I Hate Flying

[crazycarl]

I don't fly much, only when necessary. The 1st time I flew was in my mid 20s. The flight from Chicago to Los Angeles was okay, but the return flight was horrendous. It took 4 days of bouncing around the country because of a strike before arriving at O'Hara in the middle of the night.

I flew out of Raleigh/Durham last Friday for Ontario California but not before getting in an accident just 10 miles short of the airport. Last night I reset my watch to eastern time. This morning I set off for the airport (using that eastern time) and arrives at 8am for a 120pm flight. To make matters worse, they bumped my flight by 4 hours. The connecting flight in Denver went from 40 minutes to a 2 hour layover,  placing me back at RDU at 1am with a 3 hour drive home. And honestly, I'm not even sure if the truck is safe to drive. When the statey released us, I drove to the airport, parked, and ran to catch my flight. As of this writing, my return flight has changed 4 times. I called my wife and told her I may just buy a boat out here and sail it home as it may be faster.

Did I mention I hate flying?

Edit: the statey was an NC state trooper who took the accident report.

[crazycarl]

Change #6. Going to Phoenix. Got off the plane and rushed to the gate because my next flight was boarding in 12 minutes. Get here to find change #7. Flight to RDU pushed back 2 1/2 hours.

Did I mention how much I hate flying?

[Mas]

Ok...might be best to reference my reply to Carl's 'dumb luck' thread and my reference to an airplane wreck. Comanche 260, single engine turbo prop, 4 seat version and a highly regarded airplane, was in the co-pilots seat. We had gone on a double date to Oracoke Island circa 1973. The airstrip there even today is totally VFR only. That essentially means visual, daylight only, no navigation aids. Left Washington National (whole lotta fun tucked behind a 727) great flight down, fun day flying over the islands and sounds, picnic in the dunes and then as per flight plan prepared to depart, except the plane wouldn't start. Now it's kinda like a car story for a bit. Figured we left a switch on that drained the battery so drug it out onto the wing and flaged down THE car that passed by. (Truly zero traffic in 1973 in early April on Ocracoke) Jumped started the engine and remained on the ground until all instruments and gauges said good to go. We truly had to go as the fog was rolling in and daylight was failing. (Remember the VFR?) Within 10 minutes in the air everything electrical in the plane failed except the engine. We had airspeed, altimeter and compass and nothing else including no nav lights or radio and no way to land again as the strip was now completely fogged in.

Clearly time for a new flight plan. With a hand held strobe in the dash along with a coat blocking it to keep it from blinding us we were at least marginally visible to other aircraft. It was decided we would navigate up the coast so if we needed to ditch we cold hopefully set her down along the surf line, which was mostly covered in fog. We flew at 10-15,000ish feet as most private non pressurized cabins, such as ours, need to stay below that for oxygen needs even though the aircraft had a ceiling of almost 25,000 ft. Most commercial planes are 30-40,000 ft. We did have a real live paper map as well before any GPS days so we navigated the best we could given the instruments we had (not a whole lot different than Charles Lindbergh and others of his day). We did stray into Oceana Naval Airbase air space and given our darkened conditions and no radio response, they scrambled two F4 phantoms. We never knew because we were totally focused on setting down at Newport News Municipal airport which we could now see. After a slow port turn and firing a flare out of the vent window the plane began to stall. We had forgotten to switch fuel tanks as the 260 has two wing and two fuselage tanks. Got them switched in time to prevent the stall but no response down below as planes were still taxiing out for take off and traffic was still landing. I shot another flare at the towers location, which later found out only missed it by 20 or 30 yards. We could then see planes beginning to return to the taxiways and off of the runways followed by them turning off all of the runway lights...a true wtf moment. Soon they turned on one runway's lights and we saw crash trucks coming out so we kew they wanted us there.

A 260 has retractable gear but it would not deploy as no juice for the hydraulic pump. There is a manual override, kinda like a parking break lever between the seats that you use to ratchet down the gear only it would not lock in position. The girls are flipping out in the back seats and we were finding our religion in the front seats. Other than going in with no landing gear, an unbalanced fuel load, and forgetting to kill the motor just before impact, it was a safe but horrendously loud landing! Lot's of smoke and four people exiting through the one door in record time and running. The airport manager caught up with us in his car and after the obligatory debriefing and accident report we spent the night in the airport manager's home where he poured us some needed bourbon.

So in spite of all that, I got back into the air again within a couple months but never can say I hate flying! Now commercial aviation and airports can be another story which Carl has found out!

On a side note, sails are merely airplane wings, navigation is similar, a plane can fall from the sky and a boat can sink below the waves, and in neither one can you simply pull over and call AAA!

[Vectordirector]

Stories like these are why I retired early from ATC. Always some flib (freaking little itinerant bastard) trying to kill themselves.  We didn't get paid extra for saving them, if so I would be very wealthy.

 Remember that a private pilot only needs 40 hours of stick time before they are allowed to solo, released to the public. Use that knowledge if you are asked to come along on a private plane.

Airlines over schedule the arrival rate that the busy airports can handle during IFR weather. They know that there will be delays if the weather is bad, they just don't care if you are delayed, and the weather is always bad, somewhere with a major airport, every day.  As we used to say:  Time to spare, go by air.   

Flying, driving, and boating are very similar yet any idiot can buy a $500K power boat and drive it with no idea of the rules of the road.  Amazing.  They are legion in Florida.

Sailors seem to be much better with this..Most....not all.

Be safe all.

Bryan

[Urban Hermit]

Is 40 hours prior to solo mandatory now?  When I soloed about 1980 it was the instructor's option but almost universal standard practice.  That 40 hours doesn't release a private pilot menace into the skies.  At the time I was taking lessons, FAA required over 10 hours of solo cross-country and a minimum of 5 night landings, all supervised remotely by the instructor (I had one solo cross-country flight on my log book and needed 10 more, plus the night landings, when financial considerations made me abandon my desire to fly).

FWIW, statistics in those days said the most crash-prone private pilots were physicians.  That was attributed to infrequent flights and overconfidence carried over from their careers.  Blame Flying Magazine, Doc, if you take offense.

[Mas]

Truly there are way more private plane incidents than commercial but also truly our incident (as it was later classified) was not pilot error but secondary to an electrical failure that took out all instruments, lights, radio, navigation aides, fuel levels, etc. other than those that did't need it to function, though still not illuminated. The landing gears failure to lock in the down position was never fully reconciled in the investigation but what was explained was the exemplary decisions made once airborne and in trouble for getting all souls back on the ground safely. (yes we had IFR certification)

In the USA, in 2020, there were 35,766 fatal vehicle accidents, which resulted in 38,824 deaths, or 106 car accident deaths per day so one out of every 147 accidents is fatal, which is 0.7%. Commercial aviation is sooo much safer just so much more frustrating! General aviation has significantly more fatalities than commercial aviation. Many years there are no fatalities in commercial aviation but almost yearly there are between 200-300 fatalities in general aviation. Still would not hesitate to get back into the same plane with the same pilot and with the same skills.

[Vectordirector]

History has shown that certain airplanes are more subject to attract inexperienced, overly confident, wealthy private pilots.  Beech V-tail Bonanza is known as the (and these can flip flop) Doctor/Dentist killer.  Mooney/C210/Twin Comanche/etc Lawyer killer.  C501 jet is the Munson Burner.  A few others but you get the idea. High performance/retractable gear are the keys.   

We as controllers assumed that everyone was current, and a number of the controllers of my generation are pilots and know the rules for currency, although the FAA Flight Standards is a separate department that monitors that.   Not sure about the newer generation of controllers, I've been retired for 10 years. 

I took a about 2 hours of lessons back in the day, they said it would be a minimum of 40 hours @ $120/hr, and decided same as you, money better spent elsewhere.  I was fortunate to have a few friends who where experienced pilots that I went up with a number of times.  Two of them were CFII's   Great times. 

I also was fortunate to be able to sit in the cockpit jump seat a number of times on airline flights all around the country.  This was a part of our training, seeing it from the other side, getting an idea of what the pilots are doing during each phase of flight.  It was, unfortunately, curtailed after 9/11.  A really important part of controller and pilot training was mostly, lost. 

The best way to travel is to have no urgent need to be some where.

VEC

[crazycarl]

Update:
I finally made it home and with a 3 hour drive from the airport,I pulled into the garage at 4am.

Now, I'm sitting in cockpit of my Compac 19 after a very rough sail.

[Urban Hermit]

Beautiful creek, bayou, or inlet. 

I've got to relate a comedic flying experience:  Business took me from Mobile, AL to Galveston.  No direct flights to Galveston.  Fly in a big plane into Houston, get on Treetop Airlines' DeHaviland Otter (twin-engine turboprop, about 18 jump seats) into Galveston.  Flying very close above a carpet layer of cotton-ball clouds. Realized I was hearing a cyclic sucking/blowing sound.  Couldn't identify it.  The year was when digital radar screens as a vertical wedge display had started turning up in planes.  Door to the flight deck open, display visible to the rest of the cabin.  The screen would instantly light up bright green, shooting up from the bottom to the top.  Sucking sound.  Copilot's left forearm and had would appear, hand would adjust the roller trim control  in a center console a little, the green would collapse to the bottom.  Blowing sound.  And then I realized that the trim would go nose-down a tiny bit, the radar would pick up the cloud tops and generate a vertical display of a horizontal distance, and everybody on the plane would suck in their breath thinking we were going to fly into a brick wall.  The trim adjustment would raise the nose enough for the radar to beam above the clouds, the green would collapse, and everybody would exhale. With every cycle it got funnier.  I was laughing so hard when the plane started its descent I had a hard time getting my seatbelt buckled.