"Flying doesn't affect your body."
Ooh.
It does!
"Autopilot flies the plane for you."
No, it does not!
"It is more dangerous to fly during the night than the day."
No, it's the same.
Hi, my name is Captain Zoya,
and I'm a commander on the Boeing 777s
with Indian flight carrier Air India.
And I have been doing this for the last, well, 17 years.
I'm Rajalakshmi Eshwar. People call me Raji.
I'm first officer on a Boeing 777
with our national carrier, Air India.
And today, we are going to be debunking myths about flying.
"Bad turbulence can crash a plane."
Not true.
So, chances are the turbulence that you're going to face
on your flight is not going to crash your airplane.
A lot of times, how the turbulence happens
is there is a wind shift,
the change of wind direction and/or speed.
That's what destabilizes the airflow,
which is what causes turbulence.
We are well prepared to avoid these circumstances.
First of all, we, on ground, go through all the papers
and the research required to avoid them.
We have the weather reported to us.
We have radars on board.
Agarwal: Which can depict on our screen
that there is turbulence this way and you may get it.
And even if we do enter some turbulence,
we can always slow the aircraft down.
These aircrafts are structurally built
to withstand such turbulence.
So more often than not,
the turbulence that you encounter is probably just mild
and something that you're going to sail through
in just a few minutes.
Agarwal: So long as you stay seated,
put your seat belts on, stay calm,
breathe in, breathe out, you'll be fine.
"Lightning can bring down a plane."
No.
I know it sounds scary, right?
Lightning.
There are occasions that there could be lightning around.
But the aircrafts that we fly these days
are structurally built to handle these lightnings,
and we have static dischargers and various other things
that just discharges any lightning
that would possibly strike an aircraft.
So that right there is a myth.
"Cabin air will make you sick."
Hmm.
Does it?
Cabin air will not make you sick.
We have air purification, two HEPA filters, on board.
That air is continuously recirculated,
which is mixed with the outside fresh air.
It's going through various filter,
various stages before it reaches you.
Agarwal: So at any point in time,
you're breathing in fresh combined air.
Eshwar: Probably one of the other
thing that you're confusing is motion sickness,
or altitude sickness.
But it's not the cabin air.
So watch your food intake,
please be hydrated,
and you will be fit as a fiddle.
"Flying doesn't affect your body."
Ooh.
It does!
Have you gone on these flights, and then you come land,
and then you're so exhausted and dehydrated?
Agarwal: I wonder why that is! Eshwar: All the time!
All the time.
So, yes, flying does affect your body.
Let's talk about the dehydration bit, right?
Your aircraft air is pressurized.
And it is pressurized to an altitude
between 5,000 to 9,000 feet.
It's not natural to be at such an elevation
for a human body.
And then, secondly, the aircrafts do feel pretty dry.
In the air, what you're dealing with
is very, very dehydrated air.
The humidity levels of the air is extremely low.
And also, when you're in the airplane
taking those 16-hour-long flights,
chances are you're going to have coffee
and alcohol, perhaps,
which is going to dehydrate you further.
Secondly, you're also sitting down
for a long period of time.
Agarwal: And you have limited space,
and that kind of reduces the airflow in your body,
which is why we are always encouraged on the flights
to move around every now and then
to increase the blood flow in your body.
The best thing you can do is hydrate yourself
and maybe get up and stretch a little bit.
Your body will definitely readjust once we land,
so don't worry about it.
"It is more dangerous to fly during the night than the day."
No, it's the same.
The only difference is that during the day
we have some visual references,
which probably makes us feel slightly more comfortable.
But with the instruments that we fly,
day or night makes no difference.
Typically, as pilots, we fly instrument flight rules,
which means that we have predefined routes.
Eshwar: So we don't require any visual references
in the night. We have the route data,
which we put into the flight-management system,
and pretty much guide the aircraft through the route.
We ensure that whether it's day or whether it is night,
those air routes are followed to the T.
"Flying is more dangerous than driving."
No! No, no, no! No.
Flight is by far one of the most safest means of travel,
if you ask me. Agarwal: Yeah.
We follow high standards of safety.
Everything, from the get-go.
The aircraft is maintained with safety in mind.
Pilots are trained with safety in mind.
Air routes are planned with safety in mind.
Imagine, a million miles of air travel
and not a single accident.
Now imagine a million miles on the road.
Do you think it would go on without an accident?
No, no.
No. I guess there must be something, right?
Yeah.
So flying is, I think, way safer
than something like crossing the road.
It's super, super safe.
Everything is based on passenger safety.
That is our priority.
"Autopilot flies the plane for you."
No, it does not!
There are so many times I'm with friends and they're like,
"You have an autopilot, right?
It pretty much does your job.
You're pretty much sitting back and relaxing
while your autopilot is doing your job."
We control the autopilot. We tell the autopilot what to do.
We give all the commands for it.
What altitude to fly, what airspeed to fly,
what route to fly.
We are right there monitoring every single thing.
And the purpose of the autopilot
is to reduce the workload of a pilot,
so the pilot can think on the bigger picture.
Thinking about what next can we do
to make the flight better in every single way.
"Pilots must have perfect vision."
No.
Perfect corrected vision, that's something we need.
You must see plenty of pilots with glasses on, right?
Even if you have spectacles on,
as long as it is 20/20 vision, it's all right.
I have 6/6.
She has 6/6, which is 20/20 over here.
But by far, so long as you have corrected vision,
you can totally fly, yes.
"Pilots all have parachutes under their seats."
No, we don't.
Agarwal: Only the fighter airplanes, yes.
Eshwar: Yeah. Not the commercial ones.
What we have is life vests,
which are same as every other passenger on board.
"Pilots sleep for most of the flight."
Yeah, we don't have that choice.
Like, really, we don't.
I mean, except if it's a long-haul flight,
then you have multiple crew.
When the flights are very, very long,
that's when you are given your designated rest
in which you must rest.
Which is what exactly we did yesterday
from Delhi to New York.
We flew almost ...
Eshwar: 16 hours.
Agarwal: Yeah. On the other side of the world.
When you're doing such long flights,
you do have multiple set of crew.
Two captains, two first officers.
What normally happens is there is one set of crew
that sits on the control in the cockpit
while the other two goes into the bunk, rests up,
so that when the first set of crew is tired,
we come and replace them.
And we sit while they go sleep,
'cause it is humanly not possible
to be attentive for 16, 17 hours straight.
"Staying awake through a flight will cure jet lag."
No.
No, it does not.
In fact, it'll worsen it.
What I have discovered in my career
is there is no cure for jet lag.
There is no shortcut for jet lag.
You know, I have been asked this question so many times.
"Oh, you must be a pro at handling jet lag."
No, you never become a pro at handling jet lag.
I wish I did.
You can minimize it by resting.
You can minimize it by staying fed, hydrating yourself.
And the best thing to do is when you land back,
just try to adjust as much as you can to the local time.
Try to eat at their times, sleep at their times.
That's the best you can do.
But you have to go through the process. Sorry.
Yeah, all of us do after every flight.
It's just there.
And there is no escape.
I wish there was a magic potion, though.
I'll be the first customer.
So, for people who are boarding an aircraft,
please don't be afraid to fly.
You are in hands of very well-trained crew, pilots,
and the aircrafts are built to handle the stress.
So don't be afraid.