It hasn’t been the best start to the year for nervous fliers.
Last week, a Boeing 757 jet operated by Delta Air Lines lost a nose wheel while preparing for takeoff from Atlanta. Everyone had to be removed from the flight.
Earlier in January, a door plug blew off an Alaska Boeing 737 Max 9 jetliner at 16,000 feet above Oregon, leaving a gaping hole in the side of the plane and prompting oxygen masks to be deployed.
That one nearly ended my flying days. Video footage from inside the plane of people sitting right behind where the door plug blew out while the plane began its emergency descent made me want to start taking deep breaths into a paper bag. Can you imagine being on that plane? The pilots’ communication with passengers couldn’t be heard above the din created by the wind howling through the cabin.
I wonder how many people scheduled to be flying in the days immediately following the door plug debacle checked to see if they were going to be on a Max 9. I did.
Before that, the world saw images of a Japan Airlines plane that had burst into flames after a collision with a smaller coast guard aircraft on the runway at Tokyo’s Haneda airport. Miraculously, all 379 passengers and crew on board the jetliner were evacuated to safety. Five crew members of the coast guard plane were killed.
Video from inside the cabin of the Japan Airlines jet showed people remarkably calm as smoke began billowing around the plane.
Late last year, meanwhile, The New York Times published a disturbing investigative story that showed an alarming pattern of safety lapses and near misses in the skies and on the runways of America that we never hear about. Officials that the Times talked to described an air travel safety net that was fraying at the seams, with particular focus on burnt-out air traffic controllers.
Yes, I’ll admit, I’m a full-fledged member of the nervous fliers club. I have flown a lot in my life and I guess there have been just enough scary incidents to shake my confidence whenever I strap myself into a contraption that is going to fly at 600 miles an hour at 38,000 feet in the sky.
I will be the first to acknowledge that my fears are misplaced. The records show air travel is safer than it’s ever been. A person is 95 times more likely to die from unintentional poisoning than to meet their demise in an air traffic accident, according to the U.S. National Safety Council. An M.I.T. statistician figured that if a person took one flight a day, they would need to fly every day for 55,000 years before being involved in a fatal crash.
The International Civil Aviation Organization, in its global safety report for 2022, found that the airline industry saw a nearly 10-per-cent drop in accidents compared with 2020. As well, fatalities resulting from aircraft accidents dropped by over 65 per cent.
As I say, I understand cold logic suggests I’m silly to be worried about flying. But still, I persist.
It’s not just the thought of dying in a crash that has me reluctant to board planes these days – it’s other things like air rage.
Seems like all the major airlines are noticing an increase in the number of onboard incidents involving unruly passengers. The Dutch carrier KLM last year said there had been a 100-per-cent increase in unruly passenger events compared with 2019. Other airlines have documented similar increases in abhorrent behaviour by passengers. The International Air Transport Association reported an increase, globally, of unruly travellers, from one incident per 835 flights in 2021 to one in 568 flights in 2022.
One of the reasons we know about this is the videos that seem to be posted every other day of people having meltdowns on planes. They’re unnerving to watch. And the conduct seems to be more outlandish by the day.
One screaming woman recently pulled her pants down in the aisle on one flight and threatened to go to the washroom right there and then. She didn’t, thankfully. And there have been other incidents of men being loud, threatening and abusive.
Regardless of whether you are a nervous flier or not, I think we can all agree on one thing: hopping on a plane these days ain’t what it used to be.
And while flying may be safer than ever, it’s never been as unappealing as it is now.
Gary Mason