The Passenger might benefit from a class for nervous flyers-if so, it is nothing to be ashamed of. These classes can enlighten and inform (our media often does a terrible job, well aware of its distortions and misrepresentations-they take a situation with a burned-out gear green light and finish by saying.."There were no fatalities!..." It is very rare to have injuries with these.).
A few months ago in a Michigan airport, I met an off-duty policeman who was taking his first flight in at least twelve years: he had been driving each year to Florida! After stating that we have procedures for everything and also use our experience, my suggestion was to go to the next gate and ask 'his' Airbus flightcrew a few questions. The guy also admitted to me that he needed to be in control. I told him that I might be uncomfortable in his uniform with the low life all over the city's streets.
If we are very concerned, or have phobias about medicine, we could all sit for hours in Borders, or Barnes & Noble bookstores, read the Merck's Manual on diseases (my mother-in-law has a copy...) and books about pharmaceuticals and then go on a doctor's or nurses' website and be able to instantly steer these highly-trained professionals in a new direction, possibly evaluate the success of certain surgical procedures.
No sweat-we all take part in the medical profession as we undergo various treatments, thereby allowing us all to judge, second-guess the decisions and the effectiveness.
Being unconscious during surgery, or in a passenger seat (dreaming of the Microsoft computer game [it has changing weather, winds, odd, mysterious systems indications and many partially blocked radio calls after five hours sleep next door to self-centered yokels who always let their hotel door slam?]) is no obstacle.
The bumpkins in the back of the plane who assume that a flight is safe only because they have intermittent light turbulence and feel a soft landing will always be bumpkins because they never even attempt to stop by a c0ckp1t to ask questions, or ask us in the 'food court', and never take the initiative to begin to learn how to put a few things in their proper context.
Years ago, a flight attendant told me that her plane had suffered a partial loss of cabin pressure. The masks dropped down when the cabin altitude reached 14,000', but very little oxygen flow comes through the mask (and now the area near oxygen generators can smell like scorched cotton). An Air Force flightcrew who had been onboard, knowing nothing about FAA requrements, tried to create a problem at the arrival gate, because so little air came from the masks. Although proficient flying large 4-engine KC-135s or such, their ignorance led some of them to jump to conclusions. Airline aviation and its regulations are so different from anything else.
How often do the media consult actual pilot spokesman after an incident? Rarely are their so-called 'experts' trained and experienced on aircraft similar to those involved. Some have only a bit of experience in a very small (six-seat) Cessna 402 and are aviation professors (academia), but presume to judge and evaluate an event-not having access to more than a tiny bit of info-which took place in a CRJ, B-737, A-319 or a DC-10.
J. Tullamarine-I just read your excellent comments after mine were posted, and you beat me to those main points.
The media collects certain statistics on accidents involving pilots in their own, or rented, small, even experimental aircraft. There have been articles lumping general aviation incidents and airline incidents together, in the same categories, especially those involving those under the influence of something prohibited. Is any light finally illuminating a dark cave? The Dark Ages still exist.