Published: 2:00pm, 17 Mar, 2019

Updated: 2:04pm, 17 Mar, 2019

Most of us have heard about the two Boeing 737 Max 8 jets that crashed, killing all passengers. The most recent happened Sunday.

With the story receiving so much publicity, it can give travelers anxiety. 

Our Malique Rankin j sat down with a psychologist today who made a great point. We don’t have news stories about every plane that lands safely. So when one crashes, its a big story, and it seems much more likely to occur than it really is. 

Dr. Tara Feil with CHI St. Alexius says the first thing you should do is pinpoint your fears. Determining if it’s the turbulence or the confined space can help you learn how to cope. Feil says to also ask your flight attendants any questions that may help you feel more comfortable.

Dr. Tara Feil; Clinical Psychologist: “I would highly recommend coming up with a few healthy distractions for the flight. Finding an app that contains some breathing or relaxation exercises on your phone can be a great go-to. Finding a game or calming music to listen to while you’re can be a great go-to as well.”

There are a lot of things that are more likely to happen to you than being in a plane crash. The odds of being in a plane crash are 1 in 11 million.

You’re more likely to become President of the United States (1 in 10 million).
More likely to get killed by a bear at Yellowstone national park (1 in 2.1 million).
More likely to write a New York Times Best Seller (1 in 220).
And more likely to win an Olympic gold medal (1 in 662,000).
 

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WVLT) — The folks at McGhee Tyson Airport say Allegiant Airlines is responding to their requests for more air service. With travel up at McGhee Tyson, more flights could soon follow.

Part of that deal is Allegiants’ announcement they will house a crew base here in our community. Two planes will be here all the time as well as maintenance and all the supplies they may need during a flight.

Jim Evans with Knoxville’s airport authority told Pigeon Forge Hospitality and Tourism Association leaders Thursday the new base will eventually lead to more expanded flight options on Allegiant. He says tourism in the Smoky Mountains is a major part of that.

“It’s a regional airport for all of east Tennessee. So we’re Pigeon Forge’s airport, we’re Gatlinburg’s airport. We’re Union County’s airport. Things are going great, numbers are up, more flights to more places everyday,” said Jim Evans, Metropolitan Knoxville Airport Authority.

Right now, the number one flight for all of air travel is the Allegiant flight out of the airport to Newark, New Jersey, right outside of New York City.

Aviation fans may like to embark on a very cool dinner theatre experience that recreates air travel from the 1970s. The brainchild of Talaat Captan and Anthony Toth, the Pan Am Experience is based at Air Hollywood in Los Angeles, a movie set that focuses on airport and aircraft standing sets and props.

The four-hour dinner experience takes place on board a Pan Am 747 every second Saturday night at 6pm. It holds 56 passengers and passengers can sit in First Class Upper Deck, First Class Main Deck and Clipper Business Class, all of which are priced differently. As it is a re-enactment and dinner experience, the plane never actually leaves the ground.

Upon arrival, guests enter a studio made to look like an airplane terminal, complete with a Pan Am desk from the era where they are checked-in. After relaxing in the lounge with complimentary drinks, once they are “on board” the plane and have been greeted by the captains and female air stewards and given a safety briefing, the dinner and entertainment service begins.

In honour of a time where smoking was allowed on planes, passengers get to take prop cigarettes that emit an odourless smoke. They drink cocktails from the ’70s like Harvey Wallbangers, and read vintage magazines, as well as getting to check out the memorabilia that includes old baggage tags and airplane seats.

Dinner is served with authentic china, linen and glassware, and reflecting a time before pre-packaged airplane meals, guests get to enjoy the novel experience of the stewardesses carving the meat and serving it with potatoes and vegetables. This is followed by the arrival of the dessert cart and wine and cheese course. There’s also a duty free cart that sells perfume and cologne from the ’70s.

There are trivia games and the stewardesses put on a fashion show throughout the night to model all of the original Pan Am uniforms from the late 1950s to 1991. When the experience finishes, guests can tour Air Hollywood’s other filming sets and examine props used in movies, television shows and commercials.

Tickets for the experience are sold in pairs and prices range in price from $475 to $875 (€420 to €774). Check out more on the Pan Am Experience here.

Air travelers nervous about flying on a Boeing 737 after two crashes in close succession might take comfort in thinking of airplanes as herd animals: There is some safety in numbers.

Every hour of every day, thousands of 737s have the opportunity to prove the old cliché that anything that can go wrong will go wrong. But each time a flaw is found in a 737, there is a corresponding opportunity to correct it in all planes — because a cornerstone of aviation safety is that you don’t ever make the same mistake twice. Or hardly ever.

In October, a Lion Air jet crashed into the Java Sea off Indonesia, killing all 189 people aboard. And on Sunday, an Ethiopian Airlines jet crashed en route from Ethiopia to Kenya, killing all 157 aboard. Both planes were the Boeing 737 MAX 8 model. Both planes crashed not long after takeoff. A sensor and software problem are believed to have contributed to the Lion Air crash, although a final cause has not been determined. The Ethiopian Airlines crash investigation is in its early stages. Most countries, including the United States, have grounded the MAX 8s in their fleets.

The 737 is the most popular airline model in aviation history. So many 737s traverse the skies — Boeing has built more than 10,000 over 50 years, with more than 5,000 still in service — that opportunities to learn are ample. When something goes wrong with one, the news spreads fast.

For example, 737s have fuel tanks in the wings. A conduit typically runs through the tank, with an electric cable inside that carries current to a fuel pump. In April 1998, a mechanic found fuel leaking into the conduit of a Continental Airlines 737. Sparks from the electric cable had burned a hole in the conduit. Once you have fuel and a spark, all you need is oxygen to have a catastrophe. In nothing flat, the Federal Aviation Administration ordered inspections — immediately for older planes and promptly for younger ones. Sure enough, other aircraft showed signs of wear on the same conduit. The flaw was corrected. No accident resulted from it.

The system isn’t perfect. In 1991, a 737 crashed near Colorado Springs. At first, investigators attributed the crash to an extraordinary meteorological phenomenon. But another 737 crashed on approach to Pittsburgh in 1994, and after a lengthy investigation, the National Transportation Safety Board diagnosed a jam in a hydraulic system controlling the rudder. And that was the probable cause of the Colorado Springs crash, too, the board said.

The problem was exceedingly rare; at the time it was discovered, the 737 had completed about 77 million flights. It took two crashes (and several close calls) to find it.

At this point, “737” is a bit of a catchall, because the plane has evolved over the decades, with a different wing, different engines and, now, different software. In the 1990s, when Boeing introduced new models, it called them “next generation” and renamed the earlier ones “classic.” The “next generation” has advanced to become today’s MAX series planes.

Answers are at hand for the two MAX crashes. Both planes had highly capable digital flight data recorders, as well as cockpit voice recorders. Until the Ethiopian Airlines flight’s digital data is read out and interpreted, it won’t be clear to what degree the crashes were related.

Grounding the planes has a downside, and the case for doing so was by no means crystal clear. It’s certainly not as straightforward as it was in 2013 when the FAA grounded the then new Boeing 787 after battery problems appeared in two planes.

That is most likely why the Federal Aviation Administration did not lead the way in grounding this plane.

When the dual investigations determine the circumstances of the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines crashes, the time-tested aviation safety system will work to eliminate the cause. That may turn out to be one flaw, or two.

Matthew L. Wald covered transportation safety for The New York Times for 20 years.

A record 81 flights were investigated in 2018 for carrying at least one person contagious with the disease, up from 15 investigations in 2017 and 10 in 2016, according to the C.D.C. Of the 106 aircraft, 66 were on domestic routes and the rest were inbound from foreign airports.

Because the United States has a fairly high overall vaccination rate against measles, the general population is largely protected by herd immunity. But there are states, and pockets within states, with far less compliance, and the concern is that infected fliers will transport measles to these vulnerable areas.

“Suddenly the single introduction of a case can have explosive consequences,” said Dr. Martin Cetron, the director of the Division of Global Migration and Quarantine at the C.D.C.

Measles is considered among the most contagious viruses in the world. Unlike the influenza pathogens, which spread when a person sneezes or coughs but then fall, the measles virus remains suspended in air, “like really light dust particles,” Dr. Cetron said, allowing the pathogens to linger and float for up to two hours.

Influenza is spread by an exponent of two, meaning each person who gets it is likely to infect two others in a setting where people haven’t been immunized, he said. Measles is likely to be spread to between nine and 19 people who are not immunized, depending on the setting and the herd immunity of those nearby, he said.

Background: Trump’s tweet came two days after an Ethiopian Airlines flight crashed shortly after taking off from Addis Ababa, killing all 157 people on board. Though the cause of the crash is not yet known, the president tweeted that “airplanes are becoming far too complex to fly.”

• Acknowledging that flying a plane has become “highly complex,” Frank Jackman, a spokesman for the Flight Safety Foundation, cautioned against the suggestion that planes have become too complex.
• “Is it too complex to fly?” Jackman said.
• “Four billion people flew last year, the vast majority of them safely.”

By the numbers: In 1970, 1,474 people died in plane accidents. By 2017, the figure had dropped to 59, even as the number of passengers increased nearly 13-fold.

“There’s no question that aviation has become safer,” said Perry Flint, a spokesman for the International Air Transport Association. “There are just a lot of reasons, but underlying it certainly is technology.”

• Technologies like ground proximity warning systems, auto pilots, advanced weather radar, wind shear alert systems and other avionics have afforded more safety.
• Other factors, like improved pilot training, industry cooperation and engineering advancements, have also contributed.

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By Brady Jones
Medill Reports

Carbon emissions from European air travel could increase by at least 21 percent by 2040, according to a newly released study.

The 2019 European Aviation Environmental Report highlights the growth trend in the aviation sector throughout the continent. The number of kilometers flown in Europe has increased by 20 percent since 2014 and 60 percent since 2005.

This gain in travel, however, contributed an estimated 163 million metric tons of full-flight carbon dioxide emissions in 2017—an increase of 10 percent since 2014 and 16 percent since 2005. This is the equivalent to the annual greenhouse gas emissions of more than 34 million cars, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency emissions calculator.

The report, published by the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), examines this growth by the aviation industry in the context of the European Union’s stated goal of reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. In 2016, the aviation industry was responsible for 3.6 percent of greenhouse gas emissions for the EU and 13.4 percent of its overall transportation emissions. This represents the second highest release of transportation emissions after road traffic.

Violeta Bulc, European Union commissioner for transport, acknowledges in the report that although this growth in air travel means increased revenue and jobs for Europeans, it comes at a significant cost to the environment.

“Aviation has externalities that can’t be overlooked,” she says in the report. “Indeed, as air traffic increases year on year, the same holds true for environmental and health impacts.”

While declining to comment directly on what role the European Union should play in reducing aviation emissions, European Commission spokesperson Stephan Meder pointed to specific ongoing programs supported by the Commission that aim to curb carbon emissions. These include the International Civil Aviation Organization—a specialized United Nations agency—and a program it has implemented called the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation. According to Meder, it is the first ever global program to address carbon dioxide emissions in a specific sector of the economy. Meder declined to comment on whether the Commission supports Europeans reducing their amount of air travel.

The aviation report notes the potential for alternative sustainable aviation fuel sources to help reduce carbon emissions, but it also acknowledges that the impact will likely be minimal for the foreseeable future. Bio-based aviation fuels could be produced from sources such as woody biomass, hydrogenated fats and oils, recycled waste or other renewable sources, says the report, but they are largely used in a minimal role in blended fuel in order to comply with aviation fuel combustion standards. As such, much of the carbon reduction for current aviation biofuels takes place in the fuel production process rather than during flight. Currently, there is not an agreed upon definition of sustainable aviation fuel that is accepted at the international level.

Despite the heightened focus on reducing emissions—the average fuel burn per individual air traveler has actually decreased by 2.4 percent per year from 2014 to 2017—the overall carbon emissions in Europe have increased as a result of an added number of flights, larger size of aircraft and longer distances flown. Any technological advances that will reduce emissions are overcome, however, because more people are flying.

There is a growing recognition of this problem, and for some the answer is simple: stop flying so much. In Europe, the vast train network provides a low-carbon alternative, yet train travel hasn’t stopped the increase in air travel. In the United States, a comparable, carbon-free transportation network does not yet exist.

Parke Wilde, professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University in Massachusetts, manages a website and Twitter account called Flying Less. He is adamant that universities and professional organizations around the world must lead the way by setting and monitoring goals to reduce the overall number of flights.

“In the U.S. our initiative envisions university communities as leaders and catalysts, showing the way forward for bigger economic sectors,” said Wilde via email. “A key lesson is that we have to act collectively.”

Wilde acknowledges that currently there are limited carbon-free alternatives to air travel available to many Americans, but academics and professionals should still try to set the standard. EASA acknowledges the need to balance aviation industry growth with carbon reductions. In an emailed statement, Jagello Fayl, EASA spokesperson, described several methods for accomplishing this.

“EASA is supporting the implementation of a ‘basket of measures’, in cooperation with international partners, to mitigate aviation’s contribution to climate change,” he said. “These are summarised in the EAER 2019 (European Aviation Environmental Report) and include advanced fuel-efficient technology and design, optimised operational procedures, air traffic management, sustainable aviation fuels and market-based measures.”

Hans Bruyninckx, executive director of the European Economic Area, echoed that personal-responsibility sentiment in the report.

“Europe must lead the way towards a more sustainable aviation sector at home and abroad,” he says. “Strong policies and robust implementation can mitigate future impacts of a growing sector as well as foster innovation and the fundamental shift needed in consumer behavior.”