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The truth about airplane safety
The Japan Airlines and Alaska Airlines incidents could have been much worse.
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Commercial airliners carry a lot of combustible fuel, and quick evacuations are essential to avoid trapping everyone in a fireball if something goes wrong.
PHOTO: BLOOMBERG
Zeynep Tufekci
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It was only when I attempted to make small talk with my visibly squirming seatmate on a Raleigh-Durham to New York flight that I realised it was me causing that look of horror on his face, rather than the slight turbulence we had been experiencing since take-off.
A friendly chat, I had thought, might help distract him from flight anxiety. But then I noticed his eyes – wide with fear – were fixed on my computer screen, which displayed an investigative report on an airplane crash I had been reading.
