Flyer fishing with clickbait

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I’m going to bet the following headlines don’t elicit feelings of calm or assuredness in anyone who has a fear of flying, or maybe even many of the general public:

Air Canada Flight AC549 terror as packed passenger plane plummets 24,000 feet. Mirror.co.uk.

Terrifying moment passengers fear for their lives after plane drops more than 20,000 feet.Express.co.uk.

In January 2016, British tabloids the Daily Mirror and Daily Express wrote about Air Canada flight AC549, which encountered a pressurization issue on their journey from New York to Vancouver, Canada. The pilots conducted an emergency descent and landed safely in Toronto.

No one on board was injured, a reassuring fact purposely imbedded deep within these articles, forcing readers to pass through a maze of anxiety inducing vocabulary to get there.

Flight AC549 terror.



Fearing for their lives.

The plane plummeted.

Frightening descent.

Flying towards the ground.

Fire crews met the stricken flight.

Oh… My…

Clearly, a quiet day in the ‘news’room.

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The problem with sensationalized tabloid articles about a rare flight moment like this is the message that we will be terrified for our lives, emergency descents are scary and ultimately another reason to fear flying altogether.



“Most pilots go their entire career without ever seeing an emergency descent like this, but we practice them in simulation training frequently,” Says Joe, our go-to commercial airline pilot with 10+ years’ experience.

“Everything that happened on AC549 was completely normal procedure for the situation. With a pressure issue, we descend to 10,000 because it’s a safe unassisted breathing altitude. Your masks only have about 10 minutes of oxygen in them and it’s our job to get you to a safe altitude in as minimal a time frame as possible.”

This isn’t to say an emergency descent isn’t a very uneasy experience for passengers who don’t know what is happening, especially because passenger comfort isn’t the number one priority when pilots need to get low quickly. So for the sake of sticking it to these irresponsible tabloids who decided they were going to profit from our fear, here is some equipping knowledge about emergency descents that might help you ease the anxieties they’ve knowingly created.

The following are a few ways we can confirm for ourselves in the moment that we are experiencing an emergency descent – and not something catastrophic – even before our pilots tell us themselves.

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Let’s say Joe is flying us all to the Caribbean for the long weekend (woohoo!) and somewhere over the US we start to feel a bit lighter in our seats. We’ll feel the plane shift forward slightly nose-down and we’ll begin losing altitude (according to the little screens in front of us). The oxygen masks may or my not drop, depending on the situation.



1. Your airspeed will remain constant, or maybe even slow, while you descend.

If you can, watch your inflight map screen. This usually provides information about location, altitude and airspeed.

“In an emergency descent, pilots will descend quickly but will do so at a safe speed. A big jet gathers a lot of momentum, and normally the faster you descend, the faster you would gain speed… unless we use the speed break (aka spoilers, panels on the wing). The speed break allows us to go down and slow down at the same time. We sometimes use it on normal descents too,” says Joe.



Anna C. from Boston, Massachusetts recently flew Norwegian Air flight DY7142 to Rome, which made an emergency descent in Paris on April 15, 2019.

“I watched our altitude drop super rapidly, however our speed remained pretty constant, around 500 mph. In six minutes we went from 40,000 feet to 9,000 feet. I noticed a feeling as if my seatbelt was keeping me tethered. The nose was certainly further down than I’d experienced before.”

2. Your cabin will vibrate or rumble.

Spoilers on a normal descent into London, Heathrow

March 2019.

This is normal, and is caused by the way the speed break changes how air flows over the wing. If you’re not in a position to look out the window to physically see these breaks, this rumbling is how you know you’re descending at a safe speed. You will also feel this same vibration (just not as pronounced) on a normal descent if your pilots use the spoilers, which they sometimes do.

Ryan from Austin Texas was flying Delta to Tampa Bay, Florida in 2012 when his plane began an emergency descent.

“It was uncomfortable, but not sickening or anything. We used the masks on the way down and I heard a lot of wind buffeting. It all happened really quickly, not much else to say. I fly a lot, and had been in minor emergencies before, so I was not scared, just uncomfortable physically.”



3. Pilot announcements, though not directed to passengers, can indicate an emergency descent.

Pilots may not immediately communicate with passengers about a situation, however the cabin crew will know ahead of time what is going on.

“You’ll likely hear some kind of announcement for the cabin crew to carry out their actions during descent. It might sound like: Attention, cabin crew, secure the cabin, passengers take your seats, after which the flight attendants will put their carts away, run through their own set of procedures, and then take their seats.”

This is not to be confused with a pilot announcement for crew to simply take their seats during heavier turbulence.

4. Your ears might start popping before your pilots initiate their decline.

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“If it’s a pressure issue, even a slow leak, you’ll notice your ears popping at altitude when they shouldn’t be,” says Joe, who even after 10+ years as a pilot, has never experienced a pressure issue while flying.



The story of AC549 was covered internationally. After all, aircraft issues are so rare whenever someone stubs a toe on a plane it makes the news. Many other media outlets managed to cover the story without sensationalism – because in reality this was just a plane that had to land early, and quickly, because pilots and passengers enjoy breathing. While some may have been frightened by the ordeal, the risk of danger was low.

The story of AC549 is in no way evidence that flying is dangerous.

But here’s where things get super weird and, frankly, annoying. The Mirror recently covered an attempted passenger plane hijacking in Russia in January 2019 without using scary, terror or ‘afraid for their lives’ in either the headline or the content of the article.



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Like… come on people. Why was Russia afforded the privilege of that fondly revered British reserve, but not Canada?

For fearful flyers everywhere, next time you come upon a story about a plane plummeting terrifyingly from the sky, just keep scrolling. Planes do not just plummet from the sky, and only tabloids like these can make a safe emergency landing sound scarier than an attempted plane hijacking.



