Scared on a Plane

Any lingering dreams I’ve had of becoming a famous if somewhat tone-deaf rock star have finally died. I wasn’t booed off a stage or publicly humiliated, no, I was simply reminded of my extreme hatred of airplanes.

If you have never been unfortunate enough to have your own flying experience, let me briefly describe a common flight to you. Only after walking through miles of angry looking security guards, arriving at your usually changed gate, boarding the plane, and taxiing for at least 30 minutes do you get the pleasure of taking off. Call me a prude, but hurtling into the atmosphere just isn’t my thing. After you reach “cruising altitude”, you continue to bounce around miles above the earth until the merciful flight attendants calmly tell you its somehow time to land. Once you hit the runway, I promise you will never complain about long car trips again.

However, by far the three T’s are the most terrifying aspect to air-travel: take off, turbulence, and trays-of food, that is.

I’ve already touched on take offs, but I feel the full impact hasn’t been explained. After you sit through a horrifying demonstration of what to do when the plane inevitably begins to go down, you slowly start to move. As you try to distract yourself from impending death by reading a magazine, you feel the engine rev up to what must be 1,000 miles per hour. Finally, you feel the tires lift and kiss the ground goodbye. My mom, I’m sure tired of listening to me tell her we were going to die, told me this: statistically, if you’re going to crash it’ll happen in the first 15 seconds. Comforting? I didn’t think so either. Besides shooting towards the heavens, this is where the worst turbulence starts to set in.

Ah, turbulence. The word alone makes me want to grip the nearest arm rest. Imagine going over a pothole. Now imagine going over a pothole- 40,000 feet in the air. Yes, I know: turbulence doesn’t make a plane crash. It’s like going over little air pockets. Does that help when it is actually happening? Not exactly. Dribbling up and down like a big metal basketball doesn’t do much for one’s nerves. And if the pilot turns on the fasten seat-belt sign? Then you really know you’re a goner. Sure listening to music or watching a movie can help distract you, but you can still feel it. My advice: sit by someone who won’t mind getting a few scratches.

Airplane food has gotten a bad reputation from the media lately-for good reason. The lumps of unrecognizable food are best left untouched. Then again, on some lines, they give you a choice: cookies or chips. These options are usually best-who can mess up chocolate chip cookies? But if you get a choice between chicken or fish, always go with the chicken. We’ve all seen enough movies to know that the fish is never a good choice.

There are, of course, some positives to flying. Trips that would normally take days take mere hours. Places you would only be able to reach by boat are now accessible by the sky. I know some people that really enjoy hurtling through the clouds. The views-if you can muster up enough courage to look out the windows-are usually stunning. Airplanes open doors to beautiful places. Admittedly, I guess one could call me a worrier. An over reactor, even. Although I won’t swear off traveling by the skies for life, let’s just say I hope its a long, long time until I set foot off the solid ground again.