Hate to Fly

[mead]

I'm pretty afraid of flying, but I do it all the time. I've done cross country flights, short flights down to Florida, transatlantic flights, a couple of 16 hour flights to Asia, flights in small jets, small 10 seater propellar planes, aging Soviet jets, 737s, and big ole' 747s and 777s. I've probably already flown much more than the average person will in their life, and it still scares the hell out of me.

I think my main fear is a fear of death and a lack of control. People always use the car analogy, but I feel like I'm a pretty good driver. I'll drive in snow, ice, whatever and nothing has happened to me yet. At the end of the day in the car I'm the one in control and if something goes wrong I can usually figure it out. I have no similar comfort on a plane.

Yes statistically airplanes are the safest form of transportation blah blah blah, but if that sucker is going down, its probably going to take everyone with it. I actually usually sit all the way in the back of the plane as I've been told that if the plane does crash you have the highest chance of surviving it if you are all the way in the back.

Takeoffs are usually what bother me. I believe this is the point when statistically things can go really wrong and the whole thing can go really bad. Turbulence doesn't bother me that much, although if it is really rough it can be nerve racking. Landings are a synch since its pretty rare for anything serious to happen unless there is really bad wind shears.

I've met a lot of engineers who've worked for boeing and help design the planes. They've tried to explain to me how my fears are unfounded, which they certainly are, but it doesn't make me feel any better.

The best thing I've found for being nervous during takeoff is to fly on an airline like Jetblue. They have the TVs in the seat so usually I will turn that on and try to distract myself as much as possible by watching something on TV instead of focusing on the fact that the plane is about to takeoff and X,Y,Z could go wrong.

[SandyCo]

I'm back! My trip was great. The flights were okay, but they got a little bumpy here and there. Su Doku saved my sanity!

I'm nervous about MD-80s now, and probably with good reason. When I was in Chicago connecting to go to Minneapolis, we were told that our airplane was out of service. Then half an hour later we were allowed to board. The captain came on and said that "there was a problem with the fuel pump, but we think that's been fixed now". I didn't need to know that! The flight was fine, but yikes!

Yesterday in St. Louis, my flight back to L.A. was delayed for two hours. Maintenance tinkered around with the airplane for an hour before giving up; that airplane was towed away and replaced by another.

Both of these were MD-80s, which have been around for quite a while. Add to that the news of the two MD-80s that had engine fires recently, and I'd really like to stay away from those if I can! However, I don't plan to fly for quite a while now, so it probably won't be an issue.