In October, if all goes according to plan, I will be boarding a plane for the first time in many years to fly domestically.
I am concerned, because my family will also be on-board, but to be frank, how safe will we really be?
Aeroplanes do crash. It is a fact of life. It just takes something weird and out of the ordinary to cause a seemingly safe journey to turn into a nightmare.
The recent aeroplane disasters, like the AirAsia crash in which 162 people were killed, have again highlighted that nothing under the blazing sun is foolproof.
Just ask the designers of the Titanic. It took one iceberg to tear apart (excuse the pun) the arguments that the massive cruise liner was unsinkable.
I have flown many times in my life – all over the world. I have even flown in the Apartheid days when you had to suffer through numerous detours to reach Europe because of sanctions imposed on South Africa.
I have never been afraid of flying, even though it should freak us out if we really ponder how 400 000kg (a rough estimate of a Boeing 747’s weight) of steel remains afloat in mid-air.
I am now concerned because something recently happened which is terrible to the thought process of any rational person, and that is the very real possibility of a human-being purposefully crashing an aircraft.
This is what happened in the tragic Germanwings crash in the Alps.
The tragedy has been widely blamed on co-pilot Andreas Lubitz. He is believed to have barricaded himself in the cockpit of the Germanwings A320 Airbus before flying the packed plane into the mountainside as the captain fought desperately to get inside.
Now that is a scary scenario for any passenger – more horrifying than anything Stephen King can dish up.
Terrorists flying a plane into the Twin Towers is one thing, but a pilot who has been assigned to serve and protect, who deliberately heads for the mountains is a total different proposition.
The reality of such a chain of events that led to the accident is something that we, as passengers, have never really pondered.
Sure, we might have wondered if the pilot is skilled, or if the plane is safe enough, but never in our wildest dreams have we considered a co-pilot with suicidal tendencies.
The incident has raised questions about pilots’ psychological fitness to fly a plane. We can only assume that airlines across the world make every effort to ensure pilots who carry such a huge burden are mentally capable of performing such a task.
But still, what remains disconcerting, is that one pilot did manage to kill 150 people. You have to wonder how on earth something like this could have transpired in our modern era.
Have we, as passengers, ever questioned the sanity of pilots when climbing on board a plane in South Africa?
When I take my seat, stuffed in like a sardine between other wild-eyed passengers, I would like to think that at 10km above the earth I don’t have to deal with a pilot who accidentally skipped an important pill that morning.
Human error in terms of aircraft crashes has also sparked debates about if planes shouldn’t fly without a pilot. Apparently the technology exists, even if no airline is currently thinking about trying it.
Would it make sense to fly planes without pilots? After all, the argument is that pilots spend only a few minutes really flying a plane anyway. The potential cost savings means the idea won’t go away.
I really don’t know what feels more uncomfortable to my already frail state of mind – a plane without a pilot, or a plane with an potentially unstable pilot.
The psychological state of mind of pilots also raises the question: how psychologically stable are those who have been tasked with protecting life? And how do we know?
Think about law enforcement officers and medical staff. Have we ever questioned how psychologically stable they are? They hold the power of life and death in their hands, just like pilots.
Unwarranted police brutality, as witnessed both locally and abroad in countries like America, has placed focus on the real dangers when those who are empowered to serve and protect become the predators.
Maybe certain, selected passengers should be given the right to speak to the pilot before lift-off, just to make them feel safe and sure they are not going to head for the mountain. But then again, maybe some of these passengers might be unstable themselves.
The fact is, we live in very stressful times, where it seems anybody has the ability to suddenly lose the plot, but, for a pilot or emergency personnel the consequences are far more serious.
I am, therefore, not looking forward to when the plane’s engines roar to life, because I will probably imagine a pilot who has done his best to his hide his destructive habits from the authorities.
