Up in the Air

Each time I board a plane, the moments after take off and landing are kind of a rebirth to me. Somehow all the horrendous episodes of Air Crash Investigation (in NGC) comes back to my mind.There are countless ocassions that I have decided that this is it and have given up.One such latest was a Pittsburgh-New York plane where due to a puller malfunction the wheel was sucked inside by the body with a big thud and plane shook once in an horizontal plane. That may be counted for 2 rebirths.

It amuses me to no end when I see people strolling leisurely inside the air craft in the mid air. The entire plane mechanism from taxi-take off- mid air-landing works on numerous scientific approximations.(Mind you its just approximations not precise ones.). For instance the g-factor while decelerating is approximated to 9.8 up to 10 decimal point precision. If by chance the air craft enters some climatic condition in which this approximation is not enough,then you could land up straight inside your drawing room.In future an MIT science freak can prove some of the Physics theories on which the Aircraft mechanism works to be false(As Einstein did to Newton). Then,it simply means that hundreds of hours we flew in a machine,in mid air,at 40000 feet and freezing temperatures, that is entirely built on wrong assumptions.Damn it !!

Once more I have to come back to Air Crash Investigation episodes.There will be one inevitable section in each episode that how a particular mishap led to some corrective action in the planes mechanical parts/software/procedures. On each boarding there will be this haunting feeling that I may as well end up being a case study for future air travelers. People talk about being useful to society. May be I have to search for better avenues.

May be its a sign of our times in which living on land is as unsafe as being on board a aircraft. Any moment a insane fanatic or a freakish half wit kid can pull out a gun and shoot at anybody for apparently no reason. In mid air there is at least one thing assured.If something goes wrong,we wont survive to look back.