When Julia Buckley stepped onto British Airways flight 249 from London to Rio de Janeiro last week, she was “trembling with fear”. Buckley, a journalist based in Venice, Italy, had been researching a story on air safety and plane crashes in the weeks before her trans-Atlantic flight. So she was a “complete wreck” when it came time to board the plane.
The pilot noticed how afraid she looked coming aboard and asked someone to check on her before takeoff. We only know his first name is Del and when he heard why she was freaking out he delayed the takeoff a few minutes to draw a diagram of how planes fly and why they're so safe.
Not only did Pilot Del give her a sketch explaining how the plane stays in the air, but he also demonstrated the concept of lift by blowing on a piece of paper and he explaining that the 787 can glide for three hours without engine power and during the flight they would never be more than three hours from a runway. After having a bad experience on the same trip previously, Julia says this flight was the best ever. “Taking the time to explain helped so much,” she says and adds, “Absolutely world-class team yesterday.”
By the way in the United States there's about 45,000 flights every day. In the last 15 years, approximately 246,375,00 flights, there's been a total of 3 crashes which led to 52 deaths.
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