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my job and location requires me to travel a few times a year, which I hate because I fear of something happening.
wondering if you guys fly often and never experience anything or perhaps you did...
-Mega Bus & Greyhound crashes every once in a while resulting fatalities.
-Amtrack trains derails every once in a while resulting fatalities.
-Air Planes crash every once in a while resulting fatalities.
There is no 100% safe way to travel. If you are flying a US airline, you have a far better chance of getting to your detestation safely on a 2 hr flight vs a 10 hour drive than on the road dealing with distracted, texting, sleepy or straight butthole drivers.
Unfortunately planes are mechanic objects guided by mistake prone humans, so of every 500,000 + flights, there will be a crash due to mechanical or more than likely pilot error, just pray your not on it. But still better odds than the 38,000 people who die in car accidents each year on the roads.
I have a fear of flying too... so does my husband. We've both taken one flight in our lives before we even met. Neither one of us had any problems with our flights. They were both totally uneventful. The fear just occurred some time after we had flown and sticks with us to this day. It's totally irrational and I don't know why.
I wasn't afraid to fly the first time I got on the plane and I actually enjoyed the flight to and from my destination. Now just the thought of getting on a plane fills me with dread.
I hate flying but I look at it this way. I hate long drives more. The crew want to live. I'm not so important that a whole plane load of people would be taken by fate just to get me. Last but not least. I put my trust in GOD. once those wheels lift off the ground I just have to have faith.
Once I did experience some bad turbulence but what got me was once it was over some people laughed. I pick flying over driving any day.
One other thing to put the OP at ease, flying in 2016 is an incredibly mature feat of engineering. In the 60's and 70's, the early era of jet airliners, there were still a lot of problems in engines and aircraft design. Since then, most accidents have been due to things other than the aircraft. The budget airline of today is the Greyhound bus of the fifties, pretty routine, and relatively cheap when you look at the time over distance. Wing design and mechanics allow pilots to expand wing surface area and geometry for much slower stall speeds, which means the planes take off at a lower speed and gain lift without having to run the engines at 150%, and at landing, the lower speed makes for a safer situation if something did go wrong.
Location: Mokelumne Hill, CA & El Pescadero, BCS MX.
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The only part that gives me any rise to fear, is that I'm not in the cockpit flying. Mind you, I am not qualified to fly any large aircraft, but I'm hoping that if there ever is a situation where the cabin crew asks if there are any pilots on board, I'll raise my hand.
I think at the least we'll break the plane up on the runway!
1. Repeat after me: "Per mile, you are more likely to die when driving than when flying".
2. Repeat after me: "Auto accident fatalities far outnumber aviation accident fatalities".
3. If your fear is not resolved, return to step 1.
What does that have to do with fear? I'm not afraid of flying because I think they're going to crash. It's an entirely separate emotional experience.
It's one thing to be afraid because you've never been on a plane or don't really understand how flying works. The OP doesn't seem to fall in that category. Rather, there are many of us who are veteran flyers who are still terrified despite knowing 100% that it's totally safe. Phobias are unmoored from reality.
Please understand that there's no rationale to a fear of flying. It's a phobia and talking about statistics, etc doesn't help us. Most of us with a fear of flying know it's safe, but our lizard brain kicks in once we're on the plane. It doesn't help when you've had bad experiences, too. My first return flight alone when I was 16 involved an 8 hour delay, then an aborted landing at the Atlanta airport where we were so low that I could see the runway below us before we pitched up. People screamed. It was awful. There have been other scary moments but that was the worst - bad flying luck compared to others in this thread, I suppose!
I dull my lizard brain with medication. Once I mentioned how I took a 24 hour train ride to avoid a flight to my doctor and promptly wrote me a script for Xanax. It's changed my life. In the 20 years of my life prior to that, I had probably flown close to 100 times but even when I was 2 years old (and already into the double digits of flights), I was petrified. My fear is still there, but it doesn't absolutely consume me for days in advance as it used to. I'm even able to get up and go to the restroom on long flights!
Know what your strategies are for keeping calm on a plane. I have my rituals - I have to sit in a window seat and be looking out constantly, always have headphones in to dull the changing noises, have gum for takeoff and landing, remind myself that the plane wants to stay in the air when we hit turbulence, and always have meds within arm's reach.
I'm never not afraid when I fly, but I'm able to manage it better. And I've tried everything to get over the fear- sitting next to a pilot on a flight, joining a friend in a small plane on a flying lesson, taking lessons in a flying simulator... it hasn't impacted my level of fear. It's not coming from a rational place, but traveling is also my favorite thing to do so I can't let it control me. I would never have gotten some of the amazing experiences I've been lucky enough to have if I balked at getting on a plane. Even before I discovered meds, I just made sure to pre-board and let all of the flight attendants know. Even now, I often mention it to them so I get an extra smile when they're walking down the aisle. I figure if the flight attendants don't look worried, then I don't have a real reason to be worried either!
Flying is very safe, but I don't think it is irrational to fear flying. If that makes sense. Reason being is because it is abnormal for humans to be up in the sky. We are land creatures; we don't have wings. Birds fly; humans walk ( and drive). Riding in a metal tube 35,000 feet in the air is a very abnormal thing for humans to be doing. Our minds very well know that being in the air thousands of feet off the ground is a very real threat to our existence. We were not meant to fly. You can say that we were not meant to ride in cars or trains or buses, either, but those modes of transportation are not highly abnormal as is flying: we stay on the ground when commuting via the former modes of transport. Flying is just abnormal and a hugely un-human thing to be doing. Yet it is one of the safest modes of transport.
Sometimes I wish I were never born in the first place. Death is the most horrifying part, the turbulence is. Dropping 100 feet sacred me. For the same reason I refuse to go to amusement park.
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