Mm-hmm okay right well now in breaking news - Airplane lands as expected.
Windy but no biggie says pilot. Plane makes a normal landing. Yeah that's
just not how the media reports on the aviation industry these days it's a
little bit more how can we say overhyped and sensationalized
yeah let's say it like that overhyped and sensationalized and that's what I
want to talk about today.
Now a slightly different video today just a short one
and also I just want to preface this by saying I really want this channel to be
a positive place I want this channel to be a place that encourages you to, well,
get out and travel more and do more and obviously aviation is a big part of that.
So when aviation gets a bad rap or when aviation is being reported on in the
media either inaccurately or in a way that scares people yeah I really don't
like that. Now many of you watching of course know the aviation industry really
well and you can see reports in the media and you kind of let them wash over
your head because at the end of the day you know what planes are supposed to do
you know what pilots are supposed to do and it doesn't really matter how people
are reporting on it. But a lot of travellers out there and a lot of people
who just love aviation don't have that level of experience. And therefore when
they're shown something in the media when something's described as terrifying or
abnormal then quite often that's believed. The more that happens and the
more stories we see and the more things are described as scary and terrifying
then obviously people who might be nervous passengers to start with are
gonna start letting that kind of information influence them. And if that
ever means that they're going to stop making decisions to fly and travel
that's when I start to have a problem with all of this. Let me give you a
couple of examples of what I mean. From CNN travel - Pilots train to land sideways
but few pull it off. And then when you click through to the article pilot pulls
off incredible sideways landing at Bristol Airport. So the video in the
article here you can see this is a 757 just coming in to land at Bristol
cutting to dramatic footage of gale force winds and waves crashing that's
great but here we go so the planes coming in short final nice crab angle
looks pretty stable actually starting to kick the rudder around just coming
around to line up with the runway wheels touch yes a little bit sideways but
pilot lines it up and yeah it chuggs down the runway down the centreline.
And that's it. The plane lands where's the story in that? The only
reason I can think that an article was put together based on that is because
the footage was available they just had some interesting footage of a crosswind
landing created an article and then put advertising on there to sell vacuum cleaners.
Here's another one - Passengers had a terrifying experience on board a plane
in the United Kingdom. This is an Air France aircraft which actually performs
an incredibly scary maneuver that not a lot of people know about in aviation
it's called a go-around (gasp). So here we go aircraft coming in you can see a nice
crab angle to the right there crosswind from the right it's not quite.. it's floating
they even they even edited the video there they didn't show the whole thing.
But it floated down the runway obviously the pilot decided there's not enough
runway to make the landing and decided to execute a go-around. Pretty standard
right? Have a look at what some other maybe more reasonable people have said
about what they've just witnessed. Jim Stewart yeah this is entirely normal and
entirely not news there are literally thousands of videos showing similar
landings around the world on YouTube it probably happened somewhere on earth
every day how and why this make it to broadcast TV news? This is a textbook
maneuver this is not terrifying it's normal. I thought they were talking about
the fear of being on an Airbus .That's actually quite a funny comment I
appreciate that one. Get a life 7 News pathetic journalism.
Wouldn't quite go that far. What is terrifying to land although the weather
conditions don't respect our safety standards or to execute promptly a
normal procedure for which we are trained? Exactly there's nothing
terrifying about that footage until you show it on a news story and you put the
words terrifying around it. Well, not obviously, here's the thing before I say
that I can't speak for the people who are on board that aircraft and if you're
a particularly nervous flyer and it's particularly turbulent and it may be a
a hard landing, then sure you you might be scared on board that aircraft.
But they didn't speak to any other passengers, there's no passenger report
saying 'yes this was a terrifying experience' which is then being reported
on by the news. No there's just footage of the aircraft performing a go-around
and then the word terrifying put in the tweet around it. Just on a side note I
do like the way then the internet jumps on these things. There's another great comment
here, Paul R says 'I had a terrifying experience this morning when I reached
for a shirt but picked a different one at the last minute. DM me for an interview'.
Here's another one this time from Conde Nast Traveler - Plane makes terrifying but
triumphant landing at German airport. This is good this one seems to have a
happy ending. This footage now if you haven't seen
this footage of this aA80 landing in Germany it's actually incredibly
impressive. But just look at the difference between the way that the
person who shot the original footage and this article just the way that the two
have been written. The person who shot the footage and let's give credit to
them this is Cargospotter, this is the channel on
YouTube. This is at 14 million views as well (clapping). This is an excellent bit of footage
of the aircraft coming down to land. It's actually quite fascinating you can see
here it does actually touch down and gets a little bit of a bounce, the wind kicks it
round but then look at the rudder deflections there first right then left.
Lines itself back up on the runway on the centreline there great footage
excellent capture. Now this person on YouTube could have put this footage up
and said 'oh my god Airbus a380 terrifying crosswind landing'. No, a
great description and I love this line here - 'I've never seen such a tremendous
reaction of an airplane after touchdown. You can see that the pilots tried to
align with the runway using the tail rudder and luckily it worked out'.
That's fine if articles are written in that way when they're published I actually think
people would get more respect for aviation more respect for the pilots
that fly these aircraft and maybe, maybe some of those nervous passengers
wouldn't be quite as nervous because they can see that bad weather does
happen and planes do sometimes make hard landings but at the end of the day the
plane and the pilot are doing their job then as is the case most of the time
things actually have a positive ending. And aviation has got way safer as time
has gone on I mean if you look at incidents which involve fatalities of
aviation over the last 50 years you can see there's an obvious downward trend.
And that's despite the fact that people who are traveling on airlines and the
number of flights that are actually flying is going up. In fact the number of
passengers in the last 10 years has doubled over four billion people
traveled on commercial airlines in 2017, that's almost two thirds of the whole planet.
But despite the incredible safety record and the technological advances it
does seem that the media still wants to insist on reporting aviation as a risky
and dangerous endeavor. And that's where I have an inherent problem. I love
watching videos like those crosswind landings I love watching aircraft
struggling in difficult conditions mainly because I love to see those
pilots who create a successful outcome based on those tricky conditions as an
aviator and pilot myself that's probably the enjoyment I get out of it. Now if
you're a nervous passenger you probably don't want to watch that kind of content
but that's your choice. What you shouldn't have to endure is having that
content presented to you on your nightly news when you're enjoying dinner with
your family, or just catching up on the day's events, and being portrayed as a
risky and terrifying experience. I just, I don't know, I just think I think it's
lazy journalism. I think there's way more important things that we
should be reporting on and I just think there are so many positive stories when
it comes to aviation and travel that this kind of thing, this is old news guys.
Why are we still doing this? Now open invitation if anyone from the media who
does produce articles like that would like to talk to me I would love to have
an honest and open discussion about why aviation is sometimes portrayed in that
risky and terrifying light. Or maybe you're a nervous passenger and you know
if you think you know what it doesn't bother me as much as it seems to bother
you Stef, let me know in the comments below. I'd love to hear your take on this.
Okay that is all thank you for bearing with me on that one like I say I want to
keep things very positive on this channel but that was just, I don't know,
it's just something that I wanted to share with you. I'd love to hear your
thoughts on it as well. If you liked it then please like this if you're new to
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Otherwise thank you as always for watching and I'll catch you in the next video.