Ask the pilot

How safe are those old Russian jets Cubana flies? Why don't people clap on landing anymore? Plus: Stowaways, oxygen deprivation and more!

By Patrick Smith

Read more: Technology & Business, Flying, Airplanes, Airlines, Business, P. Smith, Ask the Pilot

Feb. 16, 2007 | Something I miss on airplanes (aside from the obvious things, like pillows, blankets and something to eat): clapping. Yeah, this is old school, but it wasn't that long ago when passengers routinely burst into applause each time their plane touched down. I came of age, flying-wise, in the late '70s and early '80s, and the phenomenon was still widespread.

No surprise that it rarely happens anymore. The number of Americans who fly at least two times a year has more than quadrupled in the past quarter-century. The familiarity of the routine, together with the many abrasive hassles that come with it, has rubbed away whatever sense of excitement or novelty had remained.

Clapping remains somewhat common overseas, where passengers aren't (yet) as jaded. In the past few years, on trips I've taken to Asia, Africa and the Middle East, cheers and applause could be heard on roughly half of the landings. And I wouldn't say this pertains only to remote routes on lesser-known airlines -- these were big-city arrivals on carriers like Malaysia Airlines and Air France.

Do crews feel offended, or insulted? No. The jubilation isn't a critique of the landing or a judgment on the pilots' skills. (Even if it were, somewhere in an ancient column I explain why it's basically impossible for riders to judge the perceived "correctness" of a landing.) Neither is it, unless something particularly unsettling occurred en route, an outburst of relief at having cheated gravity and lived to tell about it. Even the most nervous fliers are more optimistic than that. I wouldn't deconstruct it too much. It pretty much speaks for itself and needn't be taken too seriously. To me, it lends a folksy, humane touch to the end of a flight.

When it does happen, clapping is strictly an economy-class phenomenon. You'll be apt to look for socioeconomic meaning in this, and maybe there is one, but the dynamics of economy class -- more people sitting closer together -- lend itself to the occasion. There's a certain communal spirit, especially after a long-haul flight, when you've spent several hours in a relatively intimate space with hundreds of people. In a way, the applause acts like big collective handshake.

And speaking of old school: How many of you are old enough to remember when this column consisted of a weekly question-and-answer session? Newcomers are sometimes baffled: "Who exactly is asking the pilot anything?" (Trivia: It was Salon's Andrew Leonard who came up with the column's name in 2002, and who, perhaps wisely, ignored my plea that it be changed to the shamelessly derivative "Cockpit Confidential.") Fair enough question, and obviously it's a good idea now and again to let the readers themselves guide the discussion. So let's open up the lines.

Last month, the body of a stowaway was found in the landing gear bay of a British Airways jet at Los Angeles International Airport. Only days before, another body had been found in the bay of a Delta 767. I'd always thought incidents like these were an urban legend. I guess they really happen, but I can't understand why. Who would be foolish enough to hide himself in a portion of a plane that is unpressurized and unheated?

Somebody who doesn't know better. It's true that most stowaways are poor, presumably uneducated people who sneak aboard on the tarmac in developing nations -- some years ago, flights arriving in the U.S. from Haiti were common stowaway targets; the recent Delta incident involved a flight from Dakar, Senegal (an unfortunate damper on the airline's historic new route to Africa) -- but I've fielded enough questions in my time to know the average, even highly educated citizen has little idea whether an aircraft wheel well is pressurized. Heated? Well, many stowaways have been found bundled up with blankets and warm clothing, so apparently they have some inkling.

Though not enough. If you've ever snooped around the nether regions of a wide-body plane, you've seen just how spacious the gear bays are and how deceptively "roomy" they might appear. But the lack of pressurization means you will run out of oxygen within minutes of takeoff, and temperatures at cruising altitudes hover somewhere around 60 degrees below zero. To that you can add total darkness, deafening noise, and the very good chance of being crushed to death by the struts, doors and retraction mechanisms of the undercarriage. It's worse, even, than coach.

I remember a picture from Life magazine, taken in the 1970s by an amateur photographer. It shows a young boy dropping from the wheel well of a Japan Air Lines DC-8 only seconds after takeoff. The boy, who had either slipped, jumped from fright or been dislodged by a piece of moving equipment, had climbed aboard unnoticed in hopes of reaching Australia. The photographer, who was simply snapping shots of airplanes, had no idea he'd captured the image until after developing his film.

The stowaway theme is something we could riff on for many pages. There's Frank Abagnale, of course, the notorious imposter of "Catch Me if You Can" fame who conned his way into cockpits with a forged pilot's license. Or the case of William Cohn, a shop owner from Miami who traveled the world for free by posing as a Pan Am flight attendant in the early 1980s. The ruse was uncovered after passengers and fellow employees wrote several letters of commendation on Cohn's behalf.

Next page: Do airlines dial down the oxygen in the cabin to keep passengers woozy and docile?