Free Cockpit Confidential by Patrick Smith Page A

doesn’t matter.
    Know that nine times out of ten, a plane dumping fuel and executing a precautionary return is not in the throes of an actual emergency. The term “emergency landing” is used generically by passengers and the press. Crews must formally declare an emergency to air traffic control and will do so only in situations when time is critical, there’s the possibility of damage or injury, or aircraft status is uncertain. The great majority of precautionary landings, even those when fire engines are lined up along the runway, are just that: precautionary.
What happens when lightning hits an airplane?
    Planes are hit by lightning more frequently than you might expect—an individual jetliner is struck about once every two years, on average—and are designed accordingly. The energy does not travel through the cabin electrocuting the passengers; it is discharged overboard through the plane’s aluminum skin, which is an excellent electrical conductor. Once in a while there’s exterior damage—a superficial entry or exit wound—or minor injury to the plane’s electrical systems, but a strike typically leaves little or no evidence. In 1963, lightning caused a wing explosion aboard a Pan Am 707 over Maryland. Afterward, the FAA enforced several protective measures, including fuel tank modifications and the installation of discharge wicks aboard all aircraft.
    In 1993, I was captaining a thirty-seven-seater when lightning from a tiny embedded cumulonimbus cell got us on the nose. What we felt and heard was little more than a dull flash and a thud. No warning lights flashed, no generators tripped off line. Our conversation went:
    Â 
    â€œWhat was that?”
“I don’t know.” [ shrug ]
“Lightning?”
“Might have been.”
    Â 
    Mechanics would later find a black smudge on the forward fuselage.
On more than one flight, I have seen what appears to be silver duct tape affixed to one part of the plane or another. Tell me it isn’t so.
    Photos of what are taken to be duct-tape repairs are periodically passed around through email and posted on blogs, putting people in a frenzy. It always looks worse than it is. The material isn’t duct tape at all, but a heavy-duty aluminum bonding tape known as “speed tape,” used to patch superficial, noncritical components until more substantive repairs can be made later on. You’ll see it on flap fairings, winglets, gear doors, and the like. Speed tape costs hundreds of dollars per roll and is able to expand and contract through a wide range of temperatures.
Midway across the ocean, I watched as a 747 approached us and flew close alongside for several minutes. It was just to the left and beneath us, so close that you could see people through the windows. I often see planes passing at such alarming proximity. Are these near misses?
    This is a great illustration of what I like to call PEF, or Passenger Embellishment Factor, the phenomenon that accompanies so many accounts of dodgy takeoffs, supposed near misses, and so on. Earmark this page for the next time you’re subject to a water cooler tale like this one.
    Not to belittle your powers of observation, but distances aloft can be hard to judge, and passengers have an extremely common habit of underestimating separation with other aircraft. During cruise, planes will always be a minimum of 1,000 feet apart vertically or three miles horizontally. Flights on the transoceanic track systems ( see oceanic routings ) frequently encounter one another more or less as you describe. It can be startling—a 747 is a big ship, and even from a thousand feet away it looks awfully close—but it’s perfectly safe and routine. The rules are different for takeoffs and landings. With simultaneous approaches to parallel runways, for instance, planes can be at the same altitude and a mile or less apart—though they remain under the very close watch of