Ask Captain Lim

Hi Captain Lim,

This is a great website.  I have read through many of your entries and it does make me feel more confident.  However, I have a very real fear/anxiety about flying.  I live in Australia, so everything is VERY far away!  I am however keen to travel to the UK later this year and wonder if you could tell me where a plane could land if it lost power or malfunctioned when traveling from Australia to Europe. 

If traveling via Singapore or Dubai, there is a lot of water giving more likelihood to a crash occurring while you are over the water... as the nearest airport would be very far away! Hence, this is exacerbating my fears of nose diving into water and not being able to get out of the plane ...consequently drowning! 

How do the doors on the plane open if the water pressure from outside is pushing against them?  Also, are there any circumstances that would cause a plane to actually nose dive? 

I always get very nervous during turbulence and don't understand fully what causes the plane to bump up and down, so thanks for helping me... I'm trying to get over my fears!

Kristy

Hi Kristy,

I wish you and other many fearful flyers read my past FAQ as all those that you have just asked me have been covered before. I received so many questions daily that it is not possible for me to reply to each and everyone anymore - except when I am free ...then I will entertain one or two only.  (Even though I have upgraded and transferred most of my old posts to this new site, I regret to say that I have not been able to fix all the broken links - there are about 1000 FAQ!)

Tonight, you are lucky...  I will repeat or point out some links to your questions.

For a plane to crash during the cruise - it is extremely slim but it can happen. See this FAQ here. Even if a plane has lost all its engines, it is still flyable - see "Flying on Empty" in the same FAQ.

Do not worry about no diversionary airports along the entire route in the event of an emergency. Pilots plan their routes carefully for the flight would be illegal if no alternate airports were nominated. See one FAQ pertaining to the Boeing 777 on a route between Perth and Dubai here. Once over the land, there many airports to choose from.

You can read the topic on Ditching here regarding planes crashing onto water. If a ditching is well executed, it is likely that the plane may stay afloat initially if it was intact. So there is no question about the doors not being able to open.

On a prepared ditching, all passengers would have been briefed to wear their lifejackets prior to leaving the plane. If a plane is submerged, then there is a chance that it may not be in one piece. So one has to escape through any cracks rather than trying to open any doors!

A plane will not nose dive unless it suffers from control problems. It has happened to older planes in the past but modern planes today have many redundant controls to make such a thing happening very remote. In fact, a plane without control problems is inherently very stable during a dive. It will recover when it regains its speed - something like a paper plane!

For the explanation about turbulence, there are many FAQ here.

Meanwhile, you can watch a video on Fear of Flying below:-