Are you afraid of flying?

[Arrian]

I'm fine with flying, though I'm not in love with takeoff/landing (more takeoff, come to think of it).

A flying 48" pizza, otoh, would be terrifying...

-Arrian

[Grandpa Troll]

Fear of Flying: Age difference means interpretation difference

I heard this and me mind wandered back a few years, ahhh, them good old days and fun frolicking and fornicating times

Erica Jong's first novel was published in 1973, when she was 30. It sold millions of copies and was considered revolutionary, ground-breaking, and shocking. Now, it's just the often funny adventures of freethinking, freewheeling, sexually obsessed Isadora Wing. Hope Davis gives her just the right prickly edginess as Isadora philosophizes and fantasizes her way through husbands, lovers, and one meaningless-if-pleasurable erotic encounter after another. Isadora wallows in the depths of the male/female sexual relationship, and while she gets tiresome, often tasteless, Hope Davis never does. Her reading is fresh, inventive, and sincere. Her Isadora is wry, funny, abrasive, crude, and smart. A socially significant book and a terrific performance by Davis make this worth a listen.

[Kuciwalker]

Invalid polls

Flying is boring, not scary.

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Invalid polls

Flying is boring, not scary.

[Wezil]

Originally posted by Zkribbler


Go to the Philippines. Visit Lancer. He's lonely.

So I can catch malaria or get caught up in a coup? Be serious.

Anywhere I want to go I can get to by car.

[Asher]

Detroit
Buffalo

[Zkribbler]

No fear here.

[Heraclitus]

Invalid poll!

/preaching out of a cardboard box/ Return to the teachings of the great Banana, save your souls and lives while you still can! For the endtime is near and those who are not one with the fruit shall be cast into the old pizza box of eternal suffering and fermentation!

[MosesPresley]

Why was the report grudgingly released? I'm not sure why NASA is concerned with airline profits.

http://www.azstarnet.com/allheadlines/218625

NASA pilot survey shows 100s of near-misses
But because data jumbled, trends hard to discern
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: 01.01.2008

NASA grudgingly released some results Monday from an $11.3 million federal air safety study it previously withheld from the public over concerns it would upset travelers and hurt airline profits. The data reflect hundreds of cases where pilots flew too close to other planes, plunged from altitude or landed at airports without clearance.

NASA published the findings — contained in 16,208 pages — but did not provide a road map to understand them, making it cumbersome for any thorough analysis by outsiders. Released on New Year's Eve, the unprecedented research conducted over nearly four years relates to safety problems identified by some 25,000 commercial pilots and more than 4,000 private pilots interviewed by telephone.
The results from commercial pilots appeared to reflect in part at least 1,266 incidents in which aircraft flew within 500 feet of each other, generally considered a near miss; at least 1,312 cases where pilots suddenly dropped or climbed inadvertently more than 300 feet in flight; and 166 reports of pilots landing without clearance at an airport with an active control tower. The Associated Press matched the data to the questionnaire that was used to interview pilots and was obtained separately by the AP.

The data also reflected 513 reports of hard landings and 4,267 cases of aircraft hitting birds.

Because NASA scrambled the data, it was impossible to determine whether multiple pilots might be reporting the same incidents, and a key expert said the numbers appeared inflated. NASA also did not present the data so researchers could project survey results to overall safety trends.

The information that NASA released was "intentionally designed to prevent people from analyzing the rates properly and are designed to entrap analysts into computing rates that are much higher than the survey really shows," said Jon Krosnick, a Stanford University professor and survey expert who helped design the project for NASA. He urged NASA to release more of the data needed for a better analysis.

Citing people familiar with the research, the AP reported earlier that the data showed events like near-collisions and runway interference occur far more frequently than previously recognized.
The data came from interviews with about 8,000 pilots per year from 2001 until the end of 2004. NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said Monday the survey was poorly managed and told reporters the traveling public shouldn't care about the data.

"It's hard for me . . . to see any data here that the traveling public would care about or ought to care about," Griffin said.

Griffin dismissed suggestions NASA chose to release the data late on New Year's Eve, when the public is distracted by holidays and news organizations are thinly staffed.

"We didn't deliberately choose to release on the slowest news day of the year," Griffin said.

NASA drew harsh criticism from Congress and news organizations for keeping the information secret. Rejecting an AP request under the Freedom of Information Act, NASA explained that it did not want to undermine public confidence in the airlines or hurt airline fortunes.
Griffin later overruled his staff and promised Congress he would release at least some data by the end of the year.

NASA's survey, the National Aviation Operations Monitoring System, was intended to see whether it could help identify problems and prevent accidents.

[Provost Harrison]

I'm fine with flying but hate airports.

[onodera]

Damn, the copycat threads are gone. Just when I was posting a geniune replay about my fear of frying.

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by Provost Harrison
I'm fine with flying but hate airports.

I hate getting into and out of airports. Traffic, ick!

But I love being in airports. There's a pluthera of hot babes to watch and there's the itch to pull out my credit card and to take off to some place wonderful!

[Dis]

I'm just afraid of Crashing, flying is okay

JK. Flying doesn't bother me. Sometimes I get a little nervous in turbulence. Nothing a drink or two can't calm.

[Q Classic]

I enjoy flying, with the following caveats:

**** the TSA and airport security. Half of the **** they do is just for show, and only makes things worse: e.g., the huge knot of people targets passengers at the security gate, the stupid liquid ban in which the confiscated liquids get thrown carelessly into a bin, the stupid shoes-off rule which provides a vector for athlete's foot transmission as well as not really doing much, the stupid scanners right next to the check-in counters where there are lines of passengers targets people...

The ****ty cramped seating arrangements.

[Blake]

Originally posted by onodera
Damn, the copycat threads are gone. Just when I was posting a geniune replay about my fear of frying.

I was wishing for a "Are you afraid of crying?"