Smoke in the cabin. A tire blowout. A cracked windshield. No shortage of problems can affect a flight, fueling traveler anxiety and contributing to thousands of daily delays and cancellations around the world.
But despite the frustration and concern that such events cause, it can be difficult to interpret and understand their seriousness. Here’s how aviation safety experts say travelers should think about vacations when they happen.
Problems happen.
Several troubling air travel incidents have made headlines in recent weeks – a steep dive into an ocean, a disturbing wobble that damaged a plane’s tail, and an aborted departure after an apparent engine fire.
However, the most common mishaps and malfunctions, even if they blow hair, are usually not serious, experts said.
A hydraulic leak, for example, is a familiar phenomenon that pilots take seriously, but it’s not as annoying as it might sound. This is because airplanes have reserve hydraulic systems, which are used to power equipment such as the landing gear, brakes, flaps, and flight controls, allowing airplanes to take off, fly, and land. A plane exiting a runway, in what’s known as a runway excursion, makes for a mesmerizing video and a potentially terrifying experience for those on board. But it doesn’t necessarily cause significant damage to an airplane or threaten the safety of passengers.
The same is true of the wide range of mechanical or maintenance issues that can arise before takeoff, which can cause a pilot to hold an airplane at its gate or return to the gate from the taxiway. These incidents are important to understand and address, but are often trivial, experts said.
“The pilots are saying, ‘I’m highly trained, I’m highly educated in this airplane, and we need to go back to the gate and have the specialists engage out of an abundance of caution,'” Shawn Pruchnicki said. former airline pilot and adjunct professor at the Center for Aviation Studies at The Ohio State University. “This is the system that works perfectly. That’s a good thing.”
Sometimes, such problems can derail a flight or put an airplane out of service. But in other cases, they can be fixed quickly. And because airplanes are packed with failsafes, there are times when a flight with a malfunctioning system can proceed safely simply by relying on one or more backups.
Flight is a complex gravity-defying feat that is repeated thousands of times every day in a wide range of conditions. So travelers shouldn’t be surprised when things go wrong, said Amy Pritchett, a pilot and professor of aerospace engineering at Pennsylvania State University.
“Small little parts will always start to burn or break,” he said. “There will always be potholes in the pavement on the taxiway that shakes something up. There are always questions about whether the weather is good enough to fly, whether you can hit turbulence or not. All of these things are sources of volatility that need to be actively managed.”
The flight is safe.
Another thing travelers should keep in mind is that serious flight problems are extremely rare, experts said.
Flying is safer than driving or traveling by train in part because safety is built into the design of everything from air traffic control to the plane itself. Important systems and processes are backed up, there are rarely single points of failure, pilots receive intensive and repeated training, and airlines prepare for a wide range of possible outcomes.
“It’s the safest form of transportation ever devised by mankind,” said John Cox, a former airline pilot who runs a safety consulting firm. “Be careful driving to the airport.”
In recent decades, commercial aviation safety in the United States has improved more than fortyfold, according to a 2022 analysis of commercial aviation safety conducted by the National Academies.
According to the National Transportation Safety Board, typical causes of accidents include turbulence, hard landings, ground collisions with other planes or vehicles, and component failures, such as wing or engine malfunction.
Flying is so safe in part because the industry generally responds to any problem, even those that pose little threat. In the United States, airlines, manufacturers, and agencies such as the Federal Aviation Administration and the NTSB continually monitor and review the hazards and risks in air travel.
“The level of systems in place to monitor commercial air transport today is profound,” Ms Pritchett said. But that doesn’t mean anyone involved can lose vigilance in assessing the potential for risk, he added.
And while trips are occasionally cut short, experts said, diverting a flight from its destination generally reflects due diligence by pilots, airlines and air traffic controllers, not a life-threatening emergency. “Could we continue to our destination?” said Kenneth Byrnes, a pilot and associate professor who leads the flight education department at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. “Yes, but is it the safest thing?”
Attribution of responsibility is complex.
Because aviation is complex and defined by redundancy, problems rarely have a single cause. Instead, most serious—even catastrophic—problems are the result of multiple factors.
“There’s never a smoking gun, so to speak,” Mr. Pruchnicki said. “There’s never that ‘aha’ moment when we go through debris or go through records and say, ‘Ah, I found the only reason this plane crashed.’
Watch the episode early last year in which two planes nearly hit each other on a runway at Kennedy International Airport. The National Transportation Safety Board found that several factors contributed to what could have otherwise been a disaster.
The pilots of one plane became distracted while proceeding on the wrong taxiway, the agency found. At the same time, the air traffic controller who gave them instructions did not notice because his focus was elsewhere. And a runway status light activated too late to alert the pilots to the error, the agency concluded.
When investigating such incidents, impeachment is not only difficult, but generally discouraged, experts said. Kyra Dempsey, who writes about air accidents on a blog, Admiral Cloudberg, said that “an impeccable autopsy is the cornerstone of modern aviation safety,” facilitating an open safety culture in which people are willing to report concerns.
Mr Cox, the pilot turned consultant, said “air accident investigators are really more interested in understanding the cause than assigning blame because our job is to see that it doesn’t happen again”. Instead, “lawyers are being blamed,” he said.
Perspective is important.
When an accident happens, it’s important to keep some context in mind, experts said.
A casual observer might notice, for example, that many problems seem to affect two types of airplanes: the Boeing 737 and the Airbus A320. But these aircraft families make up more than half of all commercial aircraft in service, so they are naturally reflected more in news coverage.
Experts also warned of confirmation bias. When an airline or manufacturer is involved in a headline-making episode, the media and the public tend to be alert to other problems involving the company, even those that have little to do with the company or that may not be even important enough to attract much attention from the security services.
“When something happens, you need time to find out and learn exactly what happened and why it happened,” said Jeff Guzzetti, a former accident investigator for the FAA and NTSB “That’s something you can’t do in a news story. cycle or even two news cycles’.
It can take the NTSB months, and sometimes more than a year, to conduct investigations, which culminate in safety recommendations to prevent future accidents.
After a fuselage panel blew off a 737 Max during a flight in January, Boeing came under intense scrutiny, and rightfully so, experts said. However, several also said they received numerous calls from reporters in the months that followed seeking comment about problems involving Boeing planes in cases that had nothing to do with the company.
“Just because it’s a Boeing airplane that has a mechanical problem doesn’t necessarily mean it has anything to do with Boeing,” Mr. Pruchnicki said.
In the fuselage panel episode, the plane was essentially new, focusing attention on the manufacturer. But a manufacturer probably isn’t to blame when a problem develops with a plane that was delivered years earlier and has been flying safely ever since, experts said.
