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I refuse to fly..... My last flight was in May of this year.. From SWFL to Manchester NH.... My flight was so erratic, and bumpy the man sitting next to me said, I have been flying for 30 years, this is the worst turbulance I have ever been in.. At one point the plane dropped so fast that I litearlly watched my cup levitate off my tray... i mean it held fast in the air for a good 2-3 seconds.. Thats a long time when you're dropping... I cried thew whole flight by myself. The people next to me holding my hands.. I only did it becasue I was living in Fla. my husband was in NH at the police academy and we hadnt' seen each other for 3 months.. I will never fly again.. ever .. If it means I have to miss funerals, weddings, births etc I do not care...
I also had another experience at the NH airport we were about to board our plane and two guards came running down the hall yelling hold the boarding hold the board we have a security breach!!! Totally unprofessional and panicing everying, they held us up for an hour, patting down everyone, reopening all our luggage... I got on the plane saw a man with a turbon on his head (yes I know that is completely profiling, and I am NOT that type of person, believe when I say when severe panic and anxiety sets in you're looking for any excuse and this was like a month after 9-11) so I see him, I said **********.. I grabbed my bags, walked off the plane as they were about to shut the doors, and took a train home..
I refuse to fly..... My last flight was in May of this year.. From SWFL to Manchester NH.... My flight was so erratic, and bumpy the man sitting next to me said, I have been flying for 30 years, this is the worst turbulance I have ever been in.. At one point the plane dropped so fast that I litearlly watched my cup levitate off my tray... i mean it held fast in the air for a good 2-3 seconds.. Thats a long time when you're dropping... I cried thew whole flight by myself. The people next to me holding my hands.. I only did it becasue I was living in Fla. my husband was in NH at the police academy and we hadnt' seen each other for 3 months.. I will never fly again.. ever .. If it means I have to miss funerals, weddings, births etc I do not care...
I also had another experience at the NH airport we were about to board our plane and two guards came running down the hall yelling hold the boarding hold the board we have a security breach!!! Totally unprofessional and panicing everying, they held us up for an hour, patting down everyone, reopening all our luggage... I got on the plane saw a man with a turbon on his head (yes I know that is completely profiling, and I am NOT that type of person, believe when I say when severe panic and anxiety sets in you're looking for any excuse and this was like a month after 9-11) so I see him, I said **********.. I grabbed my bags, walked off the plane as they were about to shut the doors, and took a train home..
Tarastomsgirl, do not feel bad about never flying again. I will never fly again no matter what the circumstances. I jokingly tell my friends that the only way they could get me on a plane is I would either have to be so drunk that I would not care if the plane goes down, or at gunpoint. I think more people are afraid or anxious about flying than will admit to.
I wish I had the option not to fly! I go to college in Boston and my family lives in Georgia. I'm an international relations and Latin American studies major, and I'm studying abroad all of next year! I would be going to Bolivia this summer if I wasn't so afraid of the 2 connections I would have to make and am only studying abroad in England 2nd semester because it's a direct flight from the Atlanta airport! I'm even probably not going to do the Peace Corps even though it's been my dream since I was little because the idea of flying to Africa or Mongolia or wherever is much more frightening to me than being in some backwoods village in a 3rd world country!
My dad had a job that was 100% travel for most of my life and he just doesn't get it- and I'm not old enough to get myself drunk on a plane yet!
I loved to when I was young. One trip to and from Chicago over Thanksgiving changed that. We flew through heavy storms and tornado activity both directions. Scared the bejeezus out of me.
I was extremely nervous for quite a few years. Took drugs to stay calm, which worked, but I react strongly. I take the same pill my wife does (6'-2 vs 5'-0) and instead of being calm for 8 hours I'm a zombie for 36. Had to stop. Even Dramamine knocks me for a loop.
I eventually came to the realization that if my time is up, it's up. Driving a car, riding a train, walking, sleeping, in a plane. When it's time, I have to go. The method is secondary.
Flying now bothers me less than heavy traffic on an Interstate. On a plane you have two, maybe three people running things. On an Interstate you can easily have 100 or more in one short trip, half of them on cell phones, reading a book, talking to someone in the back seat, everything but driving. THAT makes me nervous, and careful. Especially when I consider the training most of them have had, if they paid attention.
thanks to the airlines now allowing passengers to take their cats into the plane--those of us can NO LONGER fly--i learned this the hard way by having a severe asthmatic attack during a 2 hour flight and finding out LATER the woman in the same row had her precious cat in a carry bag!!!!!
thanks to the airlines now allowing passengers to take their cats into the plane--those of us can NO LONGER fly--i learned this the hard way by having a severe asthmatic attack during a 2 hour flight and finding out LATER the woman in the same row had her precious cat in a carry bag!!!!!
I'm severely allergic to some dogs, so I feel your pain. No asthma, but head to toe hives are no fun either! I have a dog myself so I understand why people would NEVER want to travel with a dog or cat in the hold if they can help it, but it's really bad for those of us with allergies! I've found calling the airline helps. Sort of like how there are peanut free flights, there can be cat or dog free flights. You just have to really push the issue.
White knuckler here! Even on forty-five minute flights from LA to Las Vegas I would have to have a few drinks in me. Just doesn't seem worth it if you are in a constant stage of panic for hours on end. The entire time we are in the air my mind just goes to the worst possible scenerios. I don't know why? Never had a bad incident except when my family moved when I was five from NY to Ca. in a terrible hurricane. In order for me to fly to Tahiti from Los Angeles, I had to smoke a little pot, take some tranqualizers,two martinis and dramamine and I still didn't sleep. My boyfriend slept through the whole eight hours damn him!! This was in the eighties when I was young and foolish.
Instead of flying when moving from Ca. to Ma. last month, we drove which included my hubby and I, our son and four small dogs. Too many bad movies and hating the total lack of control is the issue. That and a strong fear of death!
White knuckler here! Even on forty-five minute flights from LA to Las Vegas I would have to have a few drinks in me. Just doesn't seem worth it if you are in a constant stage of panic for hours on end. The entire time we are in the air my mind just goes to the worst possible scenerios. I don't know why? Never had a bad incident except when my family moved when I was five from NY to Ca. in a terrible hurricane. In order for me to fly to Tahiti from Los Angeles, I had to smoke a little pot, take some tranqualizers,two martinis and dramamine and I still didn't sleep. My boyfriend slept through the whole eight hours damn him!! This was in the eighties when I was young and foolish.
Instead of flying when moving from Ca. to Ma. last month, we drove which included my hubby and I, our son and four small dogs. Too many bad movies and hating the total lack of control is the issue. That and a strong fear of death!
puffle, I agree about the total lack of control. That's another reason I will never fly. You are completely helpless in an emergency and dependent upon others for your life. While driving a car can be dangerous, having a high degree of control and input into the circumstances means a whole lot to me.
As I have posted before, I fly all the time and I've never gotten accustomed to it. "white knuckler" is a good way to describe me. I've flown all over the world on everything from short domestic flights to long haul 14hr+ international flights. I've taken flights on brand new 777s, weird 1970s Soviet aircraft, and even old cr@p propellar planes down in the carribean.
I haven't been in any crash type scenarios but other than that everything that could possibly go wrong I've been through (extreme turbulence with the plane dropping hundreds of feet at a time and people screaming/fainting/throwing up, flight delays of 12 hours, enginges not functioning at take off).
I have friends who work in the airline industry and even know a couple of people who used to design airplanes and all of their advice hasn't helped. Still scares me.
I am sure part of it is the control aspect (I don't know how to fly an airplane, I have no control over flying an airplane, if something were to go horribly wrong on an airplane I wouldn't be able to do anything about it), however to some degree part of it is just the aspect of flying being somewhat unnatural. You're in a metal tube that's being hurled across the atmosphere at 500 mph. If some stupid little thing goes wrong internally (little wires or gears malfunctioning) in the plane you could end up killed nearly instantaneously. I think that if I were older perhaps this wouldn't bother me so much, but I'm in my 20s and have just reached the stage in life where I have begun to somewhat appreciate my life (as opposed to when I was in my teens and just didn't care to think about the consequences of my actions).
I honestly think I'll take up drinking before I get on planes. As of yet I haven't been able to do this because most of my flights are at 9-10am. However, I have a somewhat similar fear of roller coasters (before getting on a roller coaster my heart starts beating like its going to explode, I start to sweat profusely, my palms get clammy, I get a lump in my throat), but when I was in Vegas a couple of years back I had a couple of drinks in me and got on one of the roller coasters at a local hotel (I think it was the NY hotel). I had a blast on that roller coaster after a couple of drinks! Didn't bother my nerves at all. The only thing stopping me from carrying this out is the thought that hangovers, especially on long haul 12+ hour flights would probably be really atrocious.
I had an 8 am flight from Burbank to Vegas but that didn't stop my from getting my traditional martini meds. Maybe we should all enroll in one of those fear of flying classes or maybe go to a hypnotherapist to suggest away our fear.
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