4 Things You (Probably) Don’t Know About Air Travel
Air travel is something that is growing increasingly more accessible thanks to lowered prices, but also increasingly more luxurious. Just take a look at these luxurious first-class plane cabins and you’ll get a sense of how much people are willing to pay to travel in style while they’re thousands of feet in the air. But the world of air travel has its share of secrets and nuances, and in this article, we’ll be talking about some of the ones that you (probably) don’t know about.
The Pilots Eat Different Meals
As much as some of us hate the food on airplanes, did you know that the pilots eventually have to get used to it? Pilots usually aren’t very picky about their food, but there is one little nuance that you may not know: the pilots have to eat different meals. According to an interview in 2012, the pilots have to eat different meals in the event that one of the meals is contaminated and manages to poison the pilot. In most cases, the pilot gets the first-class meal and the co-pilot only gets the business-class meal. Although it’s probably better than the food we get stuck with in economy class, it’s still interesting to think that they build so many fail-safes into air travel.
Air Travel Is the Safest Form of Transport
That statement is actually a lie. The safest form of transportation is actually the elevator, but for the sake of argument, we won’t refer to it as a real form of transportation. The reason people are more worried about travelling on a plane as opposed to a car or a bus is that we hear less about car crashes or grounded crashes in general. When a plane crashes, it’s usually a media sensation that is covered by several news outlets and the news we hear will always involve death tolls. This leads us to believe that air travel is incredibly unsafe and it petrifies some people. However, it’s simply not true and there are so many fail-safes that keep a plane from turning into a flying death trap that you’d be surprised.
Painting Planes Is More Hassle Than You Think
Adding paint to something might not seem like such a huge hassle, but on a gigantic plane that needs several layers of paint, the weight adds up and can cause issues with the stability of the plane (yes, it’s that precise!). To remedy this, airlines using laser ablation to remove paint from planes without harming the structure of the metal itself. You might be thinking “what is laser ablation?” and the easiest way to explain would be to describe it as an extremely precise laser that is used in many different applications. For air travel, it’s used to completely strip a plane of its paint every few years so new coats can be re-applied without affecting the weight of the plane itself.
A Plane Doesn’t Need Both Its Engines
And speaking of safety, one of the most remarkable safety measures in a plane is the fact that it can fly with just a single engine. In fact, a plane can fly relatively well without any engine at all. In the event that both engines fail, it’s possible for a plane to glide to safety well before any of its passengers are in danger. It’s also incredibly rare for both engines to fail which just adds to the safety.