Fear of Flying

Several people have contacted me as of late about the Egyptian airlines 767 crash. Why me? Because I used to work for Boeing, so I have some knowlege about airplanes: how they work, what goes wrong. I got laid off from Boeing, so I am not beholden to them, and I am still mad at them. This would be a golden opportunity to trash Boeing's reputation, and talk about all that doesn't work, and why, and how Boeing management frivilously bought McDonnel Douglas instead of focussing on the design and construction of airplanes.

I will not do that. Instead, I want to discuss the facts of the crash, the truth about air travel, and the fear of flying.

The facts, Ma'am, just the facts

Yesterday, October 31st, an Egyptian Airlines 767 crashed into the Atlantic ocean for reasons unknown. We know that this airplane was built about 10 years ago, and we know that this airplane was built just after another 767 which also crashed. 217 people died in this crash. As of this writing, that is all we know.

Some objective truths about airplane travel:

You are safer on board a commercial airplane than any other form of travel ever devised, with the exception of elevators. This is a consequence of how air travel evolved. Travel by ship evolved over thousands of years, and ship travel has always had risks of storm and tide. Consequently, sailors always had a fatalistic attitude towards their craft. Also, ship owners have been notoriously cheap, hiring lowly people and treating them poorly. Consequently, the people associated with ships have had a short range focus, never really seeing the bigger picture. Consider, for example, the Exxon Valdez disaster. The captain of the ship was drunk. This is an unthinkable occurance for commercial flight. The culture is different.

The number of people killed flying in commercial airplanes world wide is two orders of magnitude smaller than the number of people killed in the United States in automobile accidents. We could effect a serious reduction in death due to automobile accidents if we simply shot people after their second DWI conviction. We don't do that, because drinking and driving are still socially acceptable. Also, under Jewish law, you can't execute somebody until they actually kill somebody, and the Rabbis came up with all kinds of legal and procedural dodges to avoid executing anybody. So shooting drunkards probably won't happen. Israel has relatively few deaths due to drunk driving, but Israeli drivers kill one another quite readily while cold sober.

There are a lot of features on modern aircraft that make them intrisically safe. Your car has redundant brakes (that's what a dual braking system is). Aircraft have all kinds of redundancies, and these are just the redundancies I am aware of:

• A 747 can take off with two out of four engines out. A 737, 757, 767 and 777 can take off with one out of two engines out. A 727 can take off with two out of three engines out at sea level, (only one engine can fail and still take off at Denver - but it an engine fails on take-off at Denver, the runways are especially long so the pilot can abort the takeoff safely). A simultaneous failure of two engines at takeoff is unheard of in the jet age.
• The 777 flight critical systems are quadruply redundant. There are 4 flight management computers, located in different parts of the airplane (so a collision will not take out all of the electronics). If the flight management computer system fails catastrophically, then the pilot can still use the autopilot to fly. If the autopilot fails, the pilot can still fly the airplane by hand. Incidentally, the 777 is, and always has been, fully Y2K compliant.
• The 747 has 4 main landing gear struts. The 777 has 6 wheels on each main landing gear and has redundant structural elements controlling the main gear. The 767 landing gear is also used on the B-2 bomber, the Most Expensive Airplane In the world. If it's good enough for the USAF, it's good enough for the rest of us.
• The 747 has a quadruple redundant hydraulics. The DC-10 has triple redundant hydraulics. Why 4 instead of 3? It was a design decision back in the late sixties. But.... one day, a 747 took off from San Francisco airport and struck a light tower at the end of the runway. That took out three of the four hydraulic systems. The pilot was able to fly the airplane over the pacific, dump fuel, and return to the airport safely. This is not to disparage the DC-10, which is a fine airplane. But the 747 is better.

  The new airplanes have only two engines. But they also have a little gizmo called a Ram Air Turbine, or RAT. If the airplane should lose both engines in flight, the RAT will pop out of the belly of the airplane and power the electronics and hydraulics long enough for the pilot to make a dead-stick landing. This was tested once by an Air Canada 767. The guy loading the fuel in the airplane thought he was loading kilograms of fuel when in fact he was loading pounds of fuel. So the airplane took off with half as much gas in the tanks as they thought. Halfway across Canada, it ran out of fuel. The pilot did a deadstick landing on an abandoned race track. Everybody walked away from that - the airplane was repaired, refueled, and returned to service.

• The 777 has multiply redundant navigation systems. It has a strapdown inertial navigation system, which can measure acceleration and rotation yet it has no moving parts (it's done with mirrors, literally), so it can navigate without any outside reference. It also has a Global Positioning System receiver so it can navigate via satellite. It has the usual compliment of Automatic Direction Finders (ADF), Visual Omnidirection Range (VOR), and glide slope receivers, so it can navigate via radio. And finally, the pilot can always get on the radio and ask "where the hell am I?", although I understand they are reluctant to do that....

But these are the words of an engineer, and they aren't convincing. At least, I have never convinced anybody. Why? Because you can't combat emotions with logic. So let us consider the emotion of fear of flying.

Why people are afraid of flying

People smoke cigarrettes. They ride bicycles without helmets. They drink and drive (and kill far more people than airplanes do). The climb mountains. They have extramarital affairs (and endanger themselves and their spouses). They buy Sport Utility Vehicles and endanger everybody around them with their noxious exhaust and their gross vehicle weights. So people willingly engage in risky activity and it doesn't faze them. What is different about airplane travel?

1. When airplanes do crash, it kills many people. And it is unusual. So it gets a lot of media attention. By way of contrast, death due to drunk driving and bicycle accidents are common and kill one or two people at a time, so it gets little media attention.
2. Airplanes have a lot of mysterious high technology associated with them. What holds an airplane up? Betcha don't know! (And, if you give me the textbook answer from high school, my next question will be how does an airplane fly upside down!). Worse, the people who fly speak a strange language - what we call I-79 they call "india-seven-niner". They talk about RAT, and FMS, and VORTACs and strap down inertial navigators. There are all these strange noises, from the bing-bong! sound of the flight attendent call button to the thump! that the landing gear doors make when the landing gear retract.
3. Airplanes represent a tremendous surrender of control. We strap ourselves into this aluminum cylinder (aluminum - so soft, it is so easy to crush an aluminum can -what the hell are we doing flying across the north pole in something made out of aluminum?), and these disembodied voices fly us to wherever we are going. If we decide in the middle of the ocean that we don't want to do this any more, then there is nothing we can do. We can't even bail out if the movie is bad!
4. Airplanes are uncomfortable. Let's face it: it is boring to fly (except when something goes wrong, and then it's terrifying). The seats are uncomfortably thin, and they don't recline far enought to really allow sleeping. The air is dry (you don't notice that, but it's true). The light is bad, the food is awful, and the people around you are typically stressed.
5. Humans evolved on the ground. But even birds are afraid of heights. There are some birds that live around the Grand Canyon in Arizona. They are capable of flying across the canyon, but they don't. Instead, they fly down and then fly up again.

In fact, it is natural to fear flying. The solution to the problem is not to deny the fear, but to acknowlege it, experience it, savor the fear and then be brave and do the thing you are afraid of. Fear is important - it protects us from our own stupidity. But while we should allow fear to guide us, we should not allow fear to control us. Because while Fear protects us, Fear also leads to the evils of indifference, racism, and paralysis.

Conclusion:

I do not think of myself as a reckless man. I am married with children, and I have a good job and a bright future. I ride a bike, true, but I am fanatical about wearing a helmet, gloves, and thick, bright colored clothing. I have lights front and rear, and I carry redundant batteries and a spare light bulb. I have mastered the art of bicycle repair, but I still take the bike in once a year for a stem-to-deraileur checkup by real professions. I even carry a modest first aid kit. So while I am engaged in a risky activity, I am still careful.

I am planning on flying to Israel in the spring with my Rabbi, Jonathan Singer. Rabbi Singer is a brilliant man, a good friend, and also a husband and a father. His wife, Rabbi Beth Singer, is a brilliant woman, is also my friend, and a wife and a mother - could I possibly leave her a widow? Far be it from me to do such a thing! I would not dream of advocating any course of action that would put either of us at risk. So this is no academic discussion. I am putting my life on the line for a system of belief. If I am right, I am going to have a good time, and learn a great deal.

Travel to far off places promotes prosperity, and prosperity promotes peace. We Jews are commanded over and over again to pursue peace. Our history is full of examples of Jewish heroes who have taken grave risks to promote peace. Yitzhak Rabin, of blessed memory, is only the most recent example. Therefore, I think we should be brave, and go.

Notes:

• Wise travelers bring water on board the airplane with them, either in a resealable pop bottle or in a strong plastic container (paper containers tend to burst). The air at altitude is very dry and tends to dehydrate you. Also, the act of getting up out of the chair and going to the bathroom helps promote circulation in the lower legs and prevents pooling of blood.
• There is absolutely no reason to drink alcoholic beverages in flight. So don't do it. Using illegal drugs, tranquilizers, or amphitimines is lunacy.
• Allow plenty of time to get the airport. The monotony of waiting pales in comparison to the stress of missing a flight.
• Take the time to familiarize yourself with your airplane. If you are really and truly afraid to fly, go find a sympathetic pilot (not any pilot will do-it's got to be a sympathetic one) and have him or her show you around the airplane. A lot of the fear comes from the fact that things are so mysterious. Knowlege dispells mystery.
• In the same token, use the Internet to find maps of the airports, and study them before you leave.
• Get in shape. This is good advice for a number of reasons:
  • When we arrive at our destination, we will have to do some walking.
  • Jerusalem is fairly high, and the air is relatively thin. It is not as bad as Denver, but if you aren't in shape, then it might make you uncomfortable
  • It will tend to be hot. Your body responds to heat by expending energy pumping blood from your body's core to the extremities, where it cools and returns to the core. This mechanism presents an additional load on your heart and lungs. If you are in shape, then your body will handle this process easily.
  • If you are in shape, then your blood will return to your heart from your feet, even if you sitting for a long time
  • If an emergency does occur, then conditioning might make a difference between survival and perishing. For example, if the airplane has to make an emergency landing, and catches on fire, you might be able to outrun the flames. If the airplane loses cabin pressure, if you are in shape, you might be able to stay conscious until the airplane gets to lower altitude
  We have 5 months before we leave. Anything you can do to help build up your endurance will help.
• Remember, we are in this together. One of the things that contribute to our feelings of fear is the idea that we are all alone. We're not all alone, we're a team and we are all together.

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