In my many years of commercial aviation, I’ve heard it all. I’ve summarized the most common myths of Homo passengeris right here!1. After landing, you hear the engines rev up again: they are spinning backward to reverse the thrust.
I’ve heard this comment many times, but this idea is completely wrong! Besides being physically impossible due to mass, energy, and other factors, a jet engine (or a propeller engine) is designed to always spin in the same direction and cannot run in reverse.
What actually happens is that after landing, pilots activate mechanical "flaps" called reversers. these deploy behind the airflow exiting the engine and deflect it forward, helping to slow the aircraft down. On propeller planes, the propeller blades change their pitch (angle) to push air forward instead of backward, creating the same braking effect.
2. During long flights, the cabin is cold because pilots turn down the heat to save fuel.
No! Because of how the system is designed, adjusting the cabin temperature has no impact on fuel consumption—it simply wouldn't make sense.
Generally, pilots try to keep the cabin at an acceptable average temperature, around 24°C (75°F). However, this is influenced by a few factors:
System Efficiency: Depending on the aircraft type and the condition of the packs (air conditioning units), the regulation might not be perfectly precise.
Physics! During flight, the cabin is usually "uphill," meaning it’s tilted so the front is slightly higher than the back. Since hot air rises, it’s common for the front seats to feel warmer than the seats at the back. Fortunately, temperature control is usually divided into zones, allowing us to heat different sectors differently to help solve the problem.
3. I can make free calls from the plane because at such high speeds, the "cell handover" happens too fast for the carrier to charge me; that’s why they force me to turn off my phone.
If you were allowed to keep your phone on, you’d find that shortly after takeoff and until just before landing, your phone would have no signal at all. Think about it: you struggle to get reception just by leaving a populated area if there are no towers for a few miles—do you really think you’d get a signal at 30,000 feet?
Lately, many airlines offer the ability to make calls (at a high price!) via an onboard "local network," which is connected to conventional networks via satellite.
4. A flight from A to B takes longer than B to A because the Earth's rotation adds to or subtracts from the plane's speed.
Absolutely not! The airplane moves within the atmosphere, which in turn moves along with the Earth as it rotates. It’s a closed system. As far as we are concerned, the Earth could be rotating vertically or standing still, and we wouldn’t notice a thing on the plane.
Flight duration is actually heavily influenced by high-altitude air currents (jet streams). To be pedantic, due to the Earth's rotation, a flight from East to West takes a few millionths of a second longer than the reverse... but that’s a story for another time!
5. Airplanes land with a tailwind.
No... again, it's all about the wind direction relative to the runway.
6. The Earth is flat; if it weren't, a plane flying in a straight line would eventually fly right out of the atmosphere and into space.
(This is a "good" one, but I swear I’ve heard it!) I refuse to comment...
7. Airplanes secretly spray harmful substances into the atmosphere, known as "chemtrails."
Here too, I prefer not to get into the merits of the argument, as it would only fuel controversies that have no place on this blog.
If it’s enough for you, I’ll just say this: NO, airplanes aren't spraying anything at all. The trails you see—which some would have you believe are evidence of global conspiracies—are caused by simple physical phenomena that are perfectly explainable and demonstrable.
DontWorryFlyHappy!