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  The Flying Book

  Copyright © 2003 by David Blatner

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

  First published in the United States of America in 2003 by Walker Publishing Company, Inc.

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Walker & Company, 435 Hudson Street, New York, New York, 10014

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Blatner, David.

  The flying book: everything you’ve ever wondered about flying on airplanes/Blatner.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references.

  ISBN 0-8027-9867-5

  1. Aeronautics, Commercial—Popular works. 2. Aeronautics—History—Popular works. 3. Airplanes—Popular works. I. Title.

  TL546.7 B58 2003

  387.7—dc21 2002038089

  Visit Walker & Company’s Web site at

  www.walkerbooks.com

  and The Flying Book Web site at

  www.theflyingbook.com

  The line art on p.ii is an illustration of Jacob

  Degen’s Flugmaschine, Vienna 1807.

  The highest anyone has ever jumped into the air is 8 feet .5 inches (2.4 meters).

  FOR MY MOTHER, BARBARA BLATNER-FIKES,

  WHO TAUGHT ME TO ALWAYS ASK QUESTIONS.

  Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of the earth

  And danced the skies of laughter-silver wings;

  Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

  Of sun-split clouds—and done a hundred things

  You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung

  Hung in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,

  I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung

  My eager craft through footless halls of air.

  Up, up the long, delirious burning blue

  I’ve topped the windswept heights with easy grace

  Where never lark, or even eagle flew.

  And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod

  The high untrespassed sanctity of space,

  Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

  —Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee, Jr. Royal Canadian Air Force

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction: The Joy of Flying

  How Do Airplanes Work?

  How Airplanes Fly— What Is Air?— Parts of an Airplane— Airplane Engines— The Sound Barrier— How Fast Does It Fly?— The Gimli Glider— Birds Do It, Bees Do It…

  The Skyways

  Weather— Turbulence— Air Traffic Control—From Point A to Point B

  Things That Go Bump in the Flight

  Bumps and Noises of a Typical Flight—The Trouble with Cell Phones—Tips for Anxious Flyers—Staying Healthy in the Air—Flight Attendants

  Behind Cockpit Doors

  What Are Those Pilots Up To?—Cockpit Instruments—Weight and Balance— Runways

  The Fear Factor

  Flight Statistics—Why Airplanes Sometimes Crash—Be Prepared: What You Can Do to Survive an Emergency—The Media’s Fascination with Airline Disasters—Less Stress, More Fun

  Behind the Scenes at the Airline

  Scheduled Departures—Airplane Food—The Trouble with Toilets—Fill ’Er Up: Airplane Fuel—Airport Security—Luggage—Deregulation and Ticket Prices

  Building Airplanes

  Making Airplanes—The Boeing 747—Aircraft Maintenance

  Flying Through History

  A Brief History of Flight—The Wright Brothers—Lindbergh: The Lone Eagle

  Other Flying Machines

  Airships and Helicopters—The Aircar and Other Oddities

  Epilogue: The Future of Flying

  Appendix: Identifying Airplanes

  For More Information

  Art Credits

  Index

  The airplane has unveiled for us the true face of the earth.

  —Antoine de Saint-Exupéry,

  WIND, SAND, AND STARS

  He rode upon a cherub, and did fly: yea, he did fly upon the wings of the wind.

  —Psalms 18:10

  Acknowledgments

  It is a pleasure to acknowledge the kind and generous help I have received from so many people in the process of writing this book. Special thanks go to my editor, Liza Blue, my agent, Reid Boates, book designer Maura Rosenthal, and the folks at Walker & Company, including George Gibson and Marlene Tungseth. My lead technical reviewers, Captain Cal MacDonald and Captain Sandy Niles, provided help beyond the call of duty. For behind-the-scenes glimpses of airline operations, I’d especially like to thank Jack Walsh, Barbara Balatico, and pilots Chris Mennella and Craig Wirfs at Alaska Airlines; John Hotard and Ben Kristy at American Airlines; and Michael Olsen and Don Martin at Delta Airlines.

  For answers to an unending stream of questions, thanks to Don Sellers, Scott Eberhardt, Jef Raskin, Paul Stern, Keith Hagstette, J. C. Cuevas, Brian Lawler, Jim Sugar, Jack Tinkel; Kristine Kaske and Bob Dreesen at the archives of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, Jack Walker at the NASM restoration facility; Janice Baker at the Seattle Museum of Flight; and Sandra Angers and Debbie Heathers at Boeing Corporation. My great appreciation also to the folks at the Seattle-Tacoma Fear of Flying Clinic, Barbara Schaetti, and the barristas at Diva Espresso and various Starbucks locations who helped provide the steam to keep going.

  Finally, my deepest thanks to my wife, Debbie, our son, Gabriel, and my parents, Barbara Blatner-Fikes, Richard Fikes, Adam and Allee Blatner, and Don and Snookie Carlson, for their never-ending support and love.

  Introduction

  The Joy of Flying

  One of the most fascinating facts about flying in airplanes is that while almost everybody does it, relatively few people really understand how it works. True, most people who drive aren’t automotive engineers either, but it’s not difficult to intuit more or less how a car works. Airplanes, on the other hand, just seem like magic.

  Although flying isn’t actually magic, it is like a really good magic trick. Like plucking a rabbit from a hat, pilots use precision and excellent timing to succeed in pulling off a stunt that is plainly, obviously impossible and yet somehow works. Our bodies do their part to sustain a sense of illusion: Our organs weren’t designed to handle the conflicting sensations we feel in flight, so it can feel like you’re dropping when the aircraft is actually rising, and you can fly in circles and not feel the turn. Airlines do their part, too, by creating a carefully controlled environment: You take a seat in a room with small windows, have dinner, maybe watch a movie, and when you leave you just happen to find yourself in a new city.

  Some folks love suspending their disbelief and sit happily trusting that their 800,000-pound jumbo jet will lift off the ground and safely take them to their destination. Most people, however, sit with a certain amount of tension, uncomfortable with trusting their lives to what looks like a trick. Flying is one area in which ignorance is often not bliss, but rather causes a general sense of anxiety among many travelers. In fact, studies show that as few as one in seventeen are totally comfortable when flying, and as many as one in every six people (about 35 million people in the United States) avoid flying whenever possible.

  No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings.

  —William Blake, 1793

  Are those wings supposed to be flexing up and down like that? What was that thump? Will this air turbulence make us crash? What are those pilots doing up there, anyway? These are common questions, even for people who fly
frequently. Fortunately, unlike a magic trick, the more you know about how flying works, the more you can actually enjoy it. That’s where this book comes in.

  The Unbelievable Dream

  One hundred years ago almost nobody on Earth believed that humans would ever be able to fly in heavier-than-air machines. Many prominent scientists proclaimed it impossible and urged aviation researchers to focus instead on more efficient hydrogen-filled balloons to carry passengers from city to city. Their skepticism isn’t surprising; after all, to fly is perhaps humankind’s oldest dream, and several thousand years of failed attempts are likely to cause more than a bit of doubt.

  Historically, the great disappointment that humans couldn’t fly (seemingly the only thing that we couldn’t achieve) translated into the widespread belief that the sky was reserved for the gods. Excavations from ancient Egypt reveal gods and goddesses with wings. There are old Taoist stories of holy men being lifted to the next world by cranes. The Greek philosopher Plato wrote, “The natural function of the wing is to soar upwards and carry that which is heavy up to the place where dwells the race of gods.” And who can forget the Greek tragedy of Icarus, who fell to Earth after his wings melted in the heat of the sun?

  Later, Christian tradition held that angels had wings, and that God stopped Satan from flying by clipping his. Muslims believe that Muhammad was raised to Heaven for a night by a winged horse. In the second millennia, the ability to fly became associated with witchcraft, and images of witches on broomsticks filled many people’s hearts with fear. (Today, the great success of the Harry Potter stories places both witches and flying broomsticks in a much kinder light.)

  In our dreams we are able to fly…and that is a remembering of how we were meant to be.

  —Madeleine L’Engle,

  WALKING ON WATER

  Even the Wright brothers’ historic first powered flight in 1903 couldn’t undo the emotional impact of 3,000 years of human myths. In fact, the invention of the airplane only added to the soup by offering a double-edged sword: On the one side, flying gives people control over their lives, letting them move around the planet faster than ever before; on the other side, it removes passengers from control, opening a Pandora’s box of concerns.

  Twentieth-century Hollywood captured these mixed emotions beautifully, generating a whole new panoply of flying myths. For instance, in the 1950s, the modern-day television hero Sky King could swoop from the sky to overcome villains on the ground. Around the same time, the Twilight Zone showed a young William Shatner battling an elusive gremlin on the wing outside his window, who threatened to crash the airplane. (John Lithgow played this role in the movie of the same name.) The “gremlin” still perfectly reflects many passenger’s irrational fears that develop from misunderstandings about turbulence and why airplanes fly. Over forty years later, many people still find themselves haunted by these televised images.

  The Revealed Mystery

  Of course, flying offers more than a method of travel and a bucket of worries; flying has offered a whole new perspective on our planet and an entirely new way of living our lives. Early pilots noticed that while in flight they could see patterns on the ground that were previously hidden—patterns that revealed secrets. During the First World War, pilots found evidence of old Mesopatamian ruins from the air, and the field of aerial archaeology was born. Similarly, it was only through the use of airplanes that modern geologists and geographers have been able to map and explain many aspects of our planet.

  Flight by machines heavier than air is unpractical and insignificant, if not utterly impossible.

  —Simon Newcomb, 1902

  Today, any passenger can look out an airplane window and discover patterns that no preflight human ever saw. Twisting, searching rivers and ravines snake like immense fractal branches across the countryside…. The high desert displays its glory in 100-mile-long stripes of orange iridescence…. The sharp teeth of mountaintops poke through the shimmering early morning clouds.

  Flying also provides a new perspective on our own civilization. Grand skyscrapers are surprisingly small when seen from an airplane, and their rooftops are often sadly mundane. Conversely, farmlands that seem boring from the ground can take on amazing checkerboard patterns from the sky. As an airplane ascends, everyday objects like cars and houses begin to appear like toys. Then later, at higher altitudes, they become so small that whole cities appear like pieces of a patchwork quilt scattered across the land. Photographs of the Earth from space reveal the ultimate pattern that powered flight offers us: We are all one.

  The Flying Book

  Flying is possible. It’s not magic. It’s not really even a magic trick. The rules of flight are relatively simple, though they can appear overwhelming at first. This book is dedicated to explaining everything you might want to know about the process of flying on commercial airlines—from how airplanes get off the ground, to where your luggage goes after you hand it over at the ticket counter, from how airplanes are built and maintained, to what the pilots are doing behind the cockpit door.

  Up with me! Up with me, into the sky!

  —William Wordsworth, 1805

  Note the word commercial. That means this book doesn’t cover the details of military or general (private, small airplane) aviation. This leaves out a lot: By some reports, of the more than 200,000 airplanes registered in the United States, about 95 percent of them fall into the general aviation category. Nevertheless, the vast majority of flyers are passengers, not pilots. So while this book will be of interest to many pilots, it’s the passengers who will benefit the most.

  You can read the book from front to back, or skip around to the chapters that interest you most. The important thing is that you enjoy both the book and your flight. So sit back, relax, and take it all in.

  It is not necessarily impossible for human beings to fly, but it so happens that God did not give them the knowledge of how to do it. It follows, therefore, that anyone who claims that he can fly must have sought the aid of the devil. To attempt to fly is therefore sinful.

  —Roger Bacon,

  thirteenth-century Franciscan friar

  How Do Airplanes Work?

  There are a number of things that people do everyday that appear to be plainly impossible upon closer examination. For instance, any non-deaf person can hear sound. However, the reason you can hear sound is almost beyond belief. Sound travels because air molecules (which are themselves about 1/100,000 the size of the tiniest speck of dust you can see) bounce into each other like waves rippling on a pond until they reach your ear, where they encounter tiny hairs deep inside your ear that bend with infinitesimally small movements. You hear noises depending on which hairs bend and by how much.

  Similarly, it’s obvious that airplanes can fly. But how? In the next few chapters, you’ll see that aircraft (and birds) fly on those same, invisible air molecules, and that airplane wings, engines, and so on, are all designed to take advantage of these mysterious but powerful forces of nature. Don’t worry; learning how flying works may take away the mystery, but it takes nothing away from the wonder.

  How Airplanes Fly

  If you could read minds, the question you’d hear most often at an airport would be, “How is this thing going to get off the ground?” Whether you’re sitting on the aircraft or watching it from the ground, the idea that a hulking Boeing 747 weighing almost a million pounds could lift off the ground and fly several thousand miles seems not only improbable but simply impossible. Yet obviously, airplanes do fly. And if there’s anything more astonishing than the fact that these behemoths can fly, it is how they do it. In fact, the more you learn about how airplanes fly, the less possible it seems.

  Of course, any physical action, when investigated too closely, leads to doubt. Have you ever stopped to consider how you walk? Your left leg moves forward until you’re about to fall, but your foot nimbly catches you while your right leg swings forward, shifting your weight into equilibrium…. The more you think about the hundreds
of tiny physical adjustments that must be made each second—the impulses moving through nerves, the pumping of oxygenated blood to the legs, the flexing of the abdominal muscles, and so on—the more shocking it is that we can pull it off.

  Sir James Matthew Barrie, best known for his play Peter Pan, once wrote that the “reason birds can fly and we can’t is simply that they have perfect faith, for to have faith is to have wings.” Fortunately, faith alone doesn’t keep airplanes in the sky. The explanation is much more mystifying.

  Don’t Rely on Bernoulli

  Almost everyone learns in elementary or secondary school that airplanes fly because of something called the Bernoulli effect: The wings are curved on top and flat on the bottom, forcing the air to travel farther, and therefore faster, over the wing than under it. Eighteenth-century Swiss mathematician Daniel Bernoulli discovered that the faster a fluid moves, the lower its pressure. The result: There’s less pressure above the wing than under it, and so the airplane gets sucked upward into the sky.

  Unfortunately, this is only part of the explanation; it doesn’t describe how airplanes can fly upside down, or how airplanes with wings that have little or no camber (difference in curve between the top and bottom) can fly at all. This over-simplified interpretation of the Bernoulli effect also implies that the air moving over and under the wing must magically “rejoin” at the trailing edge of the wing (some teachers say the air moves over the wing faster so that it can “catch up” with the air moving under the wing). Wind tunnel experiments show that this is a fallacy—surprisingly, the air above the wings accellerates so quickly that it actually reaches the back of the wing before the air below the wings.

  Don’t feel bad if you have relied on this “simplified Bernoulli” explanation up to now—even the famous physicist Albert Einstein was fooled into believing it. In 1917, when Einstein was hired by a prominent German airplane company to design a new, highly aerodynamic wing, he created the cat’s back airfoil—a nearly triangular wing that forced air to travel much farther over the top of the wing than under it. After it was tested and shown to be spectacularly ineffective, Einstein was never again asked to design aircraft parts. Years later, he admitted that his was a failure of “a man who thinks a lot but reads little.”