Friday newsletters always feature luxury travel contests, tips, series or news.
Today (December 8, 2017): Travel tip: Suffering from fear of flying over water? Here’s what you need to know
Followers of my blog know that I suffer from fear of flying, which is especially bad when flying over large bodies of water. Although totally irrational, it does make sense to some extent from an anxious passenger’s perspective, as the difference between flying over water and over land is the absence of a suitable airport underneath in the unlikely scenario that something goes wrong (e.g. engine failure, onboard fire, etc …). Flying over the Atlantic or the Pacific Ocean is a real challenge for me, since the knowledge that there’s no diversion point close by makes me feel extremely uncomfortable, often to the point that I take a light tranquilizer (which rarely helps). I recently flew to Hawaii, a travel itinerary which made me nervous even weeks prior to departure (the stress almost made me cancel that trip). The Hawaiian Islands are often described as the most remote landmass on earth, and although that claim to fame belongs to Easter Island, the Hawaiian archipelago is still one of the islands farthest away from any continental land mass. Flights from the USA West Coast to Hawaii take 5 to 6 hours, depending upon the head winds and the city of departure (San Francisco is located closest to the islands), so it means that at the point of no return, you’re 2,5 up to 3 hours away from land. I don’t know if others also suffer from a similar kind of ‘over-water-flying fear’ (feel free to leave a comment).
To put things in perspective and to emphasize how safe over water flights actually are, I have asked an expert in the field the questions I can’t stop thinking about when flying over the ocean. Lode is an Airbus A320 captain who has more than 14,000 flight hours and 19 years of experience as a pilot. With a background as a training pilot, he attaches great importance to excellent communication with both passengers and colleagues, and promotes general aviation safety as he traverses the airspace. I asked Captain Lode the following questions:
- Can a plane fly on one engine?
- What is ETOPS?
- Can a plane contain a fire when flying across the ocean?
- Are pilots trained for ditching a plane on the water
- Can a plane land on water in case of an emergency?
- Is there a difference between flying overwater in a narrow or wide body aircraft?
