Okay as someone who isn’t too fussed with the idea of flying, this scared me…..
Pilots have come out and said that while we’re in the air eating our boxed dinner or packaged snack, they turn the engines off.
If you take notice it is pretty easy to hear the changing sounds of engines throughout the course of the flights.
When you start to hear the noises quieten down, THAT’S when the engines are probably off.
The Sun reports the truth is the huge jumbo jets are designed to be able to glide for extreme distances without using engines.
This is why planes will never just drop out of the sky if their engines fail.
It also means that if there is an emergency situation and the engines do fail, flight crews have time to solve the issue.
Newswcorp reported that in 1982, British Airways Flight 9 was struck by volcanic ash on the way to Jakarta, Indonesia, at 37,000 feet.
All four engines failed however the pilot glided the plane to safety for around 20 minutes.
The plane descended from 37,000 to 12,000 feet.
The Sun reported that Aviation expert Patrick Smith, author of Cockpit Confidential, has told how aeroplane gliding is more frequent than you might think.
“It’s not the least bit uncommon for jets to descend at what a pilot calls ‘flight idle,’ with the engines run back to a zero-thrust condition.
“They’re still operating and powering crucial systems, but providing no push. You’ve been gliding many times without knowing it. It happens on just about every flight.
“Obviously an idle-thrust glide is different from the engines quitting outright, but even then, the glide itself would be no different.”
Well, you learn something new everyday.
Does this make you more or less scared when flying now?
