Why are we so obsessed with plane crashes?

Hot Air.com ^ | January 3, 2015 | JAZZ SHAW

[Kaslin]

There’s an old saw regarding man’s natural inclination to be fascinated with horrific scenes which is generally described in terms of our being unable to look away from a train wreck. The more common example experienced by most of us is the all too frequent situation of being stuck in traffic for long periods only to find that the cause of the disruption was an automobile accident on the other side of the median. There’s no reason for traffic on your side to be delayed except for the rubberneckers ahead of you. But if we’re being honest, the majority of us will also look at the wreckage.

But those are instances which occur right in front of our eyes, and we’re to be forgiven if something shocking briefly captures our attention when it’s only a few yards away. As a nation, however, particularly when filtered through the lens of the media, such things are not found to be worthy of the same prolonged fascination. A train wreck will usually make the news for a day or two, but it only goes national if there are a number of passenger cars with significant injury or loss of life. And even then it’s not a terribly long story arc unless there are mitigating factors such as a sleeping or impaired engineer, faulty track maintenance or other wrongdoing which the media can make hay out of. Car crashes are, sadly, too ubiquitous to be worth more than local mention unless the occupants of the vehicle are celebrities.

But plane crashes are different. Last spring’s loss of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 occupied the media for so long that I ranked it as the number one way that the media wasted our time in 2014. The most recent crash by Air Asia is being updated on cable news with each new piece of wreckage found, and the coverage shows no signs of slowing. Even the wreck of a small plane with only five passengers is a national headline, though admittedly the seemingly miraculous survival of a seven year old girl gives the story an added hook.

But why? It’s true that a lot of people dying all at one time is more sensational at first glance, but the numbers are not actually that notable. The sum total of all the plane crashes around the world in 2014 produced an alarming 1,320 deaths. Compare that with the annual global total of deaths in car crashes which averages 1.3 million. Viewed on that scale, the barely 1,300 air disaster deaths doesn’t even come close to the 3,287 people killed in automobile wrecks every day. The old maxim about how you are safer flying than driving is absolutely true, but flying is different.

I think the reason for this is that flying still scares us. And I don’t just mean the people who suffer from paralyzing combinations of aerophobia and acrophobia. Flying is unnatural for a variety of reasons and I believe it stimulates something deep in our lizard brain stems which makes us distrust the technology – no matter how reliable it has proven to be – and stirs a horrid fear and fascination when we see others succumb to the crashing deaths we all fear at some level when we get on a plane. Flight, much like travel over the water, puts us into three dimensions of potential threat rather than the two we are primarily accustomed to on land.

We’ve had a long time to evolve a certain comfort level with the idea of traveling across the land, even if we’re going faster than we could on our own two feet by means of some other conveyance. We’ve been riding on domesticated animals or being pulled in carts or chariots since before we began recording history. The stretch from there to riding in a car wasn’t all that great. Potential threats come at you from the front, the rear or the sides. And if your conveyance breaks down or runs into something, safe old Mother Earth is only a couple of feet below you and you might just be able to walk away. (Or so you comfort yourself into thinking, anyway.)

But in the water, there is a vast, dark, unseen depth below us if our boat sinks, and a primitive part of our mind is quick to remind us that monsters lurk below. (Which, of course, they actually do.) A new dimension is added. And high up in the sky, there is no getting out and walking to the nearest house if your motor goes out. The fall into that third dimension is terrifying. I think that’s the major appeal in skydiving (speaking as someone who did it for a few years) which is found in the rush of fear driven adrenaline. Nobody is skydiving because it’s a faster way back to the terminal than waiting for the plane to land.

Maybe that’s why we are so dreadfully fascinated by plane crashes. And the media feeds that fascination by running airplane crash stories for weeks and months on end. We can’t look away from the perception of our own mortality.

[RayChuang88]

I think we know the answer: a large number of people can die in a single airliner crash. That is the type of news that can occupy news organizations for weeks on end.

[publius911]

Why are we so obsessed with plane crashes?

Aside from the psychoanalysis in this article, there is a more fundamental reason why we are so "obsessed."

Although not everyone in the world flies, enough do, and it's ubiquitous and a universal experience/fear, latent or obvious.

I believe it is a natural and common factor in all forms of mass transportation on land, on water and in the air.

[cynwoody]

We can be walking along, minding our own business, and boom, a plane crashes on top of us. It’s worse than having to dodge those nasty meteorites.

It's not every day that a naked corpse comes crashing through your roof, as happened to Irina Tipunova last July. Beats man-bites-dog for news value.

[spel_grammer_an_punct_polise]

To the writer of the article:

Not all of us were so ‘fascinated’ with plane crashes. I know that I became ‘concerned’ after the Lockerbie explosion in mid-air caused by Muslim terrorists.

The disappearance of the flight near Malaysia has now heightened my ‘concern’.

[NYer]

A class mate of mine from Germany was a Stewardess (flight attendant) for Pan Am

I worked at the North American HQ of Air France in NYC, for 20 years. The field of aviation was in growth mode as more Americans began to take to the skies and fly internationally. Passengers were treated with great respect and served some of the finest foods during the flight. We had our own commissary at JFK, including a French chef. It was an exciting time as Boeing introduced the 747 and AF/BA showcased travel on the concorde. Many happy memories and lasting friendships from those years.

[grania]

The plane crash is the situation that the person on board that plane has no control over and very rarely has the chance to save ones self.

That's why Sully is probably the greatest hero of the century so far. Who else has ever saved everyone in a plane crash? Or ever will again, perhaps.

[TomServo]

I think the reason for this is that flying still scares us.

I was scared to fly in my younger days.

But I was in a plane crash in Alaska in 1979.

I'm not scared to fly anymore - the odds are in my favor I won't be in another one. :-)

[HotHunt]

Exactly. All these so-called "experts" on TV in recent years, make me laugh, like they know any better than I do about what I should do in my life. They all have agendas anyway so you can't trust the veracity of most of them.

When I was younger, I never noticed the TV news telling us what to do, how to live, what to eat and drink. They just reported news events. Now, it's everywhere. I believe that the advent of 24/7 news, cable and satellite TV with vast amounts of airtime to fill, liberal PC media substituting for real journalists, and a dumbed-down America, has contributed to this phenomenon.

It's like people can't think for themselves anymore. They have to have somebody on TV they don't even know, tell them that letting their kids ride their bikes without a helmet and elbow and knee pads, not only is extremely risky to the kids, but makes them a bad parent, as well. It's like we can't figure some of these things out on our own and make our own life decisions.

Example: I betcha since I was in my early 20's (I'm closing in on 70 quickly) that the public has been told through the media that coffee was bad for you, then several years later that coffee was good for you, then followed several years later that, no, coffee was bad for you and back and forth like watching the ball at a tennis match. So which is it? Good for you or bad for you? I say, who cares? Drink coffee if you like it, don't drink coffee if you don't like it, cut back on coffee if you feel like you drink too much or switch to tea and eliminate the coffee quandary altogether.

Don't let some "expert" or bimbo anchorette on the nightly news tell you how and what you should do in your life. Just eat and drink what you want and behave yourself.

Sorry, John W, for using your comment as a reason for me to go off on a rant about the idiots on TV telling us what we should be doing. I lost my head. :-)

[oprahstheantichrist]

That’s just not the way I wanna go.

[jjsheridan5]

The more common example experienced by most of us is the all too frequent situation of being stuck in traffic for long periods only to find that the cause of the disruption was an automobile accident on the other side of the median. There’s no reason for traffic on your side to be delayed except for the rubberneckers ahead of you.

Actually, no, this is a myth. There is another reason for this phenomena. What happens is that, first, an accident causes a slowdown over a period of time. After that, however, it is not rubberneckers causing delays, but rather that temporary delays have an inherent "stickiness" over time. Experiments showed that random slowdowns, regardless of cause, will continue long after the initial cause has subsided, and display the exact same pattern as a wreck-induced slowdown. Computer modeling showed that it was actually that the slowdown-speedup pattern wasn't efficient, and each subsequent car will retain part of the delay, so to speak. The delay therefore takes a number of iterations before it finally is removed from the system.

Scientific American did a much better job explaining this a couple of decades ago (back when they weren't just a political rag). Similarly, there was a chronic mystery slowdown on 95 south of DC. For the longest time, people couldn't figure out what was causing it, and blamed "rubberneckers" (invariably, there will be at least one car on the side of the road). What researchers found, however, was that some trucks were having difficulty with the hills, and this created a similar pattern where only a handful of trucks laboring caused delays in the same spot, delays which lasted hours after the trucks were gone.

[Caipirabob]

Seriously? Because terrorists and their democrat enablers have vowed to attack them and with them.

[Tzfat]

I am a highly experienced Airbus Captain and check pilot. The Vanity Fair article is very well done. The conclusions weigh a little too heavy on the “automation is the problem” but the Human Factors angle is dead on.

[Tzfat]

I know Chelsey Sullenberger. He is a nice man, and a good pilot. What he did was great, but that does not make him a hero. A hero runs into a burning building, or steps intentionally into the line of fire.

Sully did what any pilot would do, saved himself, thereby saving the aircraft. Any good pilot could have done it with the similar result. Even an average pilot would have made similar choices and it come out better than an impact into buildings.

To those of us that know him, we congratulated him, and then called him a very lucky man... And we laughed out loud when news readers made a point that he had also been a sail plane pilot (as if that makes a difference in a powerless 140,000 Airbus).

[coydog]

The “Gimli Glider” comes pretty close. In Canada, during the transition from imperial to metric measurements, a jetliner ran out of fuel because litres were confused for gallons. Good thing that the pilot had flown gliders and got the jet to coast to the nearest runway.

[EEGator]

[elcid1970]

IMO crash fascination is the same as rubbernecking.

Interstate traffic slows to a crawl for miles & when you pass the accident, the vehicles involved are already cleared from the roadway which is no longer blocked at all & yet people still slow to rubberneck.

I look once to see if police & emergency crews are present. If so, I drive on.

[stevie_d_64]

Post of the day award!!!

That is a priceless gift you have!!!

Perfect!!!

[Terry L Smith]

As one who has worked in the aviation/aerospace industry, the lowest denominator I can come to, is a ‘love/hate’ relationship.

We the people, have flocked to many a movie, that has adventurous, exhilarating flight scenes in them. The first of such was, ‘Dawn Patrol’, many a year past. Let’s not forget a near distant wonderfilm, ‘Independence Day’, with alien and human-piloted flying machines operated within Earth’s precious atmosphere. Or even, in the animated film realm, ‘(Air)Planes’.

Now, to the ‘tails’ side of the coin. we have come from a point of our recent history, where to fly anywhere, was still with wonder and awe. The experience of sitting within a protective, pressurized, windowed, somewhat comfortable (then) metal tube, with strange appendages sticking out from the tube, with smaller tubes attached, making a heck of a lot of noise, riding above the clouds on a good sunny day, or bumpily, coffee-spilled riding through them, on a bad day, and then having your butt harshly feel the moment when the metal tube you are inside of, make contact with the ground, at the end of your travels. Nowadays, to take a flight, has taken precedence in the expectance to be ‘there’ in a few hours, as part of our current employment position and duties, over getting the car readied, and driving to the destination, within America, within a few days.

Flight travel, thanks to the sensationalism afforded it by any or all of the past and present news reporting, has become the resume builder of “the bubble-headed bleached blonde talking about the crash at 5, with a gleam in her eye’.

Human flight has been the long-ago bane of many a preacher, because it is ‘unnatural’. (if god had meant us to have wings....)

Granted, the number of deaths by aviation have always been lower, except during military conflicts and associated hardware delivered, than those counted on our highways, but the aviation deaths are more nasty and more numerable in one incident, than even the car pile-up over the last day or so, in New Hampshire.

Thus, the love/hate continues.

[NYer]

I am a highly experienced Airbus Captain and check pilot. The Vanity Fair article is very well done. The conclusions weigh a little too heavy on the “automation is the problem” but the Human Factors angle is dead on.

It is truly an honor to hear from you and read your post. I too was intrigued by the crew response to the situation and their delayed reaction in rousing the pilot. It has now been determined that the accumulation of ice crystals in the pitot tubes contributed to the accident and advisories have since been issued.

My love for aviation dates back to childhood when my mother worked for SAS and we flew to Europe on a Constellation. I was only 5 at the time but still recall stopping at Halifax to refuel. From my bedroom window in Queens NY, I would watch flights on their approach to (then) Idlewild Airport, and could identify each flight by time of day and carrier colors. Even then I longed for the day when I could work for Air France. The day I was hired was sublime.

Over the span of 20 years, I enjoyed the opportunity to travel on fam trips to familiarize us with different aircraft. When the B-747 was introduced to the fleet, we flew from JFK to YUL on Air Canada to board an AF 747 flight to CHI, simply for the experience. What a magnificent beast!

Just prior to leaving AF in 1986, I was afforded the opportunity to tour the flight operations center at Vilgenis just outside Paris, and watched a crew board a 747 simulator. It was fascinating to watch the equipment move at different angles, simulating some potential situation and seeing the crew react.

As you can imagine, the French took great pride in their participation in the development of the Airbus. The technology is most impressive and is designed to anticipate worse case scenarios. While this may reduce the possibility of pilot error, to a certain extent, it also contributed to pilot complacence. Perhaps this was also a contributing factor to AF447's accident in that it delayed the crew from recalling the pilot to the cockpit. By the time they resorted to waking him, it was too late. Hence, the human factor.

Again, thank you for the post and ping! I miss flying but relish in past memories.

[Tzfat]

Always fun to read about aviation industry experiences. Thanks.