Two Things
So, that Southwest flight that made an emergency landing in Yuma, Arizona at a military base after the plane developed a hole in its fuselage has me thinking.
Regular readers know that I'm an enthusiast of all things plane-related (except the TSA which seems to be doing its best to destroy all joy in every airport in the US). The fact that I can't get enough magazine columns, books, and television shows on airplanes and such means that sometimes I know stuff that the average flyer may not.
It occurred to me when I heard about the Southwest flight that two things I took as common knowledge may not be, so I'm offering them up here.
1. Southwest's planes are extra vulnerable to certain kinds of wear. As a "short hop" airline (and airline that flies a lot of shorter routes rather than a mix of long haul and short haul like most of the legacy airlines that work on the spoke and hub system), Southwest's planes go through more take offs and landings than some of the craft on other airlines.
2. Something everyone should know in case they're ever on a plane that experiences depressurization: airplanes only carry a few minutes of supplemental oxygen for passengers (hereafter called pax).
All those safety briefings about how "in case of a sudden loss of cabin pressure, a mask will drop from the panel above you . . . adjust the strap . . . place the mask over your nose and mouth and continue to breathe normally . . . the bag may not inflate . . . if you're traveling with children or others who need assistance, put your mask on first, then assist . . .blah blah blah" neglect to tell you something that I suspect most passengers should probably know when a hole opens up in a plane:
the protocol that all airlines use is that the planes have only a few minutes of supplemental oxygen. After the cabin loses pressure (and therefore its breathable air), the pilots will take the plane down to an altitude at which the air is breathable. There's really only enough air to allow pilots to get the plane down to that level, at which point supplemental oxygen isn't necessary.
When I learned that, I was kind of shocked. My first thought was that perhaps this ought to be more widely known. I've flown with a lot of nervous flyers (ask me about the complete stranger who grabbed my arm on take off from John Wayne and didn't let go until after we got to 10,000 feet). I watch a lot of people totally ignore the safety briefings. (I do, but that's because I really could basically give them and I'm busy counting the number of rows between me and the two nearest exits so that, if I had to, I could find my way by feel in a smoke-filled cabin to the nearest exit.)
Airlines seem to think the word turbulence is too scary, forcing crews to use totally ridiculous phrases like "bumpy air" to describe a perfectly normal phenomenon.
But once I learned that in the event of a depressurization, you're not going to be breathing from those masks for long, I wondered if it wouldn't be a good thing if that weren't slightly better known. If nervous flyers grab the arms of random people during take off (admittedly a pretty steep take off followed by throttling back on the engines that makes the climb out feel a little like a roller coaster ride so that the rich folks in Newport Beach aren't offended by airplane noise), can you imagine what they'll do when the fuselage opened up, the cabin lost pressure, the masks dropped from the panels above them, and the plane made a rapid drop down to 10,000 feet or so from 30,000 over the course of a few minutes?
Yeah.
In other news, this article is a follow up to a previous Salon article about the most racially segregated cities. It's worth reading.
Regular readers know that I'm an enthusiast of all things plane-related (except the TSA which seems to be doing its best to destroy all joy in every airport in the US). The fact that I can't get enough magazine columns, books, and television shows on airplanes and such means that sometimes I know stuff that the average flyer may not.
It occurred to me when I heard about the Southwest flight that two things I took as common knowledge may not be, so I'm offering them up here.
1. Southwest's planes are extra vulnerable to certain kinds of wear. As a "short hop" airline (and airline that flies a lot of shorter routes rather than a mix of long haul and short haul like most of the legacy airlines that work on the spoke and hub system), Southwest's planes go through more take offs and landings than some of the craft on other airlines.
2. Something everyone should know in case they're ever on a plane that experiences depressurization: airplanes only carry a few minutes of supplemental oxygen for passengers (hereafter called pax).
All those safety briefings about how "in case of a sudden loss of cabin pressure, a mask will drop from the panel above you . . . adjust the strap . . . place the mask over your nose and mouth and continue to breathe normally . . . the bag may not inflate . . . if you're traveling with children or others who need assistance, put your mask on first, then assist . . .blah blah blah" neglect to tell you something that I suspect most passengers should probably know when a hole opens up in a plane:
the protocol that all airlines use is that the planes have only a few minutes of supplemental oxygen. After the cabin loses pressure (and therefore its breathable air), the pilots will take the plane down to an altitude at which the air is breathable. There's really only enough air to allow pilots to get the plane down to that level, at which point supplemental oxygen isn't necessary.
When I learned that, I was kind of shocked. My first thought was that perhaps this ought to be more widely known. I've flown with a lot of nervous flyers (ask me about the complete stranger who grabbed my arm on take off from John Wayne and didn't let go until after we got to 10,000 feet). I watch a lot of people totally ignore the safety briefings. (I do, but that's because I really could basically give them and I'm busy counting the number of rows between me and the two nearest exits so that, if I had to, I could find my way by feel in a smoke-filled cabin to the nearest exit.)
Airlines seem to think the word turbulence is too scary, forcing crews to use totally ridiculous phrases like "bumpy air" to describe a perfectly normal phenomenon.
But once I learned that in the event of a depressurization, you're not going to be breathing from those masks for long, I wondered if it wouldn't be a good thing if that weren't slightly better known. If nervous flyers grab the arms of random people during take off (admittedly a pretty steep take off followed by throttling back on the engines that makes the climb out feel a little like a roller coaster ride so that the rich folks in Newport Beach aren't offended by airplane noise), can you imagine what they'll do when the fuselage opened up, the cabin lost pressure, the masks dropped from the panels above them, and the plane made a rapid drop down to 10,000 feet or so from 30,000 over the course of a few minutes?
Yeah.
In other news, this article is a follow up to a previous Salon article about the most racially segregated cities. It's worth reading.