2009-06-06, 15:25
DDK
http://inslag.se/journal/2009/6/5/inslag-forklarar-air-france-olyckan.html
(Ursäkta.)
Är själv flygrädd och Air France-olyckan har alla de värsta tänkbara ångestingredienserna, inklusive att flyga över vatten. I vilket fall prenumerar jag på SOAR Newsletters som ett led i att försöka bearbeta min flygrädsla och vill dela med mig av Capt Tom Bunn's visdom:
Air France
Regarding the Air France accident. When someone asks what happened, there is no value in speculation. Airliners are so safe today, with so many backup systems, with so many safety systems, that it becomes difficult to even understand why an accident can ever happen. So when one does, it is hard to understand.
To understand how rare accidents are, you may want to read this article.
The second thing to say is that the media has been as disciplined as a bunch of kindergarteners on Twinkies. The statements made are so absurd that even the stupidest of them should know better. Apparently, with the decline of the newspapers, reports are even stupider than the captain who crashed in Buffalo, whose stupidity was indeed colossal. He deserves a monument. And the reports are worse!
They say the plane was hit by lightning. Whoa. Wasn't this plane out over the Atlantic where there was no radar? Was there someone in a boat looking up and seeing this? No. They just made it up. Why? If there is anything to learn from this, is that what is reported is not to be believed. But shouldn't we have learned that about WMDs? And how Iraq caused 9/11? Will we ever learn that reporters will say anything?
So, was it hit by lightning. Who the hell knows? I don't. You don't. They don't. But if you want to say it or believe it, be my guest.
Was it turbulence? The press wrote about the dreaded ITCZ -- the Intertropical Convergence Zone. Look, gang. I used to fly trips from JFK to Rio once a week. I did that for years. I crossed the ITCZ hundreds and hundreds of times, and yet, I noticed nothing unusual -- ever!
I looked at the weather maps for this flight. Nothing unusual. Other planes were on the route. Nothing to report. At least, nothing from professional pilots. But the professional press has lots to report. Good luck when reading their stuff.
Third, I got lots of emails like this:
"This particular scenario has always been my worst fear . . . .
and:
" . . . it's exactly this horror that we fearful flyers do imagine."
But wait. This accident is an exact match of a person's worst fear. How is that possible when we don't know anything about this accident?
This leads me to believe many people have pre-fabricated terror "movies" in mind and that these movies are just waiting to be activated by anything with the least similarity.
But there were other emails, like this one:
I learned this lesson already thanks to you...I have been meaning to share this story with you but haven't had the time...I guess now is as good a time as any.
This past Feb I was flying home from Newark to Lansing MI, VERY early in the AM immediately following the late evening Buffalo accident that left from Newark, the same airport I was scheduled to depart. As I was getting ready in my hotel room I had the news on where both the local (I was staying in NJ) and national news covered the story and for about 20 seconds I panicked. Then I shut off the TV and said to my self, there is no use imagining the "final" seconds...that is dumb. Stop thinking about it and think about how many flights will leave safely from that airport today. Well I did it and a few other exercises and I actually had a decent two leg flight back. Thanks you so much for your program.
Fourth. If you can look at the news and then not think about the accident again and again, fine. If you can't look at the news and then let it go, don't look. Why? If you repeatedly imagine what happened, you will make it up in your mind that what you imagine actually happened. It didn't. You imagined. You repeatedly imagined. You memorized your imagination, and it became fact.
Fifth. Other emails say this accident has made them worry about their flight. It is interesting how the mind works to connect things where there is no connection. There is no umbilical cord between the Air France plane and your plane. There is no magical link between the two planes. There is no relationship between the two planes.
What is the relationship. The word: "plane". That is the connection. There is no connection at all - much less a causal connection. Yet, in the mind, one crash out in the Atlantic connects to yours.
Are you going to connect the word plane with crash when one plane in five million crashes, but not connect plane with safe flight for the 4,999,999?
You are back to square one because you are not examining your own thinking; you are just throwing connections together based on plane and plane are the same word. One plane crashes, so your plane will crash. Come on.
Of course it is traumatic if you don't distinguish between imagination and reality. That is the key. Take a look at the articles on psychic equivalence in the SOAR Library.
Statistics don't help. Because you don't know in advance if the one in five-million that crashes is going to be yours. The image of the one sticks in the mind; the 4,999,999 don't.
There was a movie when I was a kid called "The Big Carnival". A loser of a journalist happens to be in a town where a child gets stuck in an abandoned well shaft. He realizes he has hit the jackpot because one child is easy for people to identify with; a dozen children less so. So he milks it for everything he can, even delaying the rescue, to get more stories published. So it is the one that makes it hard.
Sixth. The key is to quiet the mind enough to be able to think clearly.
Seventh. If you still think turbulence did it, have a look at this test on the 777 wing on the wing at Boeing and then search youtube for "hurricane hunters".
Eighth. Are foreign-made airliners crashing more? No. Here are stats from airsafe.com (number of fatal accidents per million flights):
A-300 0.54
A-310 1.27
A-320 0.13
Compare that to the 737 at 0.36, the 757 at 0.30, the 767 at 0.40. Based on those numbers, the A-320 compares favorably with all the Boeing-built planes. Comparing the A-330/340 0.0 (obviously this accident is going to change that rate) with the 777. Until this accident, the A-330 was fatal accident-free. The 777 has had an accident but not a fatal one.
Bottom line: focus - at this point - on this accident is pointless.
(Har tagit bort kommersiella referenser och hoppas jag fått med alla.)
(Ursäkta.)
Är själv flygrädd och Air France-olyckan har alla de värsta tänkbara ångestingredienserna, inklusive att flyga över vatten. I vilket fall prenumerar jag på SOAR Newsletters som ett led i att försöka bearbeta min flygrädsla och vill dela med mig av Capt Tom Bunn's visdom:
Air France
Regarding the Air France accident. When someone asks what happened, there is no value in speculation. Airliners are so safe today, with so many backup systems, with so many safety systems, that it becomes difficult to even understand why an accident can ever happen. So when one does, it is hard to understand.
To understand how rare accidents are, you may want to read this article.
The second thing to say is that the media has been as disciplined as a bunch of kindergarteners on Twinkies. The statements made are so absurd that even the stupidest of them should know better. Apparently, with the decline of the newspapers, reports are even stupider than the captain who crashed in Buffalo, whose stupidity was indeed colossal. He deserves a monument. And the reports are worse!
They say the plane was hit by lightning. Whoa. Wasn't this plane out over the Atlantic where there was no radar? Was there someone in a boat looking up and seeing this? No. They just made it up. Why? If there is anything to learn from this, is that what is reported is not to be believed. But shouldn't we have learned that about WMDs? And how Iraq caused 9/11? Will we ever learn that reporters will say anything?
So, was it hit by lightning. Who the hell knows? I don't. You don't. They don't. But if you want to say it or believe it, be my guest.
Was it turbulence? The press wrote about the dreaded ITCZ -- the Intertropical Convergence Zone. Look, gang. I used to fly trips from JFK to Rio once a week. I did that for years. I crossed the ITCZ hundreds and hundreds of times, and yet, I noticed nothing unusual -- ever!
I looked at the weather maps for this flight. Nothing unusual. Other planes were on the route. Nothing to report. At least, nothing from professional pilots. But the professional press has lots to report. Good luck when reading their stuff.
Third, I got lots of emails like this:
"This particular scenario has always been my worst fear . . . .
and:
" . . . it's exactly this horror that we fearful flyers do imagine."
But wait. This accident is an exact match of a person's worst fear. How is that possible when we don't know anything about this accident?
This leads me to believe many people have pre-fabricated terror "movies" in mind and that these movies are just waiting to be activated by anything with the least similarity.
But there were other emails, like this one:
I learned this lesson already thanks to you...I have been meaning to share this story with you but haven't had the time...I guess now is as good a time as any.
This past Feb I was flying home from Newark to Lansing MI, VERY early in the AM immediately following the late evening Buffalo accident that left from Newark, the same airport I was scheduled to depart. As I was getting ready in my hotel room I had the news on where both the local (I was staying in NJ) and national news covered the story and for about 20 seconds I panicked. Then I shut off the TV and said to my self, there is no use imagining the "final" seconds...that is dumb. Stop thinking about it and think about how many flights will leave safely from that airport today. Well I did it and a few other exercises and I actually had a decent two leg flight back. Thanks you so much for your program.
Fourth. If you can look at the news and then not think about the accident again and again, fine. If you can't look at the news and then let it go, don't look. Why? If you repeatedly imagine what happened, you will make it up in your mind that what you imagine actually happened. It didn't. You imagined. You repeatedly imagined. You memorized your imagination, and it became fact.
Fifth. Other emails say this accident has made them worry about their flight. It is interesting how the mind works to connect things where there is no connection. There is no umbilical cord between the Air France plane and your plane. There is no magical link between the two planes. There is no relationship between the two planes.
What is the relationship. The word: "plane". That is the connection. There is no connection at all - much less a causal connection. Yet, in the mind, one crash out in the Atlantic connects to yours.
Are you going to connect the word plane with crash when one plane in five million crashes, but not connect plane with safe flight for the 4,999,999?
You are back to square one because you are not examining your own thinking; you are just throwing connections together based on plane and plane are the same word. One plane crashes, so your plane will crash. Come on.
Of course it is traumatic if you don't distinguish between imagination and reality. That is the key. Take a look at the articles on psychic equivalence in the SOAR Library.
Statistics don't help. Because you don't know in advance if the one in five-million that crashes is going to be yours. The image of the one sticks in the mind; the 4,999,999 don't.
There was a movie when I was a kid called "The Big Carnival". A loser of a journalist happens to be in a town where a child gets stuck in an abandoned well shaft. He realizes he has hit the jackpot because one child is easy for people to identify with; a dozen children less so. So he milks it for everything he can, even delaying the rescue, to get more stories published. So it is the one that makes it hard.
Sixth. The key is to quiet the mind enough to be able to think clearly.
Seventh. If you still think turbulence did it, have a look at this test on the 777 wing on the wing at Boeing and then search youtube for "hurricane hunters".
Eighth. Are foreign-made airliners crashing more? No. Here are stats from airsafe.com (number of fatal accidents per million flights):
A-300 0.54
A-310 1.27
A-320 0.13
Compare that to the 737 at 0.36, the 757 at 0.30, the 767 at 0.40. Based on those numbers, the A-320 compares favorably with all the Boeing-built planes. Comparing the A-330/340 0.0 (obviously this accident is going to change that rate) with the 777. Until this accident, the A-330 was fatal accident-free. The 777 has had an accident but not a fatal one.
Bottom line: focus - at this point - on this accident is pointless.
(Har tagit bort kommersiella referenser och hoppas jag fått med alla.)