Flying

[Roughquest]

When one is travelling by aircraft, why is there the sensation of the plane 'losing altitude' slightly that makes your stomach want to eject its contents and you get that dizziness/drunk feeling accompanied by your insides feeling squashed? Is that turbulence? I don't mean when coming in to land either....I had never experienced that feeling before until my recent trip - didnt like the sensation at all....

[Eve]

I love flying and find that controlling your breathing in a certain way can help, also works on fairground rides and such.

I used to fly planes when I was an RAF cadet and do loads of acrobatics and used to get this sometimes, G force apparantly. Was always fine with loop the loops, barrell rolls and flying upside down and such.

The one that used to get me was a stall turn, you dip then go straight up vertical then twist and come down at an angle in a spin. Feels like you're stomach's been ripped out when you do the twist!

[Clanad]

Although Jenna's answer is essentially correct, the underlying cause of such sensations, at least as it relates to passengers, is the body's inability to define where it is in space. By that I mean, in an airplane, unlike, say an amusement ride, there is no outside, fixed point of reference. As an example, when on a boat or ship one will often hear the advice to fix your sight on the horizon. This does help quite afew people afflicted with sea sickness. However, in an aircraft, the balance sensory mechanism of the inner ear is telling the brain one thing and the eyes are telling it another, with no fixed-in-space point of reference other than the aircraft itself, which is of no help, since it is moving as well. The attempt to reconcile these often opposing inputs can cause the uneasy feeling sometimes leading to air sickness. (This is one reason pilots easily overcome such sensations since they have the luxury of looking out the windscreen at the horizon or relying on instruments that relay the same information). To fully answer your question, the sensations are most often caused by turbulence, but can be caused by the aircraft banking in a turn or the beginning of a descent or climb... anything that causes inputs into the semi-circular canals of the inner ear that need to be resolved...

[larkin]

mmmmmmmmmm that sounds fun Jenna!

[kwicky]

You get this sensation when the plane hits an air pocket and is not due to the imagination at all

[Eve]

Hey Larkin, oh it is :)

We got to wear the whole RAF jumpsuit, helmet with visor and parachute works, can't stand up straight once you've got the parachute on and you have to walk like a demented monkey (well I had to anyway).

We had some right nutters taking up us which made it all the more fun. One used to get me to fly over his house so we cold so some aerobatics to say hi to his wife and she'd come out into the garden and wave. Another once said it'd be fun to put the plane into crash mode and I had to recover it before we...well crashed!

Would love to do wingwalking and a parachute jump but not sure I trust my ears with the menieres now.