Flights of fancy landing

I FLY a lot between Melbourne and Sydney for work, and have done so for 20 years.

Illustration by Michael Perkins

I FLY a lot between Melbourne and Sydney for work, and have done so for 20 years. And I must say that I have noticed something quite odd about aeroplane behaviour during the past seven or eight years.

In the old days planes took off and landed smoothly. Planes used to be a lot like buses: you'd get on and, unless you were sitting in a window seat, you wouldn't know you were not on a bus.

Not like today. Planes take off like a slingshot; they seem to want to get as high as possible as quickly as possible.

I suspect it has something to do with noise abatement. But this isn't the worst of it.

On flights from Melbourne to Sydney it's almost as if the pilot gets to the destination airport before realising we are pointing in entirely the wrong direction.

This requires a series of sharp left-hand turns to straighten up.

Not only that but the pilot also seems to realise at the last minute that we are indeed way too high so we need to dive as well as turn.

Psst, Mr Pilot, why don't you ring ahead when you get to Goulburn and straighten up 200km out? Sheesh, I don't know; do I have to think of every solution?

Anyway, even though I am an experienced flyer, I will confess to occasionally getting a tad nervous, especially on approach to Sydney with all that twisting and turning and diving.

I get these irrational mental images of the pilot suffering a massive heart attack mid-turn and dive, and of the co-pilot trying to move him from the joy stick, which is jammed in the downward position.

Whatever will we do? We're all gonna die!

Fear not, for I have the situation in hand. Immediately and telepathically grasping the seriousness of the situation I put my dive-fixing technical response into operation.

If the plane is spiralling out of control to, say, the starboard side -- that's the right-hand side for you landlubbers -- I press my right foot hard into the plane's floor and make a braking action.

At the same time I shift my entire weight from my right buttock to my left buttock so as to counter-balance the plane's tipping. I also grit my teeth while doing both.

Don't say it, let me guess. You're thinking: how can a single passenger making a braking motion with his foot and shifting his entire weight to one side of the seat possibly pull a plane out of a hopeless death dive?

Well, normally I would agree with you but not on this occasion.

And the reason is, being the highfalutin' statistical sort of person that I am, I can only point to the undeniable fact that on every occasion I have done this, the plane has righted itself. The proof is in the pudding or, as we superhero passengers like to say, in the fact no plane that has been subjected to my floor-pressing and weight-shifting has gone down.

At the end of the flight, when all the passengers dutifully file past the flight attendants and say goodbye, I usually like to give them an "aw shucks, it was nothin" look. And, do you know, I know they know it was me and my floor-pressing and weight-shifting that saved the plane because, as I leave, they give me a funny "who was that man?" look.

And as I walk up the aerobridge I give my heels a little double click thinking I just know I'm going to have a great day in Sydney.

KPMG Partner Bernard Salt is the author of The Big Tilt.

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