Flying can feel frightening when you don’t fully understand how aviation works. While for pilots and crew, sensations like a sudden bump, turbulence, a change in engine noise, or the strange feelings of takeoff and landing are familiar parts of their work routine. For general travellers who are not familiar with this industry, these can (and often do) feel like warning signs when you have no reference for what is considered normal.
This section explains the physics of flight and the aviation systems behind commercial flights. You’ll learn how airplanes fly, what keeps a plane in the air, how pilots control an aircraft, what happens during takeoff, climb, cruise and landing, and why planes make different sounds and movements throughout the journey.
Here you will also find answers to some of the most commonly asked questions that trouble nervous flyers: What causes turbulence? Is turbulence dangerous? Can a plane fall out of the sky? Why do airplane wings flex? What happens if an engine fails?
Understanding aviation won’t necessarily remove all the uncomfortable feelings, but it will replace frightening assumptions with a clear and predictable picture of what is actually happening. This, in turn, can significantly reduce anxiety.
Ask any anxious flyer what worries them the most about flying, and engine failure will almost certainly appear somewhere near the top of the list. The words alone sound terrifying. Part of the problem comes from the way movies have trained us to think about airplanes. In films, engine failures are often portrayed as […]
What Happens If a Plane Engine Fails Read More »
Watching airplane wings bend during turbulence can look terrifying. For many nervous flyers, it is one of the most alarming things they see during a flight. The wingtip rises and falls. The wing bends like a thin sheet of metal. The entire structure appears to flex in a way that seems completely unnatural. For
Why Airplane Wings Bend Read More »
Takeoff is over. The aircraft has accelerated down the runway, lifted into the air, and started climbing. For a brief moment, everything seems straightforward. The engines are loud. The airplane is gaining altitude. Your brain can easily connect the noise with the feeling of climbing. The engines suddenly become quieter. The climb feels different
That Weird Sinking Feeling After Takeoff: Why Airplane Engines Get Quieter After Takeoff Read More »
