If I wanted to fly before...

[Celethiel]

http://travel.yahoo.com/ideas/at-these-10-thrilling-airports--landing-is-a-big-part-of-the-adventure-232036749.html

I certianly don't now

and some of these places I am surprised they havent' had some horrific accident...

[Kitt]

"Try not to sink more than 10" into the ice"?  And just how the %#$@#$ is a pilot supposed to do that?

[Ron]

I've had the pleasure of landing and take off from the old Hong Kong airport. When coming in at night, you could look out your window and see into the skyscrapers right outside next to you. Very cool and fun. Of course there were an awfully lot of wonky landings there over the years. Now you have to land way outside and take a train ride or a long cab ride in.

[Zombie]

and some of these places I am surprised they havent' had some horrific accident...

 

no need to be surprised - they have

 

Madeira Funchal Airport

Boeing 727 - 164 killed

 

 

Caravelle - 36 killed

 

 

Kai Tak Airport accident

 

 

Ketchikan International Airport accident

Boeing 747 - only 1 person killed!

 

 

I've had the pleasure of landing and take off from the old Hong Kong airport. When coming in at night, you could look out your window and see into the skyscrapers right outside next to you. Very cool and fun. Of course there were an awfully lot of wonky landings there over the years. Now you have to land way outside and take a train ride or a long cab ride in.

 

Ron wasn't exaggerating

 

 

 

(the airport has since closed - where's the fun in that? )

 

 

But a big danger at any airport is wind - cross winds, wind shear. Imagine being a passenger on this Lufthansa as the 24 yo novice pilot makes her first landing attempt ...

 

[FrenchCanadian]

Normally when I fly, I'm more scared of the take off than the landing part....

 

I will say, OMG, I'm really soooo glad that I wasn't in the plan for that landing!

[Celethiel]

in the first black and white picture of Madeira Funchal Airport, i thought it was a map of the the airport from space, and was like OMG no wonder they have such a terrible Airport all those cross ways circling around it... it took a longer look to realize that was the skeleton of a plane.

 

To that German video all i have to say is: Pull up man! pull up! You're not going to make the landing, pull up!!

[Guest Con]

I'd never realized how many accidents happen in the airport.  I've always thought "phew, I'm in the clear" when the airport comes into sight.  I guess now I'll just have to anxiously stare out the window looking for any sign I'm about to die.

[Ron]

You could say the same about your front door but we don't necessarily panic about that all of the time do we. Or, do we? It's all in your comfort level. The only time I have ever truly been surprised was once, when reaching for my drink, the plane hit turbulence and suddenly dropped.  My drink seemed to pop right up into my hand and I grabbed it without spilling a drop. It was pretty cool and scary at the same time.

[thephoenix]

There are many redundancies built into airplanes that make flying one of the safest methods of travel. Every time an accident occurs, a lengthy investigation always follows and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) presents recommendations to the FAA. The reason the media pays so much attention to airplane incidents is because of the high number of fatalities that often accompany a crash. 

 

The science behind flying is actually pretty simple and hopefully this may alleviate some of your concerns. The top of the wing is curved and the bottom of the wing is relatively flat. This is the typical shape of an airfoil. As the airplane moves forward, the air moving across the top of the wing must travel a farther distance than the air flowing along the bottom of the wing. This creates a differential pressure effect with the low pressure on top and high pressure on the bottom. Fluid mechanics will tell you that pressure always moves from high to low. There are no exceptions that I know of to this rule. With this differential pressure, the high pressure wants to equalize with the low pressure, but the wing is in the way. This creates an upward force on the wing.

 

If you look closely at the wing of a small single engine Cessna-172 and compare it with the wing of a Boeing 777, the first thing that may come to mind is the blatantly obvious difference in the size of the wings. The airfoil shape I just mentioned is much flatter than that of a Cessna. The never-exceed speed of a small single engine airplane is typically 170-200 knots. The maximum speed of a Boeing 777 is around 0.89 mach (89% the speed of sound). The faster the plane goes, the faster the air moves alongside the upper and lower side of the wings, and the greater the pressure differential. However, with the speed of a Cessna-type aircraft, there needs to be a greater curvature on the top to compensate for the limited speed of that airplane. 

 

Basically, an airplane moving at 0.89 mach will not stop on a dime. As long as it keeps moving, it will continue to generate upward momentum on the wings, something we in the pilot community call "lift". There are 3 other forces: thrust, weight, and drag. The engines create the thrust - the forward momentum. As the airplane rolls down the runway, picking up more and more speed, the differential pressure between the top and bottom of the wing keeps increasing, generating more and more lift. When lift exceeds the weight of the aircraft, the aircraft leaves the ground. Many transport-type airplanes have more than one engine. In most situations, if one engine were to fail, the airplane can land safely on the remaining engines. However, in the case of complete engine failure such as the Hudson River crash, the no additional thrust is created, but the plane still has forward momentum. The momentum was enough for Capt. Sullenberger to glide down safely into the Hudson River. The chance, however, of losing all engines at the same time is extremely rare.

 

There are many other redundancies built into airplanes to keep the traveling public safe. An airplane will not fall out of the sky like a rock except in cases of extreme structural failure (wing breaking off) or a complete stall. (air separates from the surface of the wing due to excessive angle of attack). The first is extraordinarily rare and the second would be extreme pilot negligence or error. There are many warnings in the cockpit that prevent pilots from stalling. You may have heard the terms "stall horn", "stick shaker" or "stick pusher". The "stick" is the control column that pilots use for controlling the movement of the airplane. Pull on it, and you climb, push on it and you descend. Of course, this is connected mechanically, hydraulically or electronically to the actual flight control surfaces. Stalling a transport airplane is probably one of the career-ending things a pilot can do.

Edited November 9, 2013 by thephoenix

[thephoenix]

It's no secret that takeoff and approach to landing are some of the most dangerous parts of the flight. This is because the airplanes are in relatively close proximity to various obstacles and the airplanes are traveling at a relatively slow speed, requiring the use of secondary flight controls such as flaps and slats to increase the camber and size of the wing to generate more lift to compensate for the reduced speed.

 

At the old airport in Hong Kong, I think pilots used an instrumental landing system (ILS), which is very precise instrumentation that pilots use to perform difficult approaches or land in less-than-optimal visibility conditions. Kai-tak had a reputation, even in the pilot community as a very difficult and dangerous approach. I think only very experienced pilots with tens of thousands of flying hours were permitted to attempt this approach. There are various categories of ILS - CAT I, CAT II and CAT IIIa, IIIb, and IIIc. The higher the category, the more precise the instrumentation. There aren't any CAT IIIc ILS approaches yet, but it would allow for flight operations in zero visibility conditions because of its precision.

Edited November 9, 2013 by thephoenix