Mostly the same… I don’t have a general fear of flying. The most dangerous part of the trip is the drive to the airport.
But that one night with the insane turbulence… that was incredibly scary.
I’m afraid of a lot of things, but flying isn’t one of them. i didn’t fly for the first time until i was in my 20’s though so it’s not the age.
My mother hadn’t flown in 50 years because some bad turbulence in addition to a flight attendant gasping about said turbulence freaked her out in an oversees flight 50 some years ago. she recently flew again last month. the flight itself was uneventful, but she oddly got mega searched on the way there. like, this almost 80 year old chick is somehow the one hiding bombs??? they searched both her carry on and herself way more than i ever get searched.
Dave Barry write a funny piece about the terrorists being the ones traveling with a toddler (whom TSA forced to walk through the metal detector* alone even though said toddler really REALLY did not want to).
Sounds like your mom had the same experience on the opposite side of the age spectrum.
*Or whatever detector they were using when the column was written, which might have been 20 years ago now.
I was on one flight with crazy turbulence. We literally took off half an hour ahead of schedule, because they were about to shut down the airport. It was a little plane, one of those 1x2 turboprops, and it was before 9/11, and I was in the front so I could see the pilot and the copilot, and see out the front window. They were literally steering the plane, by sight, around the worst of the thunderheads. The flight attendant never left her seat. We bounced around, the wings shook, and a couple of times the plane just dropped into an air pocket or something. Because we left early, the plane hadn’t been completely set up, and some of the seats didn’t have barf bags, which was unfortunate.
That was a very uncomfortable flight, but the pilot and copilot didn’t look worried, so I wasn’t too worried, either.
When we landed, I changed planes to some enormous jet, and we’d pretty much gotten ahead of the storm, and that flight was perfectly smooth, and I felt like it was swaying, like you sometimes do when you leave a boat.
And yet… I still really enjoy turbo props. Such a great view.
I think some of the fear of flying is a reaction to being in a narrow tube. I have a friend who has never had a bad experience on an airplane but who was in a train crash which decapitated the woman who shooed him out of the first seat he took. (She’d been in the restroom when he boarded, then returned and reclaimed her seat.) He said that after that, he didn’t develop a fear of trains, but he needed to take drugs to get on an airplane for quite a while.
He’s flown extensively, and has spent much more time on planes than in trains. And yet, he developed a phobia of airplanes. These things aren’t rational, they are kinda just bad luck.
Yeah, I think that’s part of it. Honestly I’m the least comfortable during takeoff simply because I hate the angle or something. Cruise is better, but sometimes the smoothness is a little too smooth. The landing I am all in and love it - I get the same sense of wonder looking out the window that you’re describing. I’m a little odd.
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I find the small space comforting, somehow. So that’s definitely not it for me. I have zero fear of trains or cars, it’s plane specific and it’s entirely a fear of crashing to my death.
The better I’m able to see out the window the less worried I am - which is why trains are ok and cars are ok until somebody sticks me in the backseat. This is an unreliable coping mechanism on planes, particularly in Canadian winter at night.
And yet - I do have the ability to calm down without a window, but it requires mostly not thinking too hard about where I am and pretending any movement or sound is similar to just being on a boat.
The worst anxiety I ever had on a plane - other than the awful turbulence episode - was a last minute flight where I was stuck in the very back row, no window. The landing was the worst because I kept waiting for the bump of tires hitting pavement and it kept not happening. Landing takes a lot longer than it seems when you can’t see the ground.
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I’ll be getting on a plane for the first time in several years in about a week. Never really bothers me though.
Scariest airplane thing for me was when we were supposed to fly into Anchorage but something was wrong with the plane’s brakes and we got diverted to Juneau. The approach to the Juneau airport is a bit…stressful. You come in from the ocean and head straight toward about a 1000-foot cliff. At the last moment you see a narrow strip of land and cross your fingers hoping the plane stops before you slam into the cliff face. Not everybody’s type of thrill ride.
I am the same way mostly. Take off is by far the worst. Im usually near terrified until I hear the ding at 10,000 feet. Cruising is okay but turbulance can get me spooked. I hate looking out the window during take off though. Can’t do it.
That said, once it comes to landing and I can feel the plane descend, its like all my fears go away. I love looking out the window at this time. Turbulance doesnt bother me at all. I am at ease. I have no bad experiences landing though, so i wonder if I did if it would be different.
So, Freudian?
Sometimes a narrow tube is just a narrow tube.
I love flying. The take off is like a miracle. And watching cities and clouds and shit from the window is amazing.
I think falling to my death would be good too. I mean, not good, but better than the alternatives-- cancer, dementia, or suicide. Just enough time to shout your “I loves you” and pray to a god you don’t believe in and then splat.
I wonder if people scream a lot on the way down. That would be very annoying.
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I have a slight fear of driving. Because I don’t want to be killed by a douchebag after being stuck in crappy traffic.
Perhaps one of the property/casualty actuaries here can post statistics on lead times in aviation accidents. From anecdotes, I understand some were completely blindsided.
Lol. I’ve reserved aircraft insurance, but I’ve never seen a detailed description of the crash, and how long it took to fall. I just saw dates and dollars.
I once sat next to a passenger who looked distinctly nervous and asked something along the lines of, “You don’t like flying, eh?” to which he replied, “Not when I’m not in charge!” It turned out he was a 747 pilot flying to his base to start his duty! He said he listened for every noise and imagined what could be going wrong but couldn’t check his instruments to see that everything was OK.
In response to how long it takes from onset to death in the case of a fatal accident, it could be anything from instantaneous to a thirty or forty-five minutes, typically at the shorter end of the scale. A mid air collision or explosion would kill some people instantaneously while the survivors of the initial event would fall with the wreckage to the ground and be killed a few minutes later. They probably wouldn’t be conscious for all of that time though if the event took place at high altitude. A loss of all hydraulic systems, which is extremely rare and itself a result of something catastrophic, would render a plane uncontrollable but not necessarily cause it to dive into the ground immediately. So that could result in the plane flying for quite a long time after the initial problem.
Clear air turbulence (CAT), as opposed to flying into a cumulonimbus cloud, can seem incredibly scary but I believe is not actually that dangerous to the airframe. I’m not aware of any that have resulted in destruction of a jet passenger aircraft in the last 30+ years. The tossing about can cause serious injury or even death to someone inside, if they are not seated with their seatbelt on. CAT is often very difficult to anticipate and doesn’t show up on weather radar, unlike thunderstorm clouds.
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Generally I did not mind flying but I had a distinct dislike of cramming myself in a too small airline seat and I have not flown in over twenty years. I don’t need to fly and if I want or need to be there I will drive.
Lesson: do not talk up your neighbors.
Take your melatonin, preferably about half an hour before boarding.
Put on “Wish You Were Here” or “Avalon,” nap until you land.