For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for August 10, 2012

Know the feeling!!

Don’t worry, we pilots are just worrying about getting ourselves safely home. Your safety is a happy bonus. ;)

Wouldn’t this be a great tv show with real life actors? Only I think they should start from when April is born and work their way up.

Some discussions can wait until you get home safely, Michael!

Passenger planes are nothing, size-wise. You should see a B-52 in the air; that just looks wrong.

ignorance is such bliss, lol

You mean scared because we’re in chairs that are rocketing through the sky at 30,000 ft. with nothing but space below us and a thin piece of metal between ourselves and the harsh environment of no oxygen and freezing sub zero temperatures, piloted by a guy we have never met or no if is capable flying this thing. No I’m not scared. Are you?

I hate what the changes in pressure do to my ears.

Saw an episode on Smithsonian’s Air Disasters program on the sorry state of America’s Air Traffic System. The proposed solution that will allow many more flights in the air at the same time is NOT reassuring. Of course when President Romney guts the FAA’s budget (that came out fussbudget the first time – thanks Lucy) it won’t make any difference we will be stuck with the present dangerous system. I’ll stick to driving – even though “Romneycuts” or is that “RomneyUnCares” budget cuts will gut highway safety efforts.

.The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs was large enough that as the front was just touching the Earth’s surface the trailing end would be above jetliners. Momma Mia that’s a mighty big rock.

I’m sure that no one is scared when they’re visiting the dentist either, John. It’s all relative.

I flew London (ONT) → Detroit (Wayne County) → (Narita) Tokyo → Singapore. It London→Detroit was 50 minutes. Narita→ Singapore was around 90 minutes.Detroit → Narita was 22 or so hours. The scary thing, is that exactly 3 days later (the plane I WOULD have been on, if I hadn’t paid extra to ‘rush’ my passport.) crashed!

Once I rode in a C-124 Globemaster from New Haven, Connecticut to Wright-Patterson AFB. Took the same ride back. I could swear those wings were actually flapping!

That is why I fly with the window cover down!!

I have a fear of heights (the higher the worst) but I love to fly. I can never figure that out

I love to fly, but with the current TSA nonsense in place, I will not. I do remember flying with my SIL on her first flight (she was in her 40’s and was afraid to try). She was fine for the take-off and spent most of the flight leaned across me and the man next to the window to see outside. She loved it. Until we landed. We forgot to warn her about the thrust reversers. She grabbed my knee with a death grip (I limped for a while) and everyone around her was trying to tell her “this vibration is normal” over and over. She’s been fine ever since.

C-5 Galaxy is a big plane you can put three buses in the cargo area and still fly people in the upper deck

My wife’s cousin was booked on the flight that ended on a street in Brooklyn. (A prop vs a jet collision) Slow processing of a passport kept her and husband off.Later, found that one of the Manzarali Maulers was booked for the same flight! Also fortunately delayed.(Manzarali Maulers – ASA newsletter for those stationed at Ankara, Turkey 1960s)

I did a lot of flying in the military and was never frightened. The one floght where the passenger next to me was hysterical and I was calming her down I might have been frightened but was so busy calming her I didn’t have time to think about it. She was the TMO that made all the reservations for everyone’s TDY trips and worked with the airlines all the time.

That’s the way I felt the first time I flew. I was only 12 years old and flying from my brother’s house near Chicago to my area near Pittsburgh. I was all alone and I only felt scared when I thought about it.

My son and I were flying home from Washington. He asked me how I could sleep in a plane. I told him that even if something went wrong, there is nothing I could do about it anyway.

It was Reagan who scabbed the Air Traffic Controllers. Good union controllers can handle anything, as those at Gander proved on 9/11, when the US directed all trans-Atlantic flights to go there without warning Canada.

Landings are the only dangerous parts – especially if the landing is during takeoff, into a mountain, into another plane, or any other un- or semi-controlled attitude.

Canada has jets?

The first time I flew (except for flying at the age of three months), was June, 1959. The plane went from Tampa to Buffalo. I was all apprehensive, but once we were in the air, suddenly I thought, “Well, we all have to go sometime,” and it hasn’t bothered me since. Maybe it helped that economy class was overbooked and I had been bumped up to first class. First and only time.

Too late, John.

Heidi Tentee: If you consider a Boeing 747 to be a jet (reaction engine, ducted fan), then the first jet aircraft (1907 Coanda) was a Canadian invention.

sjsczurek: They better flap or the stress will be disastrous. They work in the air like shock absorbers do on the ground.