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Comment by nelsondev | Hacker News Reader

Last year in June, my Hawaiian airlines flight leaving Honolulu turned back after 30 minutes into the flight.

No explanation was given, but they put us on a different plane about 3 hours later. But the experience was terrifying to be honest, when the pilot says we are turning around, and there are only miles of ocean in all directions.

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People are typically scared of the plane falling out of the sky, right? If it helps at all, planes can still glide really really far with no engines. Not that that would happen.

another thing that sometimes reassures people is (ironically) watching those airplane disaster documentaries, e.g. on YouTube - you can see that planes are actually really robust, and lots of stuff has to go wrong at the same time before it's a real emergency, and how rare some of that stuff is. Mentour Pilot is an actual pilot who does accident documentaries sometimes.

If you're in the middle of the ocean no amount of gliding is going to get you off the ocean.

Air Transat Flight 236 would beg to differ

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Transat_Flight_236

Well. Actually. They fly routes that keeps the within a single-engine distance to an airport as much as possible. (ETOPs) Gliding should even at least get you fairly close to land, if not to land.

I used to agree, until I found out about Alaska Airlines Flight 261. I'm not sure what fail-safes are built into current Boeing and Airbus planes, but having the horizontal stabilizers malfunction is my new worst case scenario when flying now.

Agreed. I did not get a license (thanks to getting married, getting old, having kids and stuff), however taking flying lessons was the best thing I ever did for myself. Planes want to stay in the air. They don't just crash.

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