Flying and crashing

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

No, in fact I have been avoiding this thread since I first saw it because I am taking a trip next month (which can’t get here soon enough!!!). I’m already a nervous flyer (understatement) and I really didn’t need to read about plane crashes. I finally couldn’t stand it anymore this morning and clicked it (I’m so weak). It wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be :smiley:

[Aside] You should tell people (Dopers) when you are planning these little trips so we can whip together a (at the very least) mini-dopefest. I know I’m not the only one that lives in Phoenix. [/aside]

22

I’m back!

All in all it was an uneventful flight. We took off… we landed… I grabbed my luggage and jumped into cab. All fine and dandy up until the cab part. That part was interesting.

Of all the cabs waiting around the Sky Harbor terminal that night, I had to pick the one with the irate Iranian driver who had a chip on his shoulder towards life, and an axe to grind with Godless Americans.

Why not have had hour-long special on that? You know, detail the events of a ill-fated taxi cab ride complete with computer re-enactment’s and voice-overs- “We believe we’ve been able to document the point at which the ride turned from mundane to catastrophic. Lookie here, the ride was fine up until that anomaly with the Lincoln Town Car. See it cut the Iranian off? Watch as the driver’s face turns from tan to red with rage. Such nice computer detail. Note the confusion in the cockpit and the passenger in the back frantically reaching for the passive restraint system. See the terror in his face? Note also the Iranian beginning to yell. We believe that is the point at which this trip went catastrophic. No point of no return, as it were.”

That’s what these programs need to focus on, not the damn flight. I mean, I was prepared for anything up in the air, not down on the ground. Once we landed I let my guard down thinking I was in the clear.

How wrong was that?

Audrey-

I just saw your L.A. thread so I assume your flight went alright… Cool.

Nope, I haven’t seen the “Back at One” video. But dammit, now I want to see it! What kind of horror is in it?

Johnny L.A.-

You pilots are all the same. You see humor in other people’s terror.

The same friend I mentioned above, Bill, ‘Bill the asshole’? On a separate flight to Duluth in a different little Cesna, he noticed my concern during the flight (I partied with the guy and knew what he was capable of) so he decided to run the engine lean and watch my reaction. Real funny. I thought the sputtering engine was on its way out and we were doomed to fall out of the sky. After a couple fun filled minutes of that, he turned to me and laughed, and said “I just love doing that trick. It really scares people who have no idea what’s up. Ha ha. You O.K. Chris?”

One final thing, I was trying to find a picture I had seen a while ago that best describes the phenomenon I’m talking about here. I looked and looked, and couldn’t find it until today.

This is the kind of thing that happens to me.

23

Didn’t mean to slight you in the above post Mauvaise. In regards to your post: I simply didn’t have time to start one up or mention it. I was there to oversee movers and tie up some loose ends in bringing my grandmother up to Minnesota.

Thanks for the idea. Considering the weather you’re having there right now, compared to what it’s like in Minnesota, I wouldn’t mind making a special trip down there just for a DF. Absolutely gorgeous.

24

Yeah, the flight went well, although the food was bad and the in-flight movie was even worse. I survived, though. :slight_smile:

Well, in the video, he’s dead. His plane just crashed, and throughout the video, what we can only assume is his spirit hitches a ride back home to spend some time with his woman. There’s one scene where he’s just leaving the crash site, and he turns and looks up at the blackened, smoldering wreckage. Yikes.

It’s actually a nice song/video combination. Only ‘Final Destination’'s first 20 minutes or so make better pre-flight entertainment, though…

Glad you had a nice trip.

25

On the topic of movies with plane crashes, I have been told that airlines are pretty strict on not showing them.

My friend reported to me once that a flight he was on showed a newish movie (at the time) with a plot that hinged on the big plane crash at the start of the movie WITHOUT the plane crash. He’d seen it before, so knew what was supposed to be going on, but he still got confused.

26

CnoteChris: if you read the L.A. Dopefest thread, you’ll know I’m “weird” and “scary”. But that’s just on the ground. I would never pull a stunt like “Bill the Asshole” did. As a pilot, I consider it my duty to make people’s flights enjoyable. (Well, except for the “line” I mentioned earlier that I’ve never remembered to say.) I know that some people are nervous in aircraft, so when they’re flying with me I don’t do anything that would shake them up. Pilots are all kinds of people. Many have a morbid sense of humour. But most pilots would not intentionally induce terror in their passengers.

General Aviation gets a bum rap. People are always and forever building houses next to airports and then trying to get the airport shut down. (I heard that some people changed their minds after the Loma Prieta earthquake. The small airport they were lobying to close turned out to be one of the only ones in the are that was available for flying in of much-needed emergency supplies, search teams, etc. After that, they appreciated having it there.) A passenger who enjoys a flight might decide to try it him/herself. The more people who fly, the more people there are with an interest in keeping airports open. It’s in the pilot’s interest to be a “good ambassador” for General Aviation.

Sure I quoted Tom Wolfe’s description of “burned beyond recognition”, but that was when everyone was safely on the ground. Believe me: Most pilots take flying very seriously. “Bill the Asshole” and his ilk think that it’s fun to torture people. Some will pull the throttle to idle to demonstrate that an airplane won’t “fall out of the sky” in the event of an engine failure, without warning the passenger first. Most pilots will not perform such a demonstration unless they have discussed it with the passenger first and have the passenger’s consent. While it’s part of the training for an instructor to perform a “throttle chop”, most instructors will announce it first. And this is with a pilot who knows s/he is up there to learn emergency procedures. Doing that with a nervous passenger is in poor taste.

Sorry to deliver a sermon, but I feel very strongly that passengers shouldn’t be messed with. But I’ll still keep joking on the ground. :wink:

27

IIRC Tom Wolf said in The Right Stuff that test pilots never use the term “crash.” It’s “he augered in” or “he bought the farm” (collective farm for CCCP test pilots). Buck up, be brave and go chase that demon that live out in the thin air. I’ll even loan you a stick of Beeman’s.

28

It’s what I figured, but since I seldom fly anywhere, I wouldn’t know with certainty. Thanks.

29

That’s a bit harsh Johnny, Bill happens to be one of my best friends.

I can understand why you wrote that, however, because I was a bit overzealous in describing the above flight to Duluth.

It really wasn’t that bad. Honest. I simply took a bit of poetic liberty in describing the situation.

As it was, he simply ran the engine lean enough that it made it sputter. It got a rise out of me in the sense that I went, ‘What’s that?’. Before I had a chance to get seriously worried about what was going on, or start to panic, he had called the joke in, as it were. He told me what was up and everything was fine. The prank was never intended to ‘torture’ or ‘terrify’ me. I was never scared, panicked, or even worried, for that matter.

It was one of those things you sometimes do to tweak your closest friends.

No harm, no foul, absolutely no hard feelings on my part.

30

I offer my apologies, CnoteChris.

I yank people’s chains a lot. But you wouldn’t recognize me in the air. Not that I have my head “up and locked”, or that I’m so concerned with safety that I take all of the fun out of it; but when someone agrees to fly with a pilot, he’s trusting the pilot with his life. Literally. I guess I can be a bit sensitive.