Airplanes


by Iuri Tarabanov - Date: 2007-01-23 - Word Count: 754 Share This!

I've been flying airplanes since I was born minimum once a year with my parents. Of course as a passenger, but I have a dream at least once in my life to fly a plane or a helicopter as a pilot. That is a dream of many children born in a Soviet Union and most of them of course were thrown by the life far away from this dream, but if I'd manage it once - that would be a dream in my life that came true.

Once I've been flying with some East-European airline company from Frankfurt to one city in East Europe and there was a time when due to some misunderstandings between that airline company and Frankfurt airport management or something like this - there were no direct flights from Frankfurt to my destination. And I had to take a plane to Prague and from Prague - with the airplane of that East-European airline to my destination.

To that moment of time these were some propeller-driven machines bought already used from some other airlines and those were sometimes apparently old ones. So, my another regular flight, about 20 passengers on board, one stewardess, and two pilots. Everything seems to be alright, I've been flying since my childhood and I'm feeling good, lucky to see my friends in a couple of hours, we drive to the runway, approval for the flight is received, what I can hear through the open door of the pilot cabin. Strange, isn't it? I am not sure about the international flight regulations but the the cabin door I think must be closed during the flight.

So we start running along the runway, and after we have climbed about 50 meters, the plane suddenly takes almost vertical position and we start climbing like a jet warplane. And that is all with the open cabin door and without panic, as if it was a quite normal takeoff. After I think 5 seconds of such maneuvers we were climbing normally, just as usual. I took a glance around me to see the reaction of the other passengers on that, but everybody was quite calm. The funniest thing was that those 2 stunt-pilots have started the descent the same way. And again everything was appreciated nice and easy by the passengers.

Do you know that the hardest thing in any flight is? It is the landing. To take a plane off wouldn't take much. Fly the route and make some turns or even some more complicated maneuvers is also not a great task. But the landing is that very same period where a small mistake can lead to catastrophe. A great pilot, of course if the weather conditions are good and it is daytime, would land a huge airliner or small Cessna so that you barely notice it. But not all pilots can do that. Maybe, if you were flying, you have noticed that in some countries, maybe in your also, there is a custom to applause to the pilots after the successful landing. I, as a Soviet-grown one, didn't know about this custom till my first flight to Europe. After some time I've had the opportunity to try out for some hours the Microsoft Flight Simulator, where as told by many specialists, the process of piloting is more close to the reality than ever. Guess how many landing attempts I've made on the simplest Cessna before I managed it without crashing the plane? About a dozen!

Actually, one should not be afraid of flying, because international statistic tells us that from automobile catastrophes lots of people are dying every day and airplane crashes are not quite a frequent stories. So it is relatively more safe to fly rather than to drive or use any other land-transport. But if you think of it from another point of view - that if in the air something goes wrong - a chance to survive is fast zero. Because when you hear from the news that an airplane is down, you usually hear the amount of dead passengers and not the percentage of those who survived and those who did not. And when we think about the land-transport, we believe that the catastrophes is going to be recognizable at least some seconds before it happens and you will be able to act to get escaped. Of course, it is all the matter of luck and destiny and one should decide on his own. But surely, those who never flied, should definitely try this out.

Have a nice flight with all the airlines of the world.


Related Tags: flights, airlines, experience, pilots, airplanes

Iuri Tarabanov writes about interesting travel experiences. His travel site is http://www.travelime.com

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