thisisyourauthorspeaking - Tumblr blog

[thisisyourauthorspeaking]

Hi! Great to see this blog. I was wondering what would you need to fly in dire/apocalyptic circumstances. Mainly, would you need an airport for this? Like does it matter where the vehicle takes off from? Could a single person pull this off?

Good question! I would need to know more about the type of aircraft, but here are some generalizations:

- Helicopter: As long as it has fuel, it can take off and land pretty much anywhere that's flat and free of obstacles. The catch here is that most helicopters burn jet fuel, which is hard to get ahold of outside of an airport.

- Small plane (Cessna, etc.): In order for a plane this size to take off, it would need a flat surface between 2,000 and 3,000 feet long which is clear of obstacles. (Note: this surface doesn't need to be paved, and there actually are procedures for operating off of a dirt/gravel strip.)

As for fuel, it would need a special type of fuel called 100LL, which has 100 octane, no ethanol, and small amounts of lead - regular automotive gas will damage the engine, and this specific fuel is only buyable at airports. One way it could work without an airport is if your characters commandeered a fuel truck from an airport (which is unusable for whatever reason) in the vicinity, and brought it to their ad-hoc landing strip. This is easily doable with one person.

- Commercial airliner: The runway will need to be much larger (at least 6,000 feet long by 150 feet wide), flat, and paved. The entire area around it will need to be clear of obstacles (no trees/powerlines/buildings/signs).

As for actually starting and flying it, it could be done with one person, but there are more variables such as taxiing (much bigger; will need people on the ground to guide you) and startup (some airplanes cannot start their engines under their own power, and use a "start cart" provided by ground crews). If an airplane can start under its own power, it uses a system called an APU, which is essentially an onboard generator that produces enough power to start the bigger engines.

Hope this helps!

[thisisyourauthorspeaking]

Hi! Would you say a pilot would have unique skills in a survival situation(zombies, apocalyptic, anything)? As fictional or as specific as you want it to be. To give examples, I have limited English to explain this but in Metro 2033 people who worked on a metro before have a benefit for knowing the layout. This is more obvious but doctors and vets are highly important in such situations. Sometimes teachers, or people with any crowd control background take up leading positions etc. I hope this made sense to show what I'm asking.

A great deal of pilot training involves:

- Teaching them to remain calm under pressure

- Planning contingencies and backup plans for various scenarios; planning ahead in general

- Pilots have to learn a great deal about the airplanes they fly in, and just about every pilot has flown in a piston-engined trainer aircraft. A lot of knowledge about how piston engines work can carry over to cars and trucks.

- Radio communications! In an apocalyptic situation, I could absolutely see former pilots and ATCs being good at talking on the radio, because they already know the specific, unambiguous phraseology that is needed to make sure the message gets across.

- However, civilian pilots (which I am, and most pilots are) are not taught generalized "survival" skills in the event of an emergency landing far from home. Military pilots, however, go through a course called SERE, which stands for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape; this program covers survival, as well as how to resist capture and/or interrogation.

[thisisyourauthorspeaking]

so in the story I’m working on, there’s a part where their plane ends up having to land at an airport somewhere else due to issues. What would that look like exactly?

How is it organized, what procedures, etc.

You'd have to tell me more about the situation to get better detail, but here's a basic overview:

A "diversion" is a procedure in which pilots land at an airport other than the one they planned on going to, typically for reasons like fuel, deteriorating weather, mechanical problems with the airplane, or a situation with the passengers that could disrupt safety or security.

Unlike an emergency landing, in which the airplane needs to be on the ground immediately, there is no imminent danger to passengers during a diversion.

1) For flights where there's the possibility of the weather being too bad to land at the planned destination, part of the flight plan includes the name of an alternate airport, which is where the pilots will proceed to in the event that the weather at the intended destination is unsafe. Before they proceed to the filed alternate airport, they will usually attempt to land at the intended airport unless the weather is something like a severe storm.

2) Let's say that some unexpected issue pops up during the cruise part of flight, and it's no longer safe/practical to proceed to the planned destination or filed alternate. At this point, (assuming the situation involves a flight under instruments, as opposed to navigating by sight/landmarks), the procedure goes something like this:

Recognize the problem, and after weighing options, make the decision to divert.

Choose an airport to divert to, factoring in distance, time enroute, weather, availability of instrument approaches, etc. After a suitable airport has been chosen, calculate the time and fuel required to reach it.

Inform ATC (air traffic control) of your intentions. A radio call to notify ATC of the need to divert will typically state the reason for the diversion, as well as the airport the plane is now headed towards.

ATC will issue a new clearance to the pilots directing them to the new airport.

The pilots set the course in accordance with the clearance issued to them, and begin flying towards the new airport.

The crew notifies the airline of the diversion.

Only after all of these steps are completed do the pilots notify the rest of the airplane about what's happening. Unless your characters are the pilots, this is the first time they will learn about the diversion.

The airplane lands at the new airport, and after that, it depends on the airline policy regarding hotels/reimbursement.

[thisisyourauthorspeaking]

Whats the most accurate plane/flight depiction in video games you've seen, outside of simulators genre?

I've only played Battlefield and Ace Combat, neither of which are very accurate, but I've heard the aerodynamics in KSP are pretty accurate. Don't quote me on it though.

[thisisyourauthorspeaking]

What is the most realistic flight you've seen in media?

The movie Sully (2016) is about US Airways Flight 1549, aka "The Miracle On The Hudson". Wonderful film.

[thisisyourauthorspeaking]

Would like to resolve a debate with a roommate :)

How likely is it that a random person with no previous flight experience could land a plane in the event the pilot became incapacitated?

How about a 747 vs a small aircraft? (Since commercial airliners now have so much automation and can practically land themselves)

What about a 747 if autopilot stopped working? How likely could someone with good hand eye coordination (and can drive a car well) land the plane by manual control only?

Say you took control and attempted to land, hit the runway odd and broke the landing gear, causing the plane fuselage to hit the ground and slide to a stop. Are planes resilient enough that everyone would still be alive? What are the chances of casualties in this case (and at what speed thresholds)?

If you've played Battlefield or such games, how close are the flight controls there to flight simulators or actual flight? Video games are obviously designed for player experience and realism, but if you are used to those controls, would you have ingrained bad habits trying to learn to fly an actual plane?

And finally, according to my roommate (who has no flight experience whatsoever but provides me infinite entertainment with claims that he can fly a plane): "when you land, you can't shallowly glide into the runway for a landing because you'll lose too much airspeed. You need to approach, take a sharp dive, and then level out before you land". Please rate that statement on a scale of 0 to flaming make-shit-up.

Thank you very much!

Alright, I'll break this answer into a few sections:

(Full disclosure, I don't fly airliners, but I am still certified as a commercial pilot and am drawing conclusions from my professional knowledge.)

Layperson saving the day by landing the plane:

In an airliner? Not a chance in hell. While there is an element of truth to the belief that an airliner can "land itself", the process to set it up is highly complex, and one wrong step can screw the rest of it up.

First, you need to get into the cockpit. For the sake of this ask, let's say the flight attendant knows about some super-duper-secret-hypothetical override to open the door from the outside. Otherwise, this plan is dead in the water.

With autopilot

Misconception number one: Autopilot flies the plane for you.

Autopilot doesn't know your intentions. Autopilot has no self-preservation instincts. The only thing autopilot knows is the course that the person at the controls programmed in, qualified or not.

Autopilot will keep you on course, but it's the pilot's job to make sure that the course being set doesn't send the plane into the side of a mountain, or in the completely wrong direction.

There is a sliver of truth to the idea that an airplane will "land itself", but in order to set it up, it requires a few steps from a qualified pilot that knows what they're doing.

Now, in order for autoland to even work, it has to be paired with a set of antennas on the ground at the desired airport, called an Instrument Landing System, or ILS for short. In order for the autoland system to receive the signal from the ILS, the pilot must tune the navigation radios to the frequency published on a map that looks like this, in addition to setting courses and programming the navigation computer.

Needless to say, if you're not trained to read these, then you'll have a hell of a time setting up the approach.

Additionally, you need to then configure the autopilot to pair with the ILS.

Here's an exercise for you and your roommate: without looking it up, find the radio panel and autopilot control in the cockpit of this Airbus A320, one of the most common airliners today:

Let's say you do find it - what buttons do you push, in what order? Do one of them wrong, and it won't work.

Misconception number two: Air traffic control can help you fly the plane.

ATCs are not pilots, and they can't tell you how to set it up or what buttons to push. All they can do is tell you where you are, give you headings to fly, and give you landing priority due to your emergency.

How do you configure the airplane? How and when do you extend flaps? What's the maximum safe flap extension speed? How and when do you extend the landing gear? What's the maximum safe gear extension speed? Autopilot won't do that for you.

TL;DR: Sure, the plane could land itself, but that requires a series of inputs that a layperson is highly unlikely to know how to do.

Without autopilot

Let's say you accidentally push the wrong button on the stick while trying to declare an emergency. Congratulations! You are now flying the plane manually!

Now it's up to you to manage airspeed, power setting, altitude, pitch attitude, vertical speed, heading, and course.

ATC can still give you headings to point the nose in, and they may even get you lined up with a runway, but it's up to you to slow down to a safe speed, and configure the plane for landing.

Misconception number three: you can slow an airplane down just by pulling the throttle back.

Step one of slowing down is to reduce engine power. But, if that's all you do, then the airplane will keep the speed it's trimmed for, and just nose down to maintain it. The second piece of this puzzle is to pull back on the stick, just enough to maintain altitude.

But, there's a catch: At slow enough airspeeds, you enter what's called the "region of reverse command", wherein the controls seem "backwards" - you're adjusting your pitch (angle of nose up/down) to manage your airspeed, and you're adjusting your power to manage your altitude. This is highly counterintuitive to someone with no training, and when done incorrectly, can cause the airplane to stall and dramatically nose down.

Echoing above: How do you configure the airplane? How and when do you extend flaps? What's the maximum safe flap extension speed? How and when do you extend the landing gear? What's the maximum safe gear extension speed?

If you extend those at the wrong time, then they'll do far more harm than good.

If you're too fast on final approach, you'll sail right past the runway and end up crashing into whatever's behind it.

If you're too slow on final approach, you'll stall before you reach the runway and crash into the ground.

TL;DR: Hand-flying to a safe landing is a skill that needs to be honed and practiced regularly, and a layperson would not be able to do it without help.

Small plane

There is only one one case I know of in which a layperson managed to land a small plane, but this was only possible because of a few factors:

It was a clear day, and the man was able to navigate by landmarks on the ground.

There was no door between the man and the cockpit.

It was a small plane with simple controls.

Air traffic control knew a pilot, and relayed that number to the man in the plane.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Like I said above, air traffic controllers are not pilots. Additionally, there is no "hotline" that passengers can call to get talked down to a safe landing. This was just an extremely lucky "I know a guy" situation.

TL;DR: It can only happen if everything goes perfectly.

Gear-up landing

Let's say that somehow, your roommate managed to get the airplane to the runway with everything going exactly to plan, and with no help. But, oh no! The landing gear is broken!

No biggie. Gear-up landings happen all the time, and they're perfectly survivable. I actually know someone who was in one (in a small plane), and the biggest thing was how embarrassed he was. In the case of an airliner, the primary threat is getting everyone off the plane due to the possibility of a fuel leak.

Video games/flight sims

Games like Battlefield or Ace Combat are not at all accurate to the real handling of an airplane, and have no value as a training tool. However, they're inaccurate enough that the skills don't translate over, and you don't really get any bad habits from playing them.

What really trips people up when learning to fly are games like MSFS or X-Plane, because they're just realistic enough to mimic how planes actually fly, but the way that they're presented and controlled can teach tons of bad habits, such as:

Focusing too much on the instrument panel, and not looking outside at the horizon

Not using rudder or trim (important for smooth, coordinated flight)

Not preparing them for emergencies (ever notice how just about every MSFS flight has clear skies and perfect visibility?)

Exacerbating the dunning-kruger effect by presenting the games as hyper-realistic and good for training, when that is not the case

Because most MSFS players are attracted to the airliners, there is the chance that what they're "learning" about flying is not applicable to the fundamentals, which have to be done in a small plane.

Because of this, I actually discourage students from using home flight simulators to practice maneuvers, because not only are they not getting an accurate feel for the airplane, but they also may be doing the maneuver incorrectly and letting it go unchecked.

Simulators which are used specifically for flight training have to meet a specific set of regulations, one of which is to have an "instructor station" where the instructor can monitor the student's performance, and also practice scenarios that the student themselves cannot predict.

Landing flare

Your roommate's explanation is mostly incorrect.

When an airplane is on final approach, it is approaching the beginning of the runway at an angle of approximately 3 degrees, and following a system of lights called a VASI (visual approach slope indicator) to keep it on this 3 degree glide slope.

So, it is a rather shallow angle. Once the airplane has followed the glide slope and is now a few feet above the runway, the pilot executes a maneuver called a "flare" in which they pull the nose up in order to bleed off the rest of their speed.

When the pilot flares for landing, the airplane was already at a nice, slow speed for landing. If the pilot attempts to keep their speed up, then it will take much longer for the flare to bleed off their airspeed and make the airplane touch down gently.

If the flare is too aggressive, the airplane will "balloon" and fly higher above the runway, at which point the solution is to apply full power, circle around, and try again.

If your roommate were to "take a sharp dive, and then level out before you land", then they run the risk of either a) ballooning, or, because they gained so much speed from that dive, b) floating too far down the runway and potentially not having enough room to touch down and stop. if they really fuck it up, then they'll land nose-gear first, possibly damaging the wheel or even losing control and veering off the runway.

My overall opinion of your roommate:

From what you've said, they do seem to have a genuine interest in aviation, but they're misinformed by pop culture, aviation influencers, and MSFS.

My suggestion to the roomie: Their homework from this Tumblr flight instructor is to find a nearby flight school, and ask if they do discovery flights. You'll get to actually fly the plane, and you may catch the same aviation bug that I caught. We could always use more pilots!

[thisisyourauthorspeaking]

How To Write A Plane Crash

So. Your blorbos are on a plane, and something horrible needs to happen during that flight for the plot to move forward. Let's talk about it first.

- Does it even need to be a crash?

TL;DR: Plane crashes are very rare, and most of the time, when something happens, the solution is to Just Land The Plane.

First things first, consider why exactly this plot calls for a plane crash. Are you killing off a character(s)? Does the cast get stuck in the wilderness? Is it a canon event?

If it isn't something to that tune, then some possibilities that may better suit the plot include:

Diversion, where the airplane lands at a different airport because it can't land at the originally planned airport for any number of reasons. There is no imminent danger to anyone on board. Think weather along the route, emergency at the airport, weather at the airport doesn't allow a safe landing, etc.

Precautionary landing, where the crew decides to land the plane at the nearest practical airport to avoid a risky situation from developing further. There is still no danger to anyone on board, but there's a situation which may cause problems, such as an unusual indication on one of the instruments, strange noise, or deteriorating weather.

Emergency landing, where there is an imminent danger and the plane needs to be on the ground as soon as possible, be it an airport or not. Contrary to popular belief, the majority of emergency landings are completed with no injuries or deaths to anyone on board. Situations which call for an emergency landing include malfunctioning equipment, power loss, engine failure, onboard fire, violent passengers, or any other dramatized, scary-sounding "plane problem". More on this later.

Still want it to be a big, fiery crash that kills people and traumatizes the survivors? Onward!

- Why is the plane crashing?

TL;DR: Unexpected situation + human error = plane crash.

Air travel is, statistically speaking, the single safest mode of transportation on the planet. You're more likely to die in a traffic accident during the drive to or from the airport.

The single most common cause of fatal airplane crashes, regardless of the type of airplane, is human error. The average airliner has tons of redundancies, safety systems, self-tests, and fail-safes that all have to go wring in order for a mechanical issue to be the sole cause of a plane crash.

The most common phase of flight where an airplane crashes is either just after takeoff, or just before scheduled landing. It's rare for a crash to happen during cruise.

Yes, Boeing has these safety systems too - the airplanes themselves are very well-designed; the reason they're falling apart is due to humans cutting corners during manufacturing.

Some fatal crashes determined by investigators to be caused primarily by human error:

Air France Flight 447, although initially caused by an issue with the airspeed sensor, became a fatal crash when the pilots grossly mishandled the situation and caused the airplane to enter an aerodynamic stall, where it then hit the ocean.

KLM Flight 4805 and Pan Am Flight 1736, where the captain of the KLM flight began takeoff under the mistaken belief that he was cleared to do so, and subsequently crashed into the Pan Am flight, which was cleared for takeoff from a crossing runway at that time.

N3590T, a twin-engine private plane, where the pilot attempted to fly around a thunderstorm without understanding the limitations of the airplane's weather information display, nor grasping the true severity of the weather.

Notice a common theme among the incidents I posted - the incident starts with a minor hiccup, such as a sensor icing over, fog being too dense to see the other plane, or weather popping up along the route of flight, but the true cause of the crash is the pilot's failure to properly handle the situation.

This is how almost every fatal crash happens, and this is why a huge part of flight training revolves around drilling emergency situations into your head. My instructors did it to me, and I am doing it to my students. Because of this training, so many minor issues are prevented from ending in tragedy, but humans are not infallible - that is when incidents like these happen.

- "But that sounds like a hand-wave! Are there any freak accidents that kinda work?"

TL:DR: The things that cause full-blown plane crashes usually don't make for a juicy, dramatic headline.

Okay, we can work with this. Freak accidents are fun to write, but also exceedingly rare.

First things first: For the love of whoever's up there, DON'T use any of these reasons for a plane crash (unless you pair it with human error, but this section is for if you think human error is boring):

Turbulence: No properly-designed and tested airplane can be brought down solely by turbulence; the engineers know that turbulence is a thing and build the airplanes to handle it unscathed.

Mid-air collision: If the airplane is flying under instrument navigation, and in controlled airspace, it is ATC's sole job to make sure this doesn't happen, and it's almost impossible for an airliner to be involved in one given all of the safeguards in place. Of the mid-air collisions that do happen, most of them are at low altitude, near airports, and between small propeller planes.

Engine failure: Airplanes are perfectly capable of flying with one engine out of commission, and even with both engines gone, it's still perfectly possible to glide down to a safe landing spot. (NOTE: This situation may work if it's a small propeller plane, like a Cessna or a biplane. Even then, it should still be combined with another risk factor such as nighttime, flying in/over clouds, over wilderness/open water, etc.)

Engine fire: Although this warrants an emergency landing, the airplane's systems are fully capable of containing and putting out the fire before it spreads to the rest of the airplane. Looks scary, but once the fuel is shut off and the fire suppression is doing its magic, it just becomes a game of limping to an airport.

Terrorism/Hijacking: No. There's a big fuck-off bulletproof door between the crew and the rest of the cabin, and it can only be unlocked from the cockpit. (I'll save my rant about the TSA for another post.)

Now, let's talk about some incidents that were not preventable by crew action:

Flight control failure: United Airlines Flight 232 is a flight in which a freak mechanical failure caused simultaneous failure of all three hydraulic systems, resulting in a complete loss of steering control. 2/3 of people onboard survived, but this was only due to emergency management far beyond what any pilot trains for, and the help of an off-duty pilot traveling as a passenger.

Explosive decompression: In an explosive decompression, the pressurization system has failed, and it's typically accompanied by a large hull breach. The part about this scenario that makes it especially dangerous is the fact that at the altitude commercial airliners cruise at, the pilots may have 8 to 10 seconds at most to don their oxygen masks. If they fail, then there is nobody flying the plane.

Inflight wing separation: N106ER, a single-engine trainer airplane, lost a wing during final approach to an airport when practicing landings. The investigation concluded that this happened due to repetitive stress on the airplane's hull, which progressively worsened and was not able to be detected during annual inspections or preflight safety checks. IMPORTANT NOTE: THIS CANNOT HAPPEN TO AN AIRLINER - THEY ARE DESIGNED TO MUCH HIGHER SAFETY STANDARDS

All of these incidents were freak accidents that are, by their nature, unpredictable and not preventable. Therefore, I emphatically advise you to either a) stick to the human error formula above, or b) send me an ask with as much detail as you can, requesting information as to if or how it can be made believable.

Happy writing!

[thisisyourauthorspeaking]

NOTE: Although I am a government-certified flight instructor, nothing I say on this blog constitutes flight instruction.

THIS BLOG IS FOR WRITING ADVICE AND BASIC EXPLANATIONS ONLY - I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT YOU DO WITH THE INFORMATION I GIVE YOU!

YOU WILL DIE IF YOU TRY TO FLY A PLANE WITHOUT PROPER TRAINING

Hello!

My name is Azuko, and outside of tumblr, I'm a flight instructor!

What motivated me to create this blog was seeing rampant misconceptions and inaccuracies about aviation and air travel in various fics and pieces of media.

So, given that I get paid to teach people to fly, I figured it could be fun to make a tumblr blog where I ramble about flying and provide advice for writing accurate situations involving airplanes.

My area of expertise is fixed-wing light aircraft, but being a flight instructor, it is my job to know how to find appropriate sources for information about any aircraft or topic related to flight safety.