Can commercial jets fly upside down? Has terrorism forced a change in transoceanic flight paths?
And other probing questions for our expert. By Patrick Smith Dec. 12, 2008 | Nothing philosophical this week. We’ll keep it real, so to speak, with some red-meat questions and answers from reader-submitted e-mails. A few of these concerns have been dealt with in this column before, but judging from how often I’m asked about them, it’s probably time to review. In your description a week ago of a Colombian jetliner that ran out of fuel over Long Island, N.Y., you write that the plane, all four of its engines having failed, “glided to a crash landing into a wooded hillside.” I understand your desire to avoid alarmist language, but was that not a little soft? “Glided”? I suspect that “plunged” or “fell” might have been more accurate. “Glided” was a perfectly apt term. Many passengers presume that only a glider can glide, and that a large plane, sans power, will exit from the sky like a stone. But this is not at all true. Granted, the complete ceasing of all engines brings on a host of anci
