Former pilot explains the two main reasons a plane might crash
A former airline captain has revealed the very 'human' reasons behind plane crashes, reassuring the only reason you 'hear about it when it happens is because it's so rare'.
Emma Henderson is a former airline captain who has been flying planes for over 30 years. And given her years of experience, you should certainly take her word for why despite the constant headlines in relation to plane crashes, they're nowhere near as common as many have come to believe - particularly in the wake of the devastating Learjet crash in Florida last week.
Quickly debunking the 'myth' in conversation with LADbible Stories, the former pilot stated 'planes don't normally crash' and argued 'the only reason you hear about it when it happens is because it's so rare and it's really big news'.
And there's 'usually' two main reasons why 'a plane might crash'.
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The first? 'Human error or human intervention'.
Emma exemplified an incident in 2015 in which there was a murder-suicide on a European airline which caused the death of 150 people.
What happened? Well, Emma broke down exactly what the pilot did in the situation and what procedures have since been put into place to reduce the chance of such a tragedy occurring again.
Emma explained the flight saw 'a pilot deliberately disconnected the autopilot' and fly 'the plane into the ground'.
She reassured: "As a result of that, the aviation industry responded immediately and put in place lots of different things in terms of psychiatric assessments, but also put in place measures in the flight deck to make sure that nobody can lock somebody out of the cockpit.
"All of the measures that were put in place after that were to prevent something like that happening again."
And the second reason a plane 'might' crash?
"Some sort of mechanical failure," Emma said.
The former pilot quickly reassured it's 'really unusual,' emphasising just how carefully planes are checked by drawing comparisons with how people use and drive cars.
Emma said: "So before you go and drive your car, do you walk all the way around it, check all the tyres? When did you last check the oil in your car?
"All of those things are things that you don't check and yet you quite happily go and sit in your car, you might drive it up the motorway and you might have a tyre that's soft, or you might have no oil in the engine.
"The only thing you're likely to check is how much fuel have you got?"
Compare this to flying where 'every single time,' the team does 'a full walk around, a visual inspection of the aircraft to make sure that there's nothing out of place' and also writes down 'things like oil levels that's monitored in a log that's kept on board the aircraft and a copy of it is given to someone on the ground as well' and you are far safer in a plane than in a car.
And it's not only that either, Emma revealing an engineer also 'comes and effectively gives [the aircraft] an MOT every single night'.
When asked by a nervous flyer what pilots could accidentally do wrong to prompt a crash, Emma reflected it would 'most likely' be if a pilot isn't 'focusing properly on the job' and has 'something else going on in their life,' but reassures it's 'worth remembering' there are two pilots in a cockpit 'for a reason'.
Not only this, but Emma revealed pilots often 'report' on themselves if they make a mistake.
She stressed that mistakes often aren't 'dangerous to the aircraft', and they're only reported so it 'doesn't become a bigger problem down the line if it doesn't get caught', for example, flying somewhere a bit 'too fast'.
Topics: Plane, World News
Poppy Bilderbeck
