Ask the Captain: Aviation myths debunked

Q: What does Denver International Airport look like from the air? Some people say the runways form a swastika, but I've landed there before and never noticed. 

— Submitted by jlharis, Colo.

A: Denver International Airport has four north-south runways and two east-west runways. Because the east-west runways are north and south of the terminal buildings, some people have said there is a similarity to a swastika. This is clearly a stretch. The design was done to maximize traffic flow and has no underlying meaning.

Q: Conspiracy theorists claim that the exhaust from jets is chemtrails and chemicals being dumped on populations.  Is there any truth to these theories?          

— Starling Johnson, Atlanta

A: No, there is no truth to the chemtrail claims. The moisture in the air when heated by a jet engine, then cooled, causes ice crystals we see as white contrails. The Internet is full of conspiracy theorists with various untrue claims; the chemtrail claim is one of them.

Q: Is it true that a soda can or a bag of chips will pop in a plane at high altitude?

— Kamal, N.J.

A:  Not in normal circumstances. The cabin is pressurized to no more than 8,000 feet; therefore, a soda can or bag of chips is no more likely to rupture than if it were sent up to a town in the mountains above 8,000 feet.

Q: Is it true that flight times are padded by about 20 minutes?

— Phillip Demarest, Potsdam, N.Y.

A:  No, there is not a blanket 20-minute padding. Airlines will look at the history of the flight time and the taxi time to publish the block time. This block time is used to create the schedule. It varies from airport to airport, time of year, time of day and between airlines.

Q: In a previous column, you mentioned that a non-pilot would fail in being talked through landing an aircraft. You may want to refer to a Mythbusters episode where they showed (using a NASA flight simulator) that it probably can be done. Also, Wikipedia documents two instances where it has been done.       

— Paul, Austin

A: I will look for the episode.

My response is based on the complexity of the tasks to land an airliner.

On Wikipedia, I found no entries documenting an airliner landed by a non-pilot. There were two small airplane incidents, to which you refer. One was a pilot that had not flown that type of airplane previously. One was a true non-pilot. General aviation aircraft are significantly less complex than commercial jets.

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