I enjoy reading people's post-flight reports on this message board, so I thought I would post a few comments about my recent flight from JFK to San
Francisco, flying American Airlines on a 767.
The flight was fairly smooth. After a few bad bumps somewhere over the mid-West the pilot announced we were climbing 2000 feet and taking a more northward course to avoid a mass of turbulence over the center of the country. That seemed to do the trick--no more bad bumps.
During the first half of the flight I was keeping pretty calm reading magazines. Then I took out my laptop and a CD containing some recordings of my favorite light and amusing TV shows. Unexpectedly, I started to become nervous about the flight while watching the CD. For one thing, I was mixing up sounds in the background of the TV shows with sounds on the airplane. More fundamentally, watching the CD seemed to disconnect me from the reality of what was happening on the plane. I kept pulling out the earplugs during the commercials to see if the plane still sounded normal. Watching CDs just doesn't seem to work for me on airplanes.
The interesting part of the flight was the descent from cruising altitude to the altitude where the plane has to start maneuvering in air traffic (10,000 ft?). The plane just seemed to float gently down, in a rather pleasant sensation that was not like other descents I have experienced or like the descent on the return trip. Could the plane actually have been doing something different on that descent, such as gliding down? Or was this difference all in my head? Would appreciate any enlightenment from more experienced travelers or the pilots.
The flight was fairly smooth. After a few bad bumps somewhere over the mid-West the pilot announced we were climbing 2000 feet and taking a more northward course to avoid a mass of turbulence over the center of the country. That seemed to do the trick--no more bad bumps.
During the first half of the flight I was keeping pretty calm reading magazines. Then I took out my laptop and a CD containing some recordings of my favorite light and amusing TV shows. Unexpectedly, I started to become nervous about the flight while watching the CD. For one thing, I was mixing up sounds in the background of the TV shows with sounds on the airplane. More fundamentally, watching the CD seemed to disconnect me from the reality of what was happening on the plane. I kept pulling out the earplugs during the commercials to see if the plane still sounded normal. Watching CDs just doesn't seem to work for me on airplanes.
The interesting part of the flight was the descent from cruising altitude to the altitude where the plane has to start maneuvering in air traffic (10,000 ft?). The plane just seemed to float gently down, in a rather pleasant sensation that was not like other descents I have experienced or like the descent on the return trip. Could the plane actually have been doing something different on that descent, such as gliding down? Or was this difference all in my head? Would appreciate any enlightenment from more experienced travelers or the pilots.
