Airtimes

When your in an air plane why do your ears pop??

Simple answer: Pressure.

Long answer: Your ears pop in air planes because the air high above the surface of Earth is less dense than air near the surface. As you ascend in an airplane and the air pressure decreases, the air trapped in your inner ear will cause your eardrums to push outward. This expansion causes not only the discomfort you feel before your ears "pop," but also a decrease in hearing ability, because the pressure on your ears drums makes the sound harder to transmit. Your body can equalize the pressure between your inner ear and the atmosphere by allowing some air from your inner ear to escape through the Eustachian tubes, two small channels that connect the inner ears to the throat, one on each side. When they open, you feel the pressure release and you hear the change because it’s happening in your ear. This equalization of pressure is the "pop."

On the way down from an air plane flight, the air pressure increases, while your inner ear is still at the lower pressure it has adjusted to. Now, the extra pressure pushes the eardrums inward. Eventually, the pressure will equalize again, but many people don’t like to wait, they want to "pop" their ears.

For take-offs and landings (the WHOLE way up, and starting from the BEGINNING, or TOP of descent), the best ways to alleviate ear pressure are to:

*Chew gum
*Drink something
*Suck on a hard candy or mints
*Yawn
*Pinch the nostrils shut, take a deep breath in through the mouth, then force the air into the back of the nose (gently) as if trying to blow your nose
*Place hot damp towels (usually like the ones distributed to first and business class before take-off and landing to freshen up with – just ask a flight attendant for them) or paper towels that have been soaked in hot water and wrung out at the bottom of two paper or styrofoam cups, then hold the cups over the ears.
*Another trick that used mainly on babies and small children, but can be used on anyone, is to gently but with some pressure, rub your neck repeatedly from the chin to the base of the neck. This will cause a swallowing motion that will relieve pressure build-up in the ears.

You can also try using a decongestant. It is always best to check with your doctor before using any type of medications though, to make sure you are using the one best suited to your needs. I personally have found pain relief medications don’t really help people, and at least in my experience, decongestants are a waste of money.

If I can be of any more help or assistance, please feel free to contact me.

Technorati Tags: Air Plane, Air Planes, Air Pressure, Ear Pressure, Eardrums, Eustachian Tubes, Extra Pressure, Flight Attendant, Hard Candy, Inner Ear, Inner Ears, landings, Mints, Nostrils, Paper Towels, Plane Flight, Pressure Increases, Simple Answer, Styrofoam Cups, Surface Of Earth

This official U.S. government guide to piloting aircraft–created by the Federal Aviation Administration–is “the” essential resource for finding the knowledge and skills to fly all types of planes. It includes an introduction to flight training and official information on ground operations, basic flight maneuvers, slow flight, stalls and spins, takeoff and departure climbs, ground reference maneuvers, airport traffic patterns, approaches and landings, performance maneuvers, and night operations. Pilots will find information on transitioning from small aircraft to more complex airplanes, as well as detailed explanations of emergency procedures. Each topic is coupled with colorful, detailed illustrations to aid the reader. Any pilot who wishes to maintain a current understanding of aircraft operation must read this book.

Technorati Tags: Aircraft Operation, Airport Traffic, Basic Flight Maneuvers, Detailed Explanations, Emergency Procedures, Federal Aviation Administration, Flight Training, Format Paperback, Government Guide, Ground Operations, Ground Reference, Introduction To Flight, landings, Night Operations, Pub Co, Slow Flight, Small Aircraft, Takeoff, Traffic Patterns, Transitioning

and how often do they do it?

As the previous answer said, a cross-wind landing is when you have some amount of wind coming from the left or right. That is, when it’s not directly down the runway. airplanes like to land into the wind but it’s not always possible.

Virtually all landings are cross-wind landings. It’s unusual to have the wind coming right down the runway, though runways are usually built so they point into the predominant wind direction. Where I live that means almost every airport has a 13/31 runway because the winds are usually out of the northwest or somewhere between west and north.

Technorati Tags: airplane, airplanes, landings, Northwest, Runways, Wind Direction

While flying recently, we were 45 minutes into International flight when the pilot informed us we were going back to the airport because we were flying 8000lbs overeight. We did an emergency landing (firetrucks…etc) as was protocol apparently for overweight landings and changed planes.

How can this have happened and taken 45 minutes to figure out? Was the plane really overweight or could there have been another issue?

The weight of the aircraft should have been calculated in advance, so the pilots would know before take-off if the plane were overweight.

However, it’s possible that they might be given incorrect information (wrong passenger count, wrong baggage weight, wrong fuel weight, inaccurate passenger weight estimates, etc.) that could lead them to believe that the aircraft was below maximum weight when in fact it was above. In this case, they might not notice the overweight condition until the airplane took off (if they noticed at all—small weight differences would not be obvious).

A delay of 45 minutes is unlikely but conceivable. Perhaps the pilots noticed that the aircraft was not climbing fast enough to fit the flight profile, and finally realized that it must be overweight. If the aircraft can’t follow the flight profile, it might burn more fuel than expected, reducing its range and potentially making it impossible to reach its destination without a fuel stop. Perhaps the pilots noticed that the aircraft was having trouble maintaining its cruise altitude. In any case, flying overweight is generally a bad idea, especially if it obliges the aircraft to land overweight.

There could have been other problems, but not necessarily. Fire trucks and other equipment are often deployed systematically for any emergency landing, regardless of the reason for the landing.

Landing overweight can damage the aircraft, so it would have to be inspected carefully and (possibly) repaired before its next flight. The pilots might have flown for 45 minutes just to burn off extra fuel. But it’s really not possible to guess what all the details might have been.

Technorati Tags: Airplane Emergency, Bad Idea, Being Overweight, Cruise Altitude, emergency landing, Estimates, Fire Trucks, Fit, Flight Profile, Fuel Weight, International Flight, landings, Lead, Maximum Weight, pilot, Planes, Protocol, Reason

The plane was fighting the wind as it came in and never lowered it’s gear. Hit the runway and slid all the way to the end of the runway into the fence. I was surprised, it went further down the runway on it’s belly than on it’s wheels. (I suppose brakes cause more friction than smooth aluminum.)

No one was hurt. The Pilot claimed he was so worried and distracted by the crosswind that he forgot about the landing gear.

This is the 5th accident here in 3 weeks associated with our unusual high winds. 3 crashes, unfortunately, resulted in fatalities.

I’ve never been witness to a fatal crash, despite working at an airport for close to 10 years, thank God for small favors. I have seen a couple of gear up landings, both Baron drivers that for whatever reason simply forgot to extend the landing gear. The sound of propellers hitting concrete is very loud.
And I got to watch as a friend had the NLG of his Merlin II snap away on landing. I reached the airplane before the fire crews did.

And I lost a friend to an off airport crash when he took off in his V-35 with his fuel selector set to a tank that only had about 6 min’s worth of fuel in it.

In a seperate incident, I’ve had to quarantine my FBO’s avgas trucks for inspection and go deal with an aircraft owner’s hysterical wife.

I’ve lost a coworker to a bird strike while he was giving a lesson; leaving behind a wife and infant.

It sucks, but it happens, and it’ll keep happening without regard to any practices we put in place to try to minimize it. Currently, all we can do is minimize incidents and injury; it’s unfortunate, but crashes will continue to happen, pilots will continue to make an erroneous judgment or just have brain farts.

Training, intimacy with the airplane, and discipline with regards to obeying the checklists is the only thing I can think of that will help abate the disasters.

Technorati Tags: Aircraft Owner, airplane crash, Avgas, Bird Strike, Brain Farts, Checklists, Coworker, Crash Today, Crosswind, Fatal Crash, Fbo, Fire Crews, First Airplane, High Winds, Intimacy, landings, Nlg, Piper Saratoga, saratoga, Small Favors

How an airplane finds the landing field during heavy fog or clouds: Special lights on the plane? What is a good website that can explain this in detail? Could their methods be used on cars ?

It’s part of what is called an "Instrument Landing System" or ILS for short.

They use radar transmitters on the ground to send out directional (meaning if you receive the signal from a different direction, it will be different), to help position the aircraft in the correct glide path to the runway.

Since the radar is directional, instruments on the aircraft that recieve the signal will be able to tell the pilot where he is in relation to the correct glide path to the runway.

Some are more sophisticated than others and allow landings with lower visibility and vice versa.

In the future, they may use GPS signals instead of radar signals.

Technorati Tags: airplane, Cars, clouds, Direction, Fog Lights, Gps Signals, Ils, Instrument Landing System, landings, pilot, Radar Signals, Transmitters, Vice Versa, Visibility

The airplane window shutters are also required to be closed during landing and take off at night time at some international airports. Why is that so?

i believe this Q has been asked. its actually in the featured Qs but anyway, lights are turned off at night so that it is easy to see (problems) outside the plane.. same reason why the shades are pulled up during take offs and landings.

Technorati Tags: Airplane Window, International Airports, landings, Night Time, Qs, Reason, Shades, Window Shutters

i was looking at some videos on CNN and a large chunk of them had to do with minor airplane crashes and emergancy landings. are they trying to scare people?
well airplane crashes/malfunctions that are small have always been reported locally, now its all international news

because people want to know what is going on in the world around them. It isn’t to scare them. If they went unreported and somehow the public found out, there would be uproar because people would wonder why it wasn’t reported!

Technorati Tags: airplane crash, Airplane Crashes, Chunk, cnn, International News, landings, People, Uproar

Recently, the crash in Brazil killed 189 people was caused by landing gear malfunction and a slick and tricky landing area..
You know what pisses me off, is the fact that they try to make airplanes look so harmless.. oh even if a malfunction happens the airplane could still fly.. etc.. So far every crash I’ve seen has left everyone dead. I personally believe airplanes should be outlawed. The only way I’m gonna die is if I am driving my coffin… is the way I see it. Sure I still go on airplanes, but I take every trip like my last time being alive.. which is pretty stressful. But have any airplane crashes left people alive.. and I’m talking straight air to concrete type stuff.. not water landings and other nonsense.

Hahaha, do you know how many people die in car crashes every year? It’s SEVERAL TIMES more than die in plane crashes. Are you going to stop driving? Are you going to outlaw cars? Statistically cars are far more dangerous than planes. Cars are not harmless either. Hundreds of thousands of people fly every day and I would bet the percentage of people who are killed in crashes is statistically zero percent (like .00001%).

And how about the bridge collapse in Minneapolis last night? You could just be driving along the interstate and have that happen… So if you live your life in fear of something like that, then I would recommend counseling or something for anxiety and phobias if it’s interfering with your normal daily life.

Also…. Air Florida Flight 90 in Washington DC, January 1982. There were 5 or 6 survivors… the plane collided with a bridge. I know there are others too.

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