Fear of Flying

In 1989, The New York Times ran an article reporting that 15 major airlines showing the 1988 film Rain Man cut the scene in which autistic savant Raymond (Dustin Hoffman) refuses to take an airplane to Los Angeles with his brother Charlie (Tom Cruise), muttering, “Airline travel is very dangerous.” Charlie runs through the list of available airlines, all of which Raymond follows with a crash date and death toll. Raymond is steadfast in his refusal, until finally citing that Qantas Airways has never had an accident. Unfortunately for Charlie, no Qantas jets are flying to LA. And so begins their journey, albeit by car.

Which airline chose not to cut the four-minute sequence from Rain Man? Qantas, of course.

When looking at the numbers, fearing death by plane crash is like expecting to win the lottery. Slim to none just about covers both scenarios. In 2004, the odds of dying in a US civil aviation accident as an American citizen were around one in 460,993, with aviation accidents accounting for less than .03% of all mortalities. Compare that to heart disease, the number-one killer of Americans in 2004, accounting for over 27% of all mortalities. Other top killers included stroke, several forms of cancer, respiratory disease, diabetes and ‘unintentional injuries.’ If the probability of death by way of plane crash isn’t anything to be afraid of, perhaps the nature of the crashes merits a closer look.

Comair Flight 5191 stands as the deadliest US civil-aviation accident since 2001. Flight 5191 was scheduled to take off from Blue Grass Airport in Kentucky on August 27, 2006 at around 6 a.m. It was the Pilot Jeffrey Clay, who shortly after receiving a runway designation from air traffic control, mistakenly maneuvered the CRJ-100 onto a shorter, unlit stretch, not suitable for commercial jet use. Co-pilot James Polehinke then took control of the plane and initiated takeoff. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) post-accident report stated that all 47 passengers, along with two of the three crew members, were killed “by impact forces and a post-crash fire” when the plane broke through a Blue Grass Airport perimeter fence and impacted with trees on a neighboring farm. As the sole survivor, Polehinke was seriously hurt before rescue workers pulled him from the burning wreckage. His injuries included facial and spine fractures, a broken foot and hand, three broken ribs, a broken breastbone, a collapsed lung and a broken leg that would later be amputated.



NTSB released the 43-page Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) transcript five months after the crash. The bulk of the roughly 30 minute record covers the time from when the pilots first entered the cockpit to make preflight checks, up to their final takeoff preparations. Aside from standard plane-speak, the crew discussed family life and career aspirations. The accident is covered in the last two pages of the document. Once the plane began to pick up speed, about 15 seconds prior to the initial impact, Polhinke is cited as saying, “Dat is weird with no lights,” presumably in reference to the unlit runway. Clay responds, “Yeah.” The transcript then continues for two seconds with editorial insertions such as “[unknown ambient noise],” “[unintelligible exclamation],” finally ending with “#,” which signifies “expletive.”

After more than a year of investigation, NTSB cited the pilots’ initial runway confusion, as well as their failure to recognize signs that they were on the wrong runway, as the main causes of the accident. The CVR transcript and post-crash report, both of which are available on NTSB’s website, do not go into the specifics of the accident, let alone the horrific and ultimately unimaginable death faced by all but one of those on board Flight 5191.

In a chapter entitled “Beyond the Black Box” from her 2003 book Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, Mary Roach interviews Dennis Shannahan about his time spent as the injury analyst investigating TWA Flight 800. En route from New York’s JFK airport to Paris, France in July of 1996, Flight 800 broke apart over the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 230 passengers on board. Shannahan was charged with formulating the probable cause of the crash. If the cause of an accident is unclear from studying the aircraft wreckage alone, or if integral pieces of the plane cannot be recovered, “investigators turn to what is known as ‘the human wreckage’: the bodies of passengers,” Roach writes. “By studying victims’ wounds—the type, the severity, which side of the body they’re on—an injury analyst can begin to piece together the horrible unfolding of events.”

Since it was reported that Flight 800 exploded in midair before plummeting into the ocean, Shannahan looked first to see if explosives were involved. Roach continues, “Had there been a bomb in the cabin of Flight 800, Shannahan would have found a cluster of ‘highly fragmented bodies’ corresponding to the seats nearest the explosion.” He also tracked “the number and the trajectories or ‘foreign bodies’ embedded within [the victims].” Lastly, Shannahan looked at the chemical burns apparent on some of the passengers. Though explosive projectiles such as missiles can cause similar burns as seen on Flight 800 victims, he suspected that they were acquired after passengers hit the ocean, as “spilled jet fuel on the surface of the water will burn a floating body on its back, but not on its front.” Shannahan also noted that, “had a missile blasted through the cabin, the fuel burns would have been on people’s fronts or sides, depending on where they had been seated, but not on their backs, as the seatbacks would have protected them.”

Shannahan ultimately determined that no criminal activity was involved in the crash of TWA Flight 800, a theory later verified when several key pieces of the aircraft were located. The NTSB’s final report stated that an explosion in the center wing fuel tank, ignited by a frayed wire, lead to the crash.

Though criminal activity was not a factor in the case of TWA Flight 800, malicious acts do contribute to plane crashes. The aviation industry was most notably rocked on September 11, 2001, when four commercial airplanes were hijacked; two hit the Twin Towers, one the Pentagon, and another crashed in an open field in Pennsylvania, allegedly on its way to another high profile target. Arguably the nation’s number one authority on domestic aviation accidents, the NTSB does not investigate crashes resulting from “criminal activity,” nor do they factor this type of crash into aviation statistics. These investigations are handed over to the FBI and other federal authorities, as they are not considered “accidents.”

On November 19th, 1987, Customer-Service Manager Raymond Thomson fired USAir Ticket Agent David Burke after a hidden camera caught Burke stealing $69 from flight cocktail receipts. An unmarried father of seven, Burke reportedly turned moody and violent after his discharge. Less than a month later, he boarded Pacific Southwest Flight 1771 from Los Angeles to San Francisco on a one way ticket, smuggling aboard a loaded .44 magnum revolver he had borrowed from a friend. The FBI affidavit that followed the crash of Flight 1771 stated, “David Burke had been allowed to bypass security screening as a familiar airlines employee.”

The events leading up to the crash were recorded by the plane’s CVR. A commotion began with what sounded like two gunshots in the cabin. An “unauthorized entry” was then made into the cockpit, followed by a scuffle and three more shots. One more shot was heard shortly before the CVR stopped recording.

Raymond Thomson was one of the 43 passengers on board, all of whom were killed when the jet slammed into a hill near Paso Robles in San Luis Obispo County. Taking into consideration the drastic descent reported, investigators posited that the two pilots might have been shot in such a way that their bodies were left slumped over the controls, forcing the plane into a nosedive.

Amidst the wreckage, investigators recovered a portion of Burke’s thumb, along with the borrowed revolver containing six expended cartridges. Also discovered was a message to Raymond Thomson written on an airsick bag. “Hi, Ray. I think it’s sort of ironical that we end up like this. I asked you for some leniency for my family, remember. Well I got none. And you’ll get none.”

For the less blissfully ignorant (and perhaps more cynical) air traveler, the concept of aviation feels counterintuitive, not to mention unnatural. Poet Saul Williams captured the paradox when he wrote, “I can think of nothing heavier than an airplane…I can think of nothing less likely to fly. There are no wings more weighted.” As a species, we spend the vast majority of our lives firmly planted on the ground. We rely on an imperfect technology to carry us up. We then rely on fellow humans to utilize this technology without error or malicious intent. For some, air travel is nothing more than a collection of potential hazards. But in actuality, the fear of plane crashes is unfounded. Hard statistics and probability are unfortunately less convincing than horror stories and a powerful imagination.

So with that said, what is the best way to overcome the fear of death by plane crash? Replace it with the fear of death by heart attack.

For more information on plane crashes visit www.ntsb.gov or check out Mary Roach’s Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers.