Q. “Turbulence scares me to death. Do I have reason to be afraid?”
A. No. “A plane cannot be flipped upside-down, thrown into a tailspin or otherwise flung from the sky by even the mightiest gust or air pocket. Conditions might be annoying and uncomfortable, but the plane is not going to crash.”
My comment: This is not true for bad weather close to the ground. There have been many crashes caused by bad weather. One that disturbed me was the crash of Delta flight 191 in 1985. It may not even be true high in the air, such as in the case of Air France flight 447 in 2009, which seems to have involved bad weather plus pilot error.
Q. “What happens when lightning hits an airplane?”
A. Nothing. The energy “is discharged overboard through the plane’s aluminum skin, which is an excellent electrical conducor.”
My comment: I understand that's the usual situation, but just this week I was talking to friends whose plane lost an engine flying to Italy as a result of being struck by lightning. Maybe the air crew was lying when they said that happened, but I doubt it.
Q. “If all of a jet’s engines were to fail, can the plane glide to a landing?”
A. Yes. “There’s no greater prospect of instant calamity than switching off the engine in your car when coasting downhill. The car keeps going, and a plane will too.”
My comment: This is certainly an exaggeration. Although the plane can continue to glide, it needs to find an airport to land safely (or perhaps ditch in the ocean). The story of British Airways flight 009 in a 1982 volcanic ash cloud is instructive. Fortunately, it did not end in tragedy.
It looks to me like there were a couple of failures of fact-checking here -- one by the author and one by David Pogue (or the New York Times).
It looks to me like there were a couple of failures of fact-checking here -- one by the author and one by David Pogue (or the New York Times).
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