Insider Guide.(air travel description by airline pilot Patrick Smith )(interview with Kyan Douglas cosmetologists)(Interview)

Insider's Guide travel

How to Fly Without Fear

By Patrick Smith Smith is an airline pilot and the author of Ask the Pilot (Riverhead) and a salon.com column by the same name. When people say they're terrified, pilots can't help but take it personally. It's expected and natural for people on a plane to contemplate their mortality, if only for a second -- but irrational fears ("What if the wing falls off?") are another matter. * Turbulence isn't fun, but it's rarely dangerous. Driving down a gravel road, are you afraid of the car flipping over? Turbulence is the airborne equivalent of that road. It seldom displaces the plane more than about 50 feet. Aircraft are built to be inherently stable and will always return to their original orientation. And crews use cockpit radar, meteorological forecasts, and reports from other aircraft to predict and prepare for rough air. * Pressure isn't a problem. People hear "pressurization" and envision all manner of Hollywood catastrophes -- eyes popping out or people keeling over from the bends. The sole and simple purpose of pressurizing a plane is to re-create the air density found near the ground. High-altitude air is thin and oxygen deficient; pressurization squeezes it back together and allows you to breathe normally. I know of no case, ever, where a pressurization problem (strictly speaking) killed or injured a passenger. * It's not a "puddle jumper." People assume that turboprops and regional jets are somehow quaint, old-fashioned, and less safe than larger aircraft. These "little" planes cost up to $25 million each and, on a fleetwide average, are newer than most larger jets. Correlating safety and size gets into statistical hairsplitting, but I can only think of two accidents involving ...