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Why Pilots Have to Shave
James Wysong · June 20, 2004

In my search for the plane truth, I have stumbled across quite a few fun and interesting facts out there that I thought I would share with you.

• Pilots typically aren't allowed to have beards. It's not a style issue; a beard would stop the oxygen mask from fitting tightly enough if the cabin pressure dropped suddenly. My question is what about those masculine looking female pilots? Why aren't they required to shave?
  
  
• Pilots, who are not trained in the military, spend an average of $85,000, 7 years and log 1,500 flight hours before they are hired with an airline.
  
  
• In an unofficial survey, 41 percent of U.S. airline male pilots have the first name of Bob, or a name derived from Robert.
  
  
• The first women flight attendants in 1930 were required to weigh no more than 115 pounds, be nurses, and unmarried.
  
  
• Approximately 40 percent of all flight attendants have a fear of heights.
  
  
• The majority of airlines instruct their flight attendants not to help passengers stow their carry-on bags due to the high occurrence rate of back injuries. A few major airlines have even told them that they would not be covered if they injured their backs doing so.
  
  
• Eighty-five percent of a pilot's job takes place during the first and last ten minutes of flight. Eighty-five percent of a flight attendant's job takes place between the first and last ten minutes of flight.
  
  
• Why are laptops and CD players banned during takeoff? All electronic devices emit electromagnetic radiation, and those emissions can possibly interfere with the plane's sensitive navigation equipment during the first 10,000 feet.
  
  
• The best way to receive a complimentary upgrade is being a member of the airline's frequent flyer program and wearing business-like attire. The worst way is causing a scene and complaining for one. Airlines are under strict guidelines on not rewarding the constant complainer.
  
  
• Seventy-five percent of all in-flight fights are a result of an economy seat reclining issue. That personal space, albeit small, always seems to be a reason to pick a quarrel.
  
  
• Few airlines serve peanuts on flights anymore because of the risk to allergic passengers. In 1998, the U.S. government began requiring that airlines set aside three peanut-free rows on a flight when one of the passengers has a peanut allergy.
  
  
• Southern farmers used to sell 6 million pounds of peanuts to the airline industry each year, before nuts were banned on many flights
  
  
• A female passenger once purchased four full-fare first class international tickets for herself and three stuffed animals.
  
  
• Bottled water has surpassed cola as the number one requested in-flight drink.
  
  
• Pilots are 75 percent more likely to be at the front door saying farewells with the flight attendants after a good landing than after a bad landing.
  
  
• Microbursts that cause the most serious forms of wind shear during thunderstorms are extremely rare. Doppler radar (on the ground) and wind shear detection devices (in cockpits) have further minimized the threat-resulting in almost no wind shear-related crashes since 1985.
  
  
• Air travel is expected to increase in the U.S. 85 percent from 1999 to 2020.
  
  
• Over 1.6 billion passengers worldwide use the world's airlines for business and leisure travel. Research indicates that by 2010, this number could exceed 2.3 billion.
  
  
• Air transport provides 28 million direct, indirect and induced jobs worldwide, a figure that is expected to rise to 31 million by 2010.
  
  
• Over 40 percent of world trade of goods (by value) is carried by air.
  
  
• Hijacking of airplanes was outlawed in 1961.
  
  
• Since the 1950s all airplanes have been fitted with static wicks, which draw off electrical charges that collect on the metal frame. So lightning might hit the airplane in the front (and it does almost every day somewhere in the world) and quickly dissipate out the back.
  
  
• Two hundred million to six hundred million gallons of wastewater is created each year from airplane deicing.
  
  
• A passenger could travel 5.6 miles in an intercity bus using the same amount of energy it would take to move her one mile in a commercial jet.
  
  
• 30,000 flights are completed in the U.S. each day.
  
  
• It takes approximately 10 gallons of crude oil required to make one gallon of jet fuel.
  
  
• It takes 77 gallons of jet fuel needed for a person to travel from New York to Los Angeles on a commercial jet plane
  
  
• A marital aid saleslady was stopped and detained by security for three hours after two of her products raised an alert. The items were stuck in the on position.
  
  
• An airline-Virgin Atlantic, ironically enough-recently announced plans to retrofit baby-changing stations in the planes' lavatories after they kept breaking. Why? Likely because of amorous couples, Virgin surmised, not overweight babies.
  
  
• Don't flush the plane toilet while seated. In 2001, a passenger flying across the Atlantic on a Boeing 767 became vacuum- sealed to a toilet seat after flushing. Mechanics were later able to pry her loose after the aircraft landed.
  
  
• Airline food can give the passenger indigestion but aren't allowed to give you medication to treat the indigestion.
  
  
• Not telling her husband that she was joining him on his European layover, the pilot's wife took her seat at 1A in first class as a romantic surprise. What she didn't know was that sitting next to her at 1B was his mistress. After take-off, he found out, and you should have seen his expression. I heard the wife and the mistress became good friends. I also hear the pilot is paying a lot in alimony.
  
  
• A man and his wife, two daughters, the husband of one of the daughters, and the grandmother, all flight attendants, worked a flight to Asia together. Their son was a pilot working as a first officer on that flight as well. Talk about a family affair.
  
  
• American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each salad served in first-class.
  
  
• Chicago's O'Hare International Airport is one of the world's busiest airports. An airplane takes off or lands every 37 seconds.
  
  
• Average number of people airborne over the US any given hour is 61,000.
  
  
• So what happens when all engines go out on a jet airplane mid-air? It glides. Most commercial jet aircraft have approximately a 15-to-1 glide ratio (gliding 15 feet for each foot it descends). That is, an airplane flying at 35,000 feet can glide about 525,000 feet (or 100 miles).
  
  
• Not knowing one another, a flight attendant based in New York and another based in Seattle worked a two-hour flight together in economy class. After the service they sat down and talked about everything from the airlines to families. Through their conversation, they discovered that they were actually mother and daughter. The mother, feeling she was too young to start a family, had given up her baby for adoption at birth. Both had no idea where the other one was, but each recently had expressed interest in locating the other.
  
  
• Air travel is approximately 99.9999996 percent safe. More Americans die each year by drowning in their bathtubs or falling from ladders than by flying on commercial airlines. Flying is the second-safest mode of mass transportation in the world, right behind the elevator/escalator.
  
  
• The best travel book out there today is "The Plane Truth- Shift Happens at 35,000 Feet," by A. Frank Steward. OK, maybe that was more of a Frank fact.

James Wysong has worked as a flight attendant with two major international carriers during the past fifteen years. He is the author of the "The Plane Truth: Shift Happens at 35,000 Feet" and "The Air Traveler's Survival Guide." For more information about Frank or his books, see his Web site or e-mail him.