If things went belly up at 35,000 feet whilst you were strapped into a huge metal flying machine somewhere over the Earth, would you want to be informed of possible disaster? Or would you prefer not knowing?
Brace for impact.
Those are three words you definitely don’t want to hear when you’re seated in a plane, flying through the air.
But according to aviation experts, you probably won’t even hear a peep from a pilot if you’re seconds away from disaster. That’s because there usually isn’t enough time in those crucial moments to alert both the crew and passengers that there’s a bit of a problem.
Well, so say aviation experts and pilots from all over the world who responded to a question posed on the online community forum Quora, namely, “If a plane crash is certain, are the passengers informed?”
Source: www.businessinsider.com
As one Quora user commented, sometimes there are only seconds between the discovery of a problem and hitting the ground, like what happened with British Airways Flight 38, which crashed just short of the runway at London’s Heathrow Airport in 2008 after flying 8,100 kilometres from Beijing, China.
Thankfully there were no fatalities from the crash, but the pilot was only able to declare an emergency to the control tower only a few seconds before landing.
Indeed, according to one expert,
Source: www.cnn.com
However, if pilots do have some time up their sleeves to alert the crew and passengers of a crash landing, it most probably won’t be anything more than “brace for impact,” which were the words uttered by the pilot just before US Airways Flight 1549 crash landed into NYC’s Hudson River in January 2009.
“Bottom line: either the crew is way too busy trying to hold things together to say anything over the PA, or the passengers will be told whatever’s appropriate to readying them for what’s to come.”
Tom Farrier,
Other users were quick to point out that plane crashes are rarely certain, and a pilot’s first priority is flying the plane and handling the emergency to prevent a disaster. Another user who worked for a well-known American carrier revealed that passengers will never be told a plane crash is certain – no matter how dire the situation appears to be.
One helicopter crash survivor even revealed that their crash landing occurred with not a single word uttered: “We were never informed beforehand. The whole thing took place without a word. Not one OMG. Not one ‘we’re gone die.”
But really, would you really want to know that things were about to take a turn for the worse? After all, apart from adopting the brace position and hoping to god that you survive, there’s little you can do in a plane crash…
