine Tracking
As engines operate over several years, it starts getting a little less miles per gallon. Thus, there are instruments in the airplane that constantly monitor the fuel consumption, the temperatures, and thrust in the engine. These readings are constantly being sent to a computer on the ground and if there's any change, it's picked up before there's a failure with the engine.
As I'm sitting here typing this, I think to myself, "Okay...but what if a bird hits an engine?" We've all heard those stories. And then, as though Capt. Bunn truly IS in my head, he goes on to say, "Some people ask, what if a bird hits an engine".... Ha! He goes on to say that engines are built so that they can handle a bird. He mentions a plane that went down 40 years ago because of a bird in the engine but he reminds us that this was FORTY years ago with different engines. He says the engines now can handle a bird. "It doesn't do the bird any good" ;) but the engine can handle it.
Aircraft Maintenance
How is an airplane maintained? Capt. Bunn mentions that in the past, after a certain number of miles, an airplane would be removed from service and completely overhauled. However, now airlines have maintenance facilities at airports so when a plane is staying overnight in one of the major airports, small maintenance is taking place. Ultimately, about every three years the plane is completely overhauled but it is done in increments. This allows the plane to stay in service, but be continually maintained and overhauled. There are times when the plane is brought into a hangar and is completely x-rayed and they do something called "dye-checking" which allows them to see if there are any external cracks in the plane. Capt. Bunn goes on to mention that as aluminum gets older, it actually gets stronger.
Statistics
Capt. Bunn goes back to the left brain/right brain issue and explains why sometimes statistics just don't work. Statistics don't remove the emotional response. If the left brain is told there is a plane that crashes every 1,000,000 flights, those are good odds. If it's told there is a plane that crashes in one of every 10,000,000 flights, that's better and if told there is a plane that crashes in one of every 100,000,000 flights, that is even better. But the right brain sees this differently. When it looks at the first plane, it sees ONE crash. When it looks at the second plane, it sees ONE crash and when it looks at the third plane, it sees ONE crash. The right brain sees it all as the same.
He goes on to say that we're going to do some exercises to help with that right brain issue, but the one thing he repeats is that he flew for Pan Am for 30 years and knows countless pilots and flight attendants and not one has even been scratched in an accident.
Dynamic Stability
One of the things people worry about is the airplane turning upside down. This is not a huge concern of mine, but I do have this unrealistic belief that if everyone moves to one side of the plane, it could turn over.
Capt. Bunn starts with a car...he says if you go out to the parking lot and start going around in circles with your wheel turned all the way to the right, if you let go of the wheel, the car will straighten out because the wheel is put on a car with a certain geometry so when you let go of the wheel, it will go straight. Then he mentions a bicycle and explains a similar thing. Moving on to an airplane, he explains exactly how the wings are put on a plane in sort of a V shape...in order to turn, you have to put some force on the wing. The reason a plane doesn't flip end over end is because the tail fins are like wings on an arrow. This makes the plane "dynamically stable" which means the tendency of a vehicle to go straight ahead and to require FORCE on the controls to do otherwise. Dynamic stability makes it impossible for the plane to keep turning when the pilots release pressure on the controls and makes "tipping over" impossible in a plane.
How the Wing Works
A wing is shaped like a very long oval. Air goes over and below the wing. We live on a planet with 12 miles of air molecules that are constantly being pulled down by gravity. Air molecules get squeezed the closer they get to earth. When a plane flies through air molecules, the ones that go under the wing are compressed and pushing out and up on the wing. The ones that go over the wing can actually stretch out, so those air molecules on the bottom give lift to the wing. The wing can be adjusted slightly up or down to change the air pressure when flying stable or taking off or descending.
V1
Now we're talking about takeoff (ugh...I do NOT enjoy takeoff). Capt. Bunn mentions in aviation, in order to be safe, there always has to be a way out. So, he draws a birds-eye view of a runway. They are typically about 10,000 feet long (about 2 miles). They were built for 707s and DC-8s which didn't have as much power as modern planes. These modern planes really only need runways about 5,000-6,000 feet long. So,there's a lot of extra runway that isn't usually necessary, but is nice to have if needed.
Pilots know the weight of the airplane, the temperature, the winds...all the important things that affect the performance of an airplane. And the pilot determines how much runway they need in order to take off. If the pilot is taking off and needs to abort the take-off they generally have plenty of room to stop the plane because the runway is so long. But what if the runway is shorter than 10,000 feet? Pilots calculate something called V1. V1 is a speed which tells a pilot that they can accelerate the speed to a certain point on the runway and if the engine fails they can still stop with the amount of runway they have. But it also tells them how much runway they have to be able to take off with just one engine.
Capt. Bunn explains the process of V1 and how until V1, the pilot has his/her hand on the throttle because he or she will stop the plane until V1. The co-pilot announces V1 when it arrives (usually around 120mph) and the pilot takes his/her hand off the throttle because now if anything goes wrong, they will still fly. There is no thinking in this situation. It's just a simple, clear decision. The decision of when one will stop or fly in the situation of an engine failure during takeoff is made before you even get on the plane. If the takeoff happens, the plane will just come back around and land when they have the whole runway available to them. Again, the airplane flies fine on just one engine.
Sara Lee
Sara Lee was a woman in an early fear of flying course that Capt. Bunn was part of years ago. Sara Lee asked him when the "best" time was to be afraid of flying...what was the most dangerous moment? Capt. Bunn went through each step in the flight from take-off and all that we learned above, to flying and how we've already learned that there is nothing to be afraid of while cruising and then landing which is also safe and proceeded to tell her that there was simply no way he could tell her there was any reason to be afraid. Simple as that. :)
So, Sara Lee's question was "What's the most intelligent time to be afraid when flying?" Capt. Bunn's answer? "There isn't one."
And that's DVD #3. I have made my 1/2 hour phone appt with Capt. Bunn for New Year's Eve. I hope to be through another 3 DVDs by then and am looking forward to speaking with him personally. I feel fairly confident in saying, at this moment, that I'm feeling more comfortable with flying right now and I haven't even got to the exercise part of the program. I'm hoping that's a good sign of things to come! :)
Capt. Bunn draws a diagram that looks like a mountain range with ups and down and peaks at the top of the up and bottom of the down to depict turbulence, but says we probably don't even feel the ups (because whoever got hurt falling up, he says. :) ). We are concerned with the downs and because we don't notice the ups, we just feel like we're falling down, down, down. But in reality, we're still in exactly the same place. The best thing you can do in turbulence is to look for the ups not just the downs. Or whenever you notice an up, expect a down. What otherwise feels like falling thousands of feet is movement of less than an inch.
Fly By The Seat Of Your Pants
One of the things that happens in turbulence is that you get tense and tighten up your body. You put tension into your arms and legs and you press down and without realizing it, you take some weight off the seat and this can make you feel like you're falling. This is SUCH good information for me because I can actually feel that sensation right this minute in my imagination and know how it makes me feel. Ideally this knowledge will help me experience it differently on my upcoming flight. Capt. Bunn's recommendation is to "calibrate our instruments". When you sit in your seat, before the airplane is moving at all, lift up your arms off the arm rests and legs off the floor. Memorizr what it feels like to sit in the airplane with arms and legs lifted and no weight anywhere but in the seat. Then if you're on the plane, feeling as though it's going down, lift up your arms and legs and you'll find that the plane is either slowly descending or flying level but not falling like you think it is.
Dr. Tim Johnson Maneuver
Okay, I found this to be hysterically funny...the Dr. Tim Johnson maneuver is self-titled by Dr. Tim Johnson himself (from Good Morning America). He says that when he gets on a plane, he bounces up and down like riding a horse because that negates the movement of the plane. I don't know if I can do that for four hours. ;) But I can see how it could be useful. If nothing else, I just love that there are other people in the world designing their own ways of feeling better on a plane.
Being Sure in Turb
Planes are totally safe in turbulence. Capt. Bunn suggests checking out the Hurricane Hunters website (hurricanehunters.com/welcome.htm) because these people fly commercially built planes directly into hurricanes and they hold together just fine. Airplanes can take several times the amount of force that any turbulence can produce. Capt. Bunn then tells a story that stuck out to me in the book as well. It was something I had never considered prior to reading his book. He mentioned that it takes 15-20 seconds for the pilot to unbuckle themselves to get out of their seat to go use the first class bathroom. They look for the light they have in the cockpit that tells them the bathroom is free or full...however by the time they get unbuckled, a previously free bathroom may now be full...so when do they go to the bathroom? During turbulence when the seatbelt light is on. Capt. Bunn says he's never had a problem using the bathroom during turbulence in all his years of flying. He did mention that you wouldn't want to use the bathroom in the back of the plane because it moves around more than any other part of the plane.
How Much Does the Plane Move?
Another technique that can be done of the plane to help with understanding how much a plane moves is to go over to the sink, fill up a cup halfway with water and hold the cup over your head with both hands over the sink and as fast as you can, shove your hands down into the sink. Notice that for a fraction of a second, the water will be 2-3 feet above the cup as that's what happens when you pull the rug out from under water.
Then try a similar technique on the airplane. Put down your tray table, take a cup, put it on your tray table, the tray table will go wherever the airplane goes and so will your cup. If the airplane drops a foot, the water is going to be a foot above the cup...if it drops 3 feet, it's going to be 3 feet above your cup. However, it's unlikely that anyone has ever seen anything like that. You may have seen water slosh out of your cup but that's because the plane is moving just a slight amount. I absolutely LOVE this visual. It is a very effective one for the way my brain works! :)
Capt. Bangma
Capt. Bunn tells a story of when he was flying for Pan Am and flying to Tokyo on 13 hour flights. He flew with a pilot by the name of Capt. John Bangma. On these long flights, there's lots of time to talk and Capt. Bangma asked Capt. Bunn what people are afraid of when it comes to flying. He explained that turbulence was the big thing and no matter how much Capt. Bunn explained it to Capt. Bangma, he simply couldn't understand it. So, Capt. Bangma finally said he could fix people's issues with turbulence and explained that when he was a Jr. Pilot, he got the flights no one wanted and those were primarily flying cargo through Central America in the middle of the night with no radar with airplanes that couldn't get above storms. These planes through right through storms and they creaked and groaned and moved about and although he never felt as though they were comfortable flights, because they were simply bumpy, he learned that pretty much, planes could fly through anything. Thus, Capt. Bunn shares this story to give us yet another story to carry in our minds when it comes to turbulence. He says a plane can handle anything nature can provide.
Turb Levels
Light Turbulence is from 1.0 - 1.2 Gs
Moderate Turbulence is from 1.2 - 1.3 Gs
Severe Turbulence is from 1.3 - 1.6Gs
The airplane is built to handle 2.5Gs without doing ANY damage to the plane and up to 5Gs with maybe some bending of aluminum or popping of rivets, but the plane will stay together.
In severe turbulence, the plane is moving up and down quite a bit and you might not be able to read something in front of you, but he also says that it is so rare that he doesn't feel anyone will run across it.
He suggests getting a sticky note and writing "If I can read this, it is not yet time to worry" and put that sticky note on the back of the seat in front of you. You will be able to read it in both Light and Moderate Turbulence and that's likely to be the only turbulence people run into.
Jet Engine Simplicity
Capt. Bunn tells a story to discuss the likelihood of an engine failure. He shares a story of having dinner with about a dozen other Pan Am pilots while they had a layover in Frankfurt. He asked them if any of them had experienced an engine failure. He said all of them had had experiences with an engine with high temperature or vibrations and they had to shut down the engine to make sure the engine wasn't damaged but none of them had experienced an engine failure. Capt. Bunn believes one could talk to 100 pilots and find that none of them had experienced an engine failure.
ETOPS
ETOP is a program that Boeing designed to start building planes with 2 engines because engines had become so reliable, 4 were no longer needed. One of tests was that Boeing required it's 767 fleet to fly 2,000,000 hours with NO engine failures before planes could fly overseas with just 2 engines. At the beginning, the planes always stayed within 90 minutes of land so there was always some airport at which to land, but then they were able to fly further from land.
Capt. Bunn discusses household light bulbs to demonstrate 2,000,000 hours. He mentions that it's very unusual for 2 light bulbs in the same light to burn out at the same time. He says light bulb packages general say that a light bulb can last for about 850 hours and still you never see two burn out at the same time, thus, the chance of 2 engines failing at the same time over 2,000,000 hours is "incomprehensible". And airplanes fly just fine on one engine.
Engine Tracking
As engines operate over several years, it starts getting a little less miles per gallon. Thus, there are instruments in the airplane that constantly monitor the fuel consumption, the temperatures, and thrust in the engine. These readings are constantly being sent to a computer on the ground and if there's any change, it's picked up before there's a failure with the engine.
As I'm sitting here typing this, I think to myself, "Okay...but what if a bird hits an engine?" We've all heard those stories. And then, as though Capt. Bunn truly IS in my head, he goes on to say, "Some people ask, what if a bird hits an engine".... Ha! He goes on to say that engines are built so that they can handle a bird. He mentions a plane that went down 40 years ago because of a bird in the engine but he reminds us that this was FORTY years ago with different engines. He says the engines now can handle a bird. "It doesn't do the bird any good" ;) but the engine can handle it.
Aircraft Maintenance
How is an airplane maintained? Capt. Bunn mentions that in the past, after a certain number of miles, an airplane would be removed from service and completely overhauled. However, now airlines have maintenance facilities at airports so when a plane is staying overnight in one of the major airports, small maintenance is taking place. Ultimately, about every three years the plane is completely overhauled but it is done in increments. This allows the plane to stay in service, but be continually maintained and overhauled. There are times when the plane is brought into a hangar and is completely x-rayed and they do something called "dye-checking" which allows them to see if there are any external cracks in the plane. Capt. Bunn goes on to mention that as aluminum gets older, it actually gets stronger.
Statistics
Capt. Bunn goes back to the left brain/right brain issue and explains why sometimes statistics just don't work. Statistics don't remove the emotional response. If the left brain is told there is a plane that crashes every 1,000,000 flights, those are good odds. If it's told there is a plane that crashes in one of every 10,000,000 flights, that's better and if told there is a plane that crashes in one of every 100,000,000 flights, that is even better. But the right brain sees this differently. When it looks at the first plane, it sees ONE crash. When it looks at the second plane, it sees ONE crash and when it looks at the third plane, it sees ONE crash. The right brain sees it all as the same.
He goes on to say that we're going to do some exercises to help with that right brain issue, but the one thing he repeats is that he flew for Pan Am for 30 years and knows countless pilots and flight attendants and not one has even been scratched in an accident.
Dynamic Stability
One of the things people worry about is the airplane turning upside down. This is not a huge concern of mine, but I do have this unrealistic belief that if everyone moves to one side of the plane, it could turn over.
Capt. Bunn starts with a car...he says if you go out to the parking lot and start going around in circles with your wheel turned all the way to the right, if you let go of the wheel, the car will straighten out because the wheel is put on a car with a certain geometry so when you let go of the wheel, it will go straight. Then he mentions a bicycle and explains a similar thing. Moving on to an airplane, he explains exactly how the wings are put on a plane in sort of a V shape...in order to turn, you have to put some force on the wing. The reason a plane doesn't flip end over end is because the tail fins are like wings on an arrow. This makes the plane "dynamically stable" which means the tendency of a vehicle to go straight ahead and to require FORCE on the controls to do otherwise. Dynamic stability makes it impossible for the plane to keep turning when the pilots release pressure on the controls and makes "tipping over" impossible in a plane.
How the Wing Works
A wing is shaped like a very long oval. Air goes over and below the wing. We live on a planet with 12 miles of air molecules that are constantly being pulled down by gravity. Air molecules get squeezed the closer they get to earth. When a plane flies through air molecules, the ones that go under the wing are compressed and pushing out and up on the wing. The ones that go over the wing can actually stretch out, so those air molecules on the bottom give lift to the wing. The wing can be adjusted slightly up or down to change the air pressure when flying stable or taking off or descending.
V1
Now we're talking about takeoff (ugh...I do NOT enjoy takeoff). Capt. Bunn mentions in aviation, in order to be safe, there always has to be a way out. So, he draws a birds-eye view of a runway. They are typically about 10,000 feet long (about 2 miles). They were built for 707s and DC-8s which didn't have as much power as modern planes. These modern planes really only need runways about 5,000-6,000 feet long. So,there's a lot of extra runway that isn't usually necessary, but is nice to have if needed.
Pilots know the weight of the airplane, the temperature, the winds...all the important things that affect the performance of an airplane. And the pilot determines how much runway they need in order to take off. If the pilot is taking off and needs to abort the take-off they generally have plenty of room to stop the plane because the runway is so long. But what if the runway is shorter than 10,000 feet? Pilots calculate something called V1. V1 is a speed which tells a pilot that they can accelerate the speed to a certain point on the runway and if the engine fails they can still stop with the amount of runway they have. But it also tells them how much runway they have to be able to take off with just one engine.
Capt. Bunn explains the process of V1 and how until V1, the pilot has his/her hand on the throttle because he or she will stop the plane until V1. The co-pilot announces V1 when it arrives (usually around 120mph) and the pilot takes his/her hand off the throttle because now if anything goes wrong, they will still fly. There is no thinking in this situation. It's just a simple, clear decision. The decision of when one will stop or fly in the situation of an engine failure during takeoff is made before you even get on the plane. If the takeoff happens, the plane will just come back around and land when they have the whole runway available to them. Again, the airplane flies fine on just one engine.
Sara Lee
Sara Lee was a woman in an early fear of flying course that Capt. Bunn was part of years ago. Sara Lee asked him when the "best" time was to be afraid of flying...what was the most dangerous moment? Capt. Bunn went through each step in the flight from take-off and all that we learned above, to flying and how we've already learned that there is nothing to be afraid of while cruising and then landing which is also safe and proceeded to tell her that there was simply no way he could tell her there was any reason to be afraid. Simple as that. :)
So, Sara Lee's question was "What's the most intelligent time to be afraid when flying?" Capt. Bunn's answer? "There isn't one."
And that's DVD #3. I have made my 1/2 hour phone appt with Capt. Bunn for New Year's Eve. I hope to be through another 3 DVDs by then and am looking forward to speaking with him personally. I feel fairly confident in saying, at this moment, that I'm feeling more comfortable with flying right now and I haven't even got to the exercise part of the program. I'm hoping that's a good sign of things to come! :)
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