Originally Posted by
EchoMike
"Mr. Happiness" about died - turned white as a sheet, the two stews broke out laughing - and we were treated ROYALLY for the entire flight - and somehow they were always just too busy to get Mr. Happiness so much as a glass of water. He was first off the airplane, too.
This is a true story . . . and I do have a pilot's license, but not for the big iron.
I had something a little bit like this (but regarding a nervous passenger, not a snotty one) a while ago flying from Norwich into Manchester on a little twin-prop thingy (Eastern Airlines, I think it was). It was as windy as a windy thing; the further north you went, the windier it got, and they'd cancelled everything to more northerly destinations - so Manchester must have been just within the limits for the aircraft (in fact the captain's briefing included a phrase along the lines of "we'll have a go, but we might have to divert if the conditions aren't up to it when we get there").
I'd chosen the aisle seat, and as we came down the final approach the guy by the window to the right of me was having kittens - white knuckles, terrified expression, the whole nine yards. 'Course, it didn't help that we were banked to the right - it always looks like you're banked over harder than you really are, and he was convinced we were going to land on the wingtip, not the wheels. So I gave him a ten-second explanation of how you do approaches in crosswinds, reassured him that this was perfectly normal, and told him not to worry if the right wheels touched a little before the left ones. Sure enough, they did - and he was amazed to find out that this was a perfectly normal way to do it. "I wouldn't have worried if I'd known", he said - his fretting was simply down to the perception that aeroplanes should fly straight and level unless they're going around corners in the sky.
Same with a friend of mine. He used to be terrified of flying, until we went on holiday together. All I did was tell him at each stage stuff like: "You'll hear a clunk in a moment; that's the wheels being retracted" or "You'll hear a whirring motor in a minute as he winds the flaps down; that's so he can slow down for the approach, and don't worry if it looks like the wing is coming apart, it's meant to look like that". Pops and clunks worry nervous flyers, and a little bit of reassurance works wonders. Since then I've taken him up in our club's PA-28 and he loved every moment.
David C