“Humans at Helm: Is Any Flight Safe?”

My article was “Humans at Helm: Is Any Flight Safe?” by Neil Genzlinger. In his article, he commented on the new series “Terror in the Skies”, which is a tv show about plane crashes and malfunctions, and about the growing familiarity to airplane calamities due to cellphones and such. It not only shows footage taken from cellphones, but also has footage of pilots having in-flight breakdowns, and other flaws.

While I am usually all for not lying, and telling the truth; I think that in this case, this series might be a bad idea. In this series, they are exposing all the flaws and dangers to travel by air. By doing so, not only can they discourage people from traveling in the air, but it will also provide unncessary paranoia to people who do decide to travel by air. No matter how much the chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board vouches for air travel, she cannot say with absolute certainty that traveling by air will be 100% safe.

Also, by airing this kind of TV series, I believe that it might also cause society as a whole to become more desensitized towards these types of calamities. People will start to think that it is natural for things such as these to happen. “It happens on TV all the time, it’s no big deal”. When thoughts like that are said, society generally tends to move in a negative direction. This doesn’t only go for airplane calamities; it goes for global warming, extinction of animals, among others. As people are exposed more and more to certain things, they will become used to it; causing them to become desensitized.