Talk:Advice for nervous flyers

Statistics

Is it worth adding a section on how incredibly safe it is to actually get on an airplane and fly somewhere? In light of the Malaysia Airlines incident this is probably worth mentioning. Andrewssi2 (talk) 01:39, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Sounds good to me! Please feel free to add any you can find! --Nick ^talk 01:40, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

PS Do you think we should have a separate section or just fit them into the existing sections? --Nick ^talk 01:47, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

I think a separate section would be great. My rationale is that the better one understands the background of airline safety, the less scarey it would seem.

Also there may be some misconceptions about the safety of certain airlines, especially from non-western countries, which are simply unfounded. Such a section could address this as well. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 01:55, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Both of those ideas sound great! --Nick ^talk 02:02, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

WV allows exceptions to WP linking in certain cases. Would https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_safety#Accidents_and_incidents be OK for this? --Andrewssi2 (talk) 12:55, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Too much detail?

A recent edit has added a lot of text giving a very detailed account of flying in a plane.

Is this really appropriate? I feel that the 'captain obvious' rules lends itself to most of this new text. Andrewssi2 (talk) 20:54, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

I don't see a WV:NCO violation, at least if this is aimed at passengers who have not flown before. K7L (talk) 12:41, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

I thought it was aimed at people who are afraid of flying, rather than people who have never flown before. Andrewssi2 (talk) 09:27, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Ill-fated Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

Swept in from the pub

From the Tourist Office

I'm deeply saddened by the loss of 227 travellers and 12 crew members aboard ill fated Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 which goes missing over the Gulf of Thailand. Asked by: Saqib (talk) 20:30, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

I think we all are. (Should we maybe rather move this discussion to the pub?) ϒpsilon (talk) 20:35, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

This tragic incident has reminded me of the ill-fated wikipedia:Airblue Flight 202 in which one of my friend was travelling from Karachi to Islamabad to apply for Norwegian visa in the embassy. He was just finished from college and was planning to do a first trip abroad for leisure purpose. His parents were insisting him to cancel his Europe trip because they were afraid to let him travel to Europe alone but he was so eager to apply for visa. There were 152 on-board including 4 foreigners and it was the deadliest air accident in Pakistan. (I think its fine to keep this topic here in Tourist Office). --Saqib (talk) 22:17, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

Saqib himself removed this from the TO, but I felt it might have a place here instead. I too am deeply saddened by this incident - it's a real tragedy. I thought that an incident like this might make some people even more afraid of flying than they already are, so I created Advice for nervous flyers, which I thought might be a good addition to our flying coverage. --Nick ^talk 00:23, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

This is a shocking tragedy that comes at an uneasy time, especially for us here in Central Europe. I cannot imagine how the families of the passengers and crew feel. This comes after a period of exceptional lack of massively fatal accidents on major airlines and great safety record despite ever-growing number of flights. The fact that terrorism may be a factor is very worrying given the advances in technology and organization that allowed for the aforementioned. PrinceGloria (talk) 06:24, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Something had to have happened very suddenly, or else someone other than the pilot must have taken over, since there was no distress call. It's extremely sad. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:32, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Spelling

Can we use one style of English throughout this article, please? Hobbitschuster (talk) 12:41, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

Is flying safer than high-speed rail

It is without question that commercial aviation is orders of magnitude safer than general aviation and driving a car and still quite a bit safer than bus travel. But is there enough data to give a conclusive judgment whether high-speed rail is safer than flying? Especially when you measure it in "per trip" rather than "per passenger km" as flights tend to be longer and most potential problems are "bunched" near departure and landing, which isn't the case for the much more "linear" rail travel. Hobbitschuster (talk) 23:37, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

Is this article a joke?

Oh dear. It looks like we've ventured dangerously close to the chicken joke:

Commercial aircraft are designed and tested to operate in conditions far more severe than those encountered on nearly any actual flight. For example, one test involves shooting frozen chickens (as you would buy in the supermarket) at a new aircraft to assess whether it's capable of withstanding bird strikes. Aircraft are also maintained to strict and regular schedules.

This looks to be close to an old joke which claims:

The US Federal Aviation Administration has a unique device for testing the strength of windscreens on aeroplanes. The device is a gun that launches a dead chicken at a plane’s windscreen at approximately the speed the plane flies. The theory is that if the windscreen doesn’t crack from the carcass impact, it’ll survive a real collision with a bird during flight.

It seems the British were very interested in this and wanted to test a windscreen on a brand new, speedy locomotive they’re developing. They borrowed FAA’s chicken launcher, loaded the chicken and fired. The ballistic chicken shattered the windscreen, broke the engineer’s chair and embedded itself in the back wall of the engine’s cab. The British were stunned and asked the FAA to recheck the test to see if everything was done correctly.

The FAA reviewed the test thoroughly and had one recommendation:

“Use a thawed chicken.”

The simulation of a bird collision is a valid test which makes sense, but a frozen chicken? Likely a joke (snopes, straight dope). K7L (talk) 16:03, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Guide and FTT?

Here it was mentioned that this article is perhaps already a guide...what do you think? --ϒpsilon (talk) 18:12, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

I just added some photos to give the article a little life and will upgrade and nominate it in a while if nobody objects. ϒpsilon (talk) 18:28, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

No objections, so I'll upgrade it now. Any further additions to the article are welcome, as always. ϒpsilon (talk) 20:10, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

Do go ahead. Hobbitschuster (talk) 20:51, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

Worth a mention?

Canada had a famous episode where a large jet was landed safely despite running out of fuel in mid-air. w:Gimli Glider Gimli#See The cause was apparently using the wrong units when refueling, pounds instead of kg or some such; this was around the time Canada switched to metric.

Should this be mentioned here? It is reassuring in a way. Pashley (talk) 13:48, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

I think we should mention that even if all engines should fail, pilots are able to land the machine safely and stuff like this is part of training. Hobbitschuster (talk) 17:30, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

Drugs?

I'm a heavy smoker & keep nicotine gum in my carry-on luggage for long flights. Some people take a tranquilizer for their nerves, or even a sleeping pill, before a flight or just knock themselves out with booze, but this has hazards. Should these be discussed in the article? Pashley (talk) 12:52, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

Real risks?

I have a friend who gets severe migraines, apparently sometimes triggered by air pressure changes. He sometimes gets them due to weather & the last time he flew they took him off the plane on a stretcher. He no longer flies. I would guess such conditions are quite rare, but do not actually know.

Flying too soon after scuba diving can be hazardous. I wonder how the pressure change might affect people with asthma or other respiratory problems. What about something like a w:Aortic aneurysm; could flying home for treatment cause it to pop (almost always fatal)? Are there other conditions that might preclude flying or require precautions?

Discussing these risks here would not be easy; it would be difficult to write text that covers them well but does not unnecessarily terrify an already nervous flier. Should we do it anyway? Pashley (talk) 13:25, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

I think that kind of information should go in Flight and health. —Granger (talk · contribs) 15:32, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

Evidence whether or not change in air pressure affects the risks of migraines is controversial. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:20, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Doc: that's why I said "apparently" above. Certainly the friend in question is entirely convinced pressure changes trigger his. Pashley (talk) 13:15, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

Statistics

So the statistics were changed in a recent edit. Which if any statistics do we want? I think we should not conflate civil and military aviation or accidents and deliberate attacks (as there is a certain geographic preponderance of the latter). Hobbitschuster (talk) 19:00, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

The original statistics came from Boeing's Statistical Summary of Commercial Jet Airplane Accidents. However, the list of exclusions was pretty long - no non-jet aircraft, no Russian aircraft, no sabotage/hijacking/terrorism - basically anything that would make Boeing look bad against its competitors (can you name any bombed or hijacked Airbus flights?). The new statistics are from the Bureau of Aircraft Accident Archives (B3A), which includes accidents involving any fixed-wing aircraft capable of carrying six or more people regardless of cause, however, the stats they give also include military transport aircraft. The B3A stats also match the graph in the article. Lcmortensen (talk) 08:54, 29 April 2018 (UTC)

Other aspects of travel people might get irrational fears over?

Flight anxiety is probably the most common and studied but there are other aspects of travel that some people get more frightened over than necessary... there maybe isn't "train fright" per se but there is the bizarre habit of people feeling safer in cars despite the reality of safety. There is also the phenomenon of people from the US having a distorted view of Europe as some sort of apocalyptic hellscape of crime and murder when in reality murder rates in the U.S. are consistently higher than in the EU - in many places by a factor of ten. Should we have articles dealing with individual issues or maybe something like advice for those afraid of travel? Hobbitschuster (talk) 13:38, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

Is there a word ending in "-phobia" for fear of travel? Ikan Kekek (talk) 16:20, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

Or maybe it would fit into travel basics, or some other article we already have? --ϒpsilon (talk) 16:40, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

Information for people overly worried about crime could go in Crime or maybe Stay safe. Information about automobile safety could go in Driving. —Granger (talk · contribs) 19:21, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

People are not overly worried about driving. They are not worried enough about driving. At least if we go by the victim figures... Hardly anything that humans don't immediately recognize as at least partial self-harm (cigarettes, alcohol etc.) is as deadly as cars. Hobbitschuster (talk) 23:55, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

Maybe my comment was unclear. I didn't mean to suggest that people are overly worried about driving. My suggestions were for information about automobile safety and information for people who are overly worried about crime. —Granger (talk · contribs) 00:04, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

737 max

If and when that ill fated bird takes to the skies again, it'll cause a lot of nervousness among some passengers. Should we give hints how to identify the 737 max as opposed to the 737 NG here? Hobbitschuster (talk) 05:45, 12 November 2019 (UTC)