Seriously, of course a person with a chronically weak heart, who is affected by altitude, should not invite trouble by flying. A lame man should exercise special care in crossing a street with crowded traffic, and one with weak lungs should not attempt swimming a long distance unaccompanied.
Consciousness of speed in the air is surprisingly absent. Thirty miles an hour in an automobile, or fifty in a railroad train, gives one greater sensation of speed than moving one hundred miles an hour in a large plane. On the highway every pebble passed is a speedometer for one’s eye, while the ties and track whirling backward from an observation car register the train’s motion.
In the air there are no stones or trees or telegraph poles—no milestones for the eye, to act as speed indicators. Only a somewhat flattened countryside below, placidly slipping away or spreading out. Even when the plane’s velocity is greatly altered no noticeable change in the whole situation ensues—80 miles an hour at several thousand feet is substantially the same as 140, so far as the sensations of sight and feeling are concerned.
Piloting differs from driving a car in that there is an added necessity for lateral control. An automobile runs up and down hill, and turns left or right. A plane climbs or dives, turns, and in addition, tips from one side to another. There is no worry in a car about whether the two left wheels are on the road or not; but a pilot must normally keep his wings level. Of course doing so becomes as automatic as driving straight, but is, nevertheless, dependent upon senses ever alert.
One of the first things a student learns in flying, is that he turns by pushing a rudder bar the way he wants to go. (The little wagons of our youth turned opposite the push, remember?)
When he turns he must bank or tip the wings at the same time. Why? Because the plane would skid in exactly the same way a car does if it whirls around a level corner.
The inside of an automobile race track is like a bowl, with the sides growing steeper toward the top. The cars climb toward the outer edge in proportion to their speed, and it is quite impossible to force a slow car up the steep side of the bowl. The faster it goes the steeper the bank must be and the sharper the turn. A pilot must make his own “bowl” and learn to tip his plane the right degree relative to the sharpness of his turn and his speed. A skid means lack of control, for a while, either on the ground or in the air, and of course is to be avoided. By the way, compensating for skidding is the same with a car or plane—one turns either craft in the direction of the skid.
Besides skidding, a plane can stall exactly as a car does on a hill. The motor is overtaxed and stops. The plane motor doesn’t stop, but just as a stalled car starts to roll backwards down the hill, so the stalled plane begins to drop. Recovery of control with an automobile is simple; only a matter of jamming on the brakes and getting the engine started again. With the plane there is similarly little difficulty; it falls for a moment until it attains enough forward speed to make the rudder and elevators again effective. This is comparable to the ineffectiveness of a rudder on a too slow-moving boat. If a plane stall with out motor occurs so close to the earth that there isn’t time to recover control, a hard landing results.
But in the air, as with automobiles, most accidents are due to the human equation. The careful driver, either below or aloft, barring the hard luck of mechanical failure, has remarkably little trouble, considering what he has to contend with.
I think it is a fair statement that for the average landing, the descent of the plane is less noticeable than the dropping of the modern high-speed elevator. It comes down in a gentle glide at an angle often much less than that of a country hill. As a result, unless a passenger is actually watching for the landing, he is aware he is approaching the ground only when the motors are idled.