Page 8 THE SUNDAY MAIL, ESCAPE December 27, 2009 thesundaymail.com.au

8 Escape.com.au

Flying facts

Straighten upand fly right

BRACE YOURSELF: Airline safety procedures have a purpose.

Roderick Eime

ALL the rules and procedures aboutflying on planes can make the journeya real drag. Buckle this, stow that, turnthat off. Are all these regulations justto intimidate passengers andmakeaircrew feel important?

Paul (not his real name) flew ascabin crew with a major Australiancarrier for more than a decade. I askedhim about some of the rigmarole thatmost of us ignore.Brace. ‘‘Always good for a giggle, butif things get messy, you should knowhow to do it properly. The idea is to getyou sitting as far forward as possible so

if there’s an impact you don’t go flyingall over the place. If we tell you toremove your tie, dentures andspectacles, then it’s serious.’’Stow your tray table, seat backsupright. ‘‘It’s a drag I know, but thereare two reasons. One, to give you clearaccess if you have to move quicklyand, two, to remove hazards in theevent of a sudden stop. Also, if yourchair is reclined, you could slide underyour belt.’’Lifejackets are under your seat.‘‘Seriously, make sure you knowwhere it is and how to put it on – andwhatever you do, don’t inflate it untilafter you exit the aircraft. Remember

Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961.’’ (Scoresof passengers drowned when thecockpit filled with water and theycouldn’t swim out.)

Greg is a captain with amajor Asianairline, with 15,000 hours’ total flyingtime, and has held a commercialpilot’s licence for 30 years.What’s the secret to a silky smoothlanding? ‘‘The best landings are really

in the hands of the pilot and99 per cent of landings are done thatway – good and bad. The best landingsare when all the ducks are lined up(approach speed, no crosswind, glideslope etc) and you just nail it.’’And the rough ones? ‘‘Well, you’llexpect me to say this, but it’s mostlikely a computer systemmistakewhere the ‘autoland’ feature has not

properly selected the flare point forany number of reasons. If there’s a badcrosswind, storm or it’s gusty, a pilotwill want to get the plane down ASAPand that can be indelicate.’’

Ray (not his real name) is a seniorcertifying engineer with 20 years’experience and signs off the bigBoeing and Airbus aircraft.Turn off yourmobile phone. ‘‘That’sa myth, but most airlines, I reckon,keep mobile phones off for passengercomfort and it’s still against the law inmost places. Thankfully, most phoneswon’t work at altitude anyway.’’(Airlines are trialling in-flightequipment and ‘picocells’ – minimobile phone towers inside theaircraft that communicate with land orsatellite systems.)Where is the safest section of aplane? ‘‘Most survivors seem to be inthe back.’’ True. Despite claims bymany authorities suggesting no ‘‘safezone’’ existed, Popular Mechanicsmagazine analysed 20 accidents in theUS and found passengers sitting rearof the wing had a noticeably improvedsurvival rate.

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