Questions!

G'day!

So a couple people I know have tossed some questions my way and I plan to do my best to answer them... starting now.

FIRST QUESTION: If you shoot hole in a plane, will the change in air pressure destroy it and kill everyone? Short answer- no. More accurate answer- eh, it depends, but still no. Long answer- There are a bunch of factors that go into this answer. The first is that not all planes are actually pressurized. <Here>'s a link to the legal jargon about pressurized cabins. Don't worry about de-legal-ifying all of that, though. Airplanes that you're worried about (ie, almost all commercial flights you or your family use to travel) have tons of systems and backup systems and backup backup systems (that really isn't an exaggeration) that prevent 'explosive decompression'.

So, we all have this picture of someone shooting a gun off in an airplane then everyone gets sucked out of the hole or through a window. In all reality, that won't happen. It WILL, however, be VERY very loud and VERY very uncomfortable. The air INside the plane is trying to get OUTside all the time, anyway. That's what it means to pressurize a cabin- they pump air INto the plane, like you do with tires. If they didn't do that, you wouldn't be able to breathe way up above the clouds. But the Federal Aviation Administration doesn't let a pressurized plane leave the ground unless all these systems are built into it that slowwwwwly equalize pressure if the fuselage is punctured! For all of that scary stuff to happen, an entire chunk of the plane would have to be blown away... bigger than the doors, even. And once everything equalizes, its just like having your car window open... at 200+mph... not fun, but not inherently deadly unless you aren't minding the pilot's seatbelt sign!

NEXT QUESTION: How many geese does it take to make the engine stop working? Heh... let me begin this answer with a video. <HERE> Now, uh... I don't want to scare anyone, but in the worst case scenario, it takes only one bird to knock out an engine. And that was in a huge 757. The next question might be, How does a pilot respond? or Do they train you for that kind of stuff? Let me see if I can explain how I've been trained in regards to birds and birdstrikes... I literally flinch when I'm in my car or even walking across campus when I catch a bird in the corner of my eye. And if I see one when I'm flying, I can guarantee that I'm going to treat it with the same caution as I would another airplane.

Now, I've come close to hitting birds a few times while flying... its a horrible feeling. They usually have a tendency to freeze up when they see a plane. Sometimes, they actually fold their wings and dive straight down. This can be awful if you are approaching them from below as they will dive straight down into you. Birds have enough mass to come right through the windscreen (pilot term for winshield). They can put huge dents in wings and ruin control surfaces like your ailerons, rudder and elevator. So. Birds=bad and pilots are trained to avoid them at all costs as if they were actually airplanes. If birds are flying around an airport, the tower tells you where they are. You'll also hear about birds when you check in for weather before you even taxi. Its that big of a deal.

NEXT QUESTION: What happens when you get a phone call in a plane? Does it crash? Hahaha, most of us can hear that announcement in our heads right now, "Please turn off all portable electronic devices, two way cell phones, pagers... something something blah blah..." There IS actually a reason for this. They're not just trying to be jerks. But the reason is kind of just an extra precautionary... No, the plane won't crash if someone makes a cell phone call. But the pilots might notice because their navigation instruments might flicker around. Cell phones (and other stuff like pagers or radios or laptops, etc.) emit on a certain frequency band. This won't really affect GPS signals which is what almost all mainstream commercial flights use for primary navigation these days. But the older analog signals like VOR and ADF can get screwy. Basically, the pilot is looking at some dials up front that have needles that point left or right. Electronic interference from passengers' electronics can cause them to flick off course for a little bit and its kind of annoying. Also, its not safe for navigation because if we are up there trying to navigate while a bunch of electronics in the back are causing interference, no one will end up where they want to be. So that's that.

NEXT QUESTION- Why are you supposed to put the oxygen mask on yourself while babies are suffocating? Let's think about two possible sequences of events, both starting with the cabin losing pressure and the masks dropping down. 1) You fool around trying to get your kid calmed down enough to get the mask on their face. Then, maybe you have to deal with your other kid. And maybe an elderly person who seems to be having trouble. After that, maybe you help someone who can't quite reach their mask. Maybe you only help one person. But while you do that, you're slowly suffocating yourself. If everyone on the plane helped the kids first- guess who blacks out first-the adults. Now, if a safe landing is made, we have a plane full of kids and passed out adults, AKA chaos. This is an extreme example, but think of the flip side. 2) You fidget with your mask and you don't black out. Maybe less able people around you black out while you mess with your mask. But once yours is on, you know how to do it. You can help people around you with ease. If they have blacked out, once you get their mask on, they'll come back around pret-ty quickly while sucking on tasty oxygen. If not, at least their brain is actually getting oxygen and they'll be okay overall. Even if your kids or babies black out, at least you can get them oxygen whereas if you blacked out before... bad news. So, that's the logic. There may be legal restrictions or reasons... but those are reasons too. It seems debateable... but... I dunno. I couldn't find anything in the Federal Aviation Regulations about it, even in the section about supplemental oxygen.

NEXT QUESTION: What are the odds of surviving a crash? Well... lets talk about two differnt types of crashes. There is the anticipated crash... and the not so anticipated crash. If the plane loses and engine or the gear gets stuck or something similar, the pilots are probably going to know about it. If they know about the emergency, then they can use their training and protocol to deal with it and chances are you survive. A significant portion of our training is emergency training. We learn in an environment of failed engines, broken instruments and fires on board so that we are ready to deal with it later if it actually happens.

But... on the flipside... there are the not so anticipated crashes. This could be a situation in which the pilots got disoriented and fly into a mountain. Recently, a plane tried to take off from the wrong runway and it was about a half-mile too short for that plane... only one survived. Those kinds of crashes are very difficult to survive...

Part of the danger, too, comes from surviving AFTER the crash. With limited medical supplies, survival rates drop significantly after the first 24 hours if the crash site isn't located by emergency teams. Food and water become an issue as do risks of infection, disorientation, shock or exposure to elements. I don't want to scare anyone... but them's the facts. Statistically, driving your car to the airport is WAY more likely to result in an accident than the plane crashing... but I'd have to say that if the crash was not anticipated, I'd rather be in the car.

Its not that I turn a blind eye to all these thoughts about crashes when I turn the keys in an airplane... its just part of my motivation to be a... dang good pilot and to never think to myself, "I've finally become the best I can be," because its not about 'being the best' so much as 'always becoming better.' Just... for what its worth, that's my view.

LAST QUESTION FOR THE DAY: What is it like to go through the process of learning to fly? And is it hard to figure out all of the gadjets and gizmos up there? Well, I don't really know how to answer that... its a freakin' dream come true for me, personally. I love it. I walk up to every flight excited and ready to go. I walk away from every flight still excited and ready to go do it again. Actually, I'm usually exausted after I fly because I use every bit of energy I have trying to do it right and trying to get better. The whole process takes a lot of time. Doing it along with school is a huge drain, but at the same time, I wouldn't trade it for anything. My GPA is crap... but I'm not on probation.

Time is really the defining thing. You can't just go up and fly for three hours and expect to learn three hours' worth of lessons OR retain it. Most of my flights are somewhere between an hour to an hour and a half. On cross-country training flights, those are closer to three hours. Actually, I just flipped through my log book... longest flight was on 9/28/08 and I went from College Station to Lufkin to Palestine to Waco to College Station. It was 3.4 hours long. I have 78 total logged hours, right now. I need 190 total hours to get the rating I'm working on right now. When you are only logging between 1 and 2.5ish hours per flight, and only flying three or four times a week... it can take a long time to build up time. Its kind of depressing. Most airliners want a few thousand hours before they'll hire you. Some of them even want a few thousand hours of JET TIME ALONE... So, like most other jobs, its a long ardous process if you want to move up.

As far as all those gadjets and gizmos go... they're not hard to learn if you're willing to leave behind your brain and instincts and really, truly trust them. And if you really enjoy flying, that goes a long way in making the instruments easier to learn. If you are just kind of wanting to fly around or just be able to say you're a pilot, then the instruments would probably be boring and harder to learn. Then again, I'm not really sure. I grew up knowing all the instruments because my dad is a pilot and I always asked him about it. (If you're a pilot and reading this, I knew how to tune and track a VOR before I knew how to make a turn about a point. And I understood an ILS approach before I understood crosswind correction.)

After you get the basic private pilot license and an instrument rating... most everything else seems to be elaboration and refinement of those basic skills. If you go military, you're going to get the structured aspect and some new ways of flying. And of course you're going to be flying much faster jets so everything you already learned just happens much much faster back to back. And you have to be absolutely precise and accurate every time. And you'll be in really good shape along with other aspects of military life. If you go commercial, you're going to learn a lot of rules and regulations. The whole idea of flying freely around in the sky pretty much disappears and now you're flying highly regulated routes that are drawn out on fun maps like <THIS> or like <THIS>.

But the lingo is fun... the jargon and code-words that pilots get to use around eachother is a really fun thing to be a part of. Hearing stories about other pilots and about how so-and-so would have done such-and-such better... those are fun. Chilling at the flight school and watching planes come and go is fun. Talking about which planes you wish you could fly is fun. Comparing stats between planes gets just as crazy as talking sports with people. Its a life I'm really only at the very tip of beginning and its pretty sweet.

Tune in next time when I answer some more questions- such as:
How much fuel does my plane use?
How much fuel do big commercial planes use?
How do planes stay in the air during turbulence? Why don't they fall out of the sky? (Even though it feels like you're about to!)
What kinds of things determine the cruising altitude for airplanes?
What happens if plane gets a flat tire on the runway on takeoff or landing?
What are your philosophical musings about passenger planes- with people all coming from different places and walks of life to board one plane for a short time and then all going their own ways... this seemingly impossible crossing of paths, and yet it happens daily... hmm...