Out of Pod Experience

Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 -

Since Saturday/Sunday there is a missing Boeing Jetliner with 239 passengers. My condolences to the families and the missing.

What do you think about this? After reading the various media reports it sounds like there was no effort in search and rescue, just a recovery effort assuming it crashed in the ocean. The pilots were veteran / highly experienced, and the 777 can travel on one engine if the other fails.


Makes me more nervous about flying and international flights, I'm not too fond of planes.

Sad news. I feel sorry for the families.

Fear of flying is a rather odd thing. Statistically it is safer to fly than drive. Yet the human mind is not able to properly coprehend that in many cases.

To put things in perspective. What is most scary?

A: Flying in a machine that is carefuly checked and tested each day with experianced and trained crew who do it for living. While each aircraft being coordinated with experianced flight controllers. Everythign is heavily regulated with rules and violating these rules can give large consequences.

B: Driving in a car that haven't been checked for several years. You have no idea if the brakes even work before you actually need them. Some people only drives a few times a month (including me) thus are out of trainging. All this happens in really limited space. Seriously, you have 2 objects moving towards each other each with a velocity up to and above 100km/hr (60mph) and the only thing the seperates them is a little dotted line in the middle. The roads can be full of idiots who do drunk driving and speeding, as the respect for laws and safety is much lower compared to aviation.

As a person who has a flight license it is easy for me to be rationalize this, but I do understand why some people fear flying. The human mind is really full of flaws.

or aliens.

and mizzy, I think it has more to do that if you get in a wreck you have a pretty good chance of making it out alive. especially if you are buckled up and have air bags. that's not so when you slam in the ground at 100's of mph and explode in flames =p. though the chances of an accident are certainly much, much lower in an aircraft...chances of survival in the case of one are remote lol

I think the chance of dying while your dying is 100%

that doesn't surprise me either given the stats. i mean there are thousands of automobile accidents a day a few of which result in fatalities. planes go down very rarely by comparison. the auto deaths add up daily. where the airplane deaths only get new "additions" every so often.

This says both passports were stolen around 2 years ago in Thailand at a car rental agency (left passports as deposits for cars, both passports were missing upon car return). http://www.sfgate.com/news/world/article/2-on-missing-Malaysia-jet-used-stolen-EU-passports-5299597.php

I hate flying

I think relevant to your point 'B'. As a former mechanic I'm not only familiar with how lazy some technicians are but how it can be easy to overlook problems at times (only human - regardless of training). And second I'm used to seeing "one in a million chance" things happening to machines every-single-day.

The point is not that there is less death/year by flying rather than driving, is the death per accident ratio. When your car go full ****** what are your chance to death. I love flying, and use local airlines a lot, but each time it take off, I always say to myself: "if something goes wrong, you're ******", I don't think like that when I get into my car.

Here are things I know for sure:

1. A plane is missing

2. It went missing thousands of miles from where I live, so I can't possibly know anything else about it.

3. The families of the people on the plane are going through a pretty rough time right now.

4. Despite being no where near the events being discussed, involved in the situation, or even having a working knowledge of aircrafts, traffic control procedures, or internationally coordinated search and rescue missions, a large number of anonymous internet user will post various rumors, "facts", and conspiracy theories about what happened, and after spinning each other up for a week or two, will start forming "truther" societies to spew forth whatever frenzy they worked themselves into, in complete disregard to the suffering and dignity of the families of the people actually involved.

Other than that, I don't really know anything...

Sad news for the plane going down. I don't want to imagine my wife or kids being lost in such a way....

Be it the plane was shot down, structural failure, or scammed, jammed, and popped by aliens is something that'd be nice to know. Maybe it'll help at least bring closure to the families of the lost.

I don't fly. I flew to Oklahoma a few years back from Seattle with my wife. We were on our way to see my mom, who'd just attempted (and damn near succeeded) suicide. I was awfully sure I was getting there to bury her. Layover in Houston and the checkpoint security (TSA) had a muslim woman in the next line over. I heard her say it was "Against her religion to be checked by security" and they let her waltz through easy peasy. I was wearing a hat my wife got me when I got home from Iraq that had a Combat Infantryman's Badge on the front and stated I was an OIF Veteran. Well, I was treated to the full meal deal. Metal detector, pat down, then naked scanner. There was a man behind me that said rather conspicuously (for crying out loud! He's a VETERAN, why is HE treated like a criminal?" which earned him a trip with police to someplace else. On that day, I decided never again will I give an airline my money. They support that crap by allowing it. They don't have to...

But that's besides the point. No, it's not. if they'd put as much effort into aircraft quality which = safety maybe there wouldn't be oil slicks in the ocean by Malaysia....