Smoking in the cabin. A burst tire. A cracked windshield. No shortage of problems can plague a flight, fueling traveler anxiety and contributing to thousands of daily delays and cancellations around the world.
But despite all the frustration and worry that such events cause, it can be difficult to interpret and understand their severity. Here’s how aviation safety experts say travelers should think about disruptions when they occur.
Problems arise.
Several alarming air travel incidents have made headlines in recent weeks: a sharp fall into an ocean, a troubling wobble that damaged a plane’s tail, and an aborted departure after an apparent engine fire.
But the most common incidents and malfunctions, while scary, are usually not serious, experts say.
A hydraulic leak, for example, is a common occurrence that pilots take seriously, but it’s not as disruptive as it seems. This is because planes have emergency hydraulic systems, used to power equipment such as landing gear, brakes, wing flaps and flight controls, allowing planes to take off, fly and fly. ‘to land. A plane leaving a runway, in what is called a runway excursion, makes for a captivating video and a possibly terrifying experience for those on board. But it does not necessarily cause significant damage to an aircraft or threaten the safety of those on board.
The same goes for the wide range of mechanical or maintenance problems that can arise before takeoff, which may require a pilot to hold an aircraft at its gate or return to the gate after taxiing. These incidents are important to understand and address, but they are often minor, experts say.
“Pilots are saying, ‘I’ve been highly qualified, I’m very educated on this plane, and we need to go back to the gate and involve the experts out of an abundance of caution,'” said Shawn Pruchnicki, a former airline pilot. and assistant professor at the Center for Aviation Studies at Ohio State University. “It’s the system that works perfectly. This is a good thing.”
Sometimes such problems can derail a flight or put a plane out of service. But in other cases, they can be fixed quickly. And because planes are equipped with safety features, sometimes a flight with a faulty system can be completed safely simply by relying on one or more backups.
Flying 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 components will always start to burn out or break,” she said. “There will always be potholes in the sidewalk of the travel lane that will jostle something. We always wonder if the weather is good enough to fly, whether or not you risk encountering turbulence. All of these are sources of variability that must be actively managed.
Flying is safe.
Another thing travelers should keep in mind is that serious flight problems are extremely rare, experts say.
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 procedures have backups, 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 conceived by mankind,” said John Cox, a former airline pilot who runs a security consulting firm. “Be careful when driving to the airport.”
Over the past several decades, commercial aviation safety in the United States has improved more than forty-fold, 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, difficult landings, ground collisions with other planes or vehicles, and component failures, such as a faulty wing flap or engine. .
Flying is so safe in part because the industry generally responds to all problems, even those that pose little threat. In the United States, airlines, manufacturers, and agencies like the Federal Aviation Administration and the NTSB continually monitor and review the risks and hazards associated with air travel.
“The level of systems in place to monitor commercial air travel today is profound,” Ms Pritchett said. But that doesn’t mean anyone involved can lose vigilance in assessing the possibility of danger, she added.
And even though trips are sometimes cut short, experts say diverting a flight from its destination usually reflects the prudence of 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 heads the flight training department at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. “Yes, but is it the safest thing to do? »
Blaming is complicated.
Because aviation is complex and defined by redundancy, problems rarely have a single cause. On the contrary, the most serious problems – even the most catastrophic – result from multiple factors.
“There’s never a smoking gun, so to speak,” Mr. Pruchnicki said. “There’s never that ‘aha’ moment, where we look at a wreck or records and say, ‘Ah, I found the only reason why that plane crashed.'”
Take the episode early last year in which two planes nearly collided on a runway at Kennedy International Airport. The National Transportation Safety Board found that several factors contributed to what otherwise could have been a disaster.
The pilots of one plane were distracted while taking the wrong taxiway, the agency found. At the same time, the air traffic controller who was giving them the instructions did not realize it because his attention was elsewhere. And a runway status light activated too late to warn pilots of the error, the agency concluded.
When investigating such incidents, it is not only difficult, but generally discouraged, to place blame, experts said. Kyra Dempsey, who writes about aviation accidents in a blog, Admiral Cloudberg, said that “the squeaky clean autopsy is the cornerstone of modern aviation safety,” facilitating an open safety culture in which people are willing to report their concerns.
Mr Cox, the pilot-turned-consultant, said “aircraft accident investigators are really more interested in understanding the cause than in assigning blame, because our job is to make sure this doesn’t happen again . Instead, “the lawyers are blamed,” he said.
Perspective is important.
When an accident happens, it’s important to keep some context in mind, experts say.
A casual observer will notice, for example, that many problems seem to affect two types of aircraft: Boeing 737s and Airbus A320s. But these aircraft families represent more than half of commercial aircraft in service, so they are naturally most reflected in media coverage.
Experts have also warned about confirmation bias. When an airline or manufacturer is featured in a headline-making episode, the media and public tend to be on alert for other issues involving the company, even ones that don’t matter much to do with the business or that may not even be important enough to be considered. attract a lot of attention from security agencies.
“When something happens, you need time to find out and understand 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 cycle or even two news cycles.
It can take the NTSB months, and sometimes more than a year, to conduct investigations, which result 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 rightly so, experts say. But several also said they received numerous calls from reporters in the months that followed, seeking comment on issues involving Boeing planes in cases that had little to do with the company.
“Just because it’s a Boeing plane that has a mechanical problem doesn’t mean it has anything to do with Boeing,” Mr. Pruchnicki said.
In the episode regarding the fuselage panel, the plane was practically new, drawing attention to the manufacturer. But a manufacturer is probably not at fault when a problem arises with a plane that was delivered years earlier and has been flying safely ever since, experts say.