Are You Afraid To Fly?

[AikiDale]

Just got curious after seeing several posts from those who seem decidedly opposed to flying. Will you or won't you fly and why?

[EricW]

I was on one of the first flights in the US after air travel was reopened after 9/11. So no, clueless turds with box cutters don't particularly bother me. All the hysteria over terrorists and flying really strikes me as ridiculous and irritating. The "problem" has nothing to do with terrorism, but mandated pacifism.

I'm personally embarrassed to live in a country that thinks shaking down granny for her knitting needles makes anyone safer.

It doesn't.

/Mini Rant.

[stingerjg]

Flying stresses me out. Id rather drive for 12hrs straight than fly there in 4 hours. Plus it gives me time to think and jam to some tunes.

[jessej]

Not afraid of flying here. One time on a rough landing the dude sitting next to me grabbed my thigh. I was going to say HEY! But I kept my mouth shut because i didn't want to embarrass him

[John Heiter]

Your poll leaves out a lot of possible options... ex. "I'm not afraid of flying at all but I AM afraid of long lines at the ticket counter, clerks who don't know what they're doing, delays for no apparent reason, overbookings costing me my "reserved seat", having to take off my cowboy boots that I've had on all day just to prove that I'm not concealing anything in them other than some serious foot stank, forgetting to take my rainbow leek out of my pocket before entering the terminal and having it confiscated, and having to ride for hours in a seat designed for passengers no more than 4'6" and that holds approximately 1 1/2 of my butt cheeks."

John

[BismarckC]

Flying is fine. It is the crashing that bothers me. Actually, I hate feeling like a head of cattle stuffed into some cargo container.

[Qstick]

I was on one of the first flights out of Dulles (in DC) headed to Vegas the first day flights resumed after 9-11. The flights don't bother me, watching 90y/o people having to struggle to remove their shoes for a lame scan does.

[Jake Di Vita]

It's not the fall....it's the sudden stops.

Personally I'd rather be controlling the vehicle but I can usually pony up and deal with it so that's when I fly.

What I really don't understand is I can't bring a knife on board....but I can bring a cane.

I can do a hell of a lot of damage with a cane.

[davidwiz]

I am opposed to flying not b/c I was afraid, but because of all the bs that TSA/airport security puts you through (none of which has ever worked in preventing someone from hijacking an airplane - yet the gov't inspectors get all kinds of stuff past TSA during the tests).

Me and my gf went to LV last month. The TSA-drone at the airport said, "It's a good idea to take off your shoes." Neither of us did, as there is no metal in our shoes. So, what do you know, the metal detector goes off for both of us (but no one else). They wand us, and the only thing that they can find is the metal zipper in my jeans and my gf's alloy toe ring - neither of which has ever set off a metal detector before. It was TSA showing us how big and powerful they are by jerking us around. If I can drive somewhere rather than fly, I make a point of doing it.

-David

[AikiDale]

It's not the fall....it's the sudden stops.

Personally I'd rather be controlling the vehicle but I can usually pony up and deal with it so that's when I fly.

What I really don't understand is I can't bring a knife on board....but I can bring a cane.

I can do a hell of a lot of damage with a cane.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hey! Don't go giving the TSA any ideas Jake. I'm pretty good with a stick and I want to keep that option at least viable....

[Vlad]

I'm man enough to admit that I'm afraid of flying. Well, I'm afraid of flying in commercial aircraft. As a kid I used to get rides from military helo's during their testing runs and I thought it was a blast. As an adult I know how metal can fail and how airlines save money. I fly when I have to, and I have flown 12+ hours each way like 5 times. I just rather drive if its within one day or so. I'll jump in a helicopter with crazy military test pilots any day though.

[old shooter]

I think that one more option on the poll could be:

Afraid to fly, but do it anyway for the time savings.

Mike

[BritinUSA]

Ok, I'll admit it. I'm terrified of the whole flying/crashing thing. I never used to have that much of a problem until 1998 ( I think it was '98). I caught a flight from Colorado to St. Louis for the Nationals, from there I got onto a small two-prop plane to take me to Quincy (or some place near it).

The pilot got everyone on board, there were two seats on either side of the aisle and three along the back. I got the back seat, right in the middle with a clear view of the cockpit (they left the door open).

So about noon, we zip off into the wild blue yonder for the first leg of the flight where some people were planning to get off. After that diversion we took off again. The pilot wasn't hanging around, the turnaround time was about 5 minutes. I later found out he wanted to get ahead of a storm. It would have been nice if he'd told the rest of us.

So we take off again and pretty soon the plane starts bouncing around like a ping-pong ball in a hurricane. From my vantage point I can see into the cockpit and what appeared to be some kind of doppler radar thing. I could see a big red blob marching down the right hand side of the screen. I looked out the starboard windows to see absolute blackness, the biggest ugliest storm cloud I had ever seen, complete with lightening.

So the plane is now doing it's whole roller-coaster impersonation and I see another big red blob moving down the left hand side of the radar, looking out the port window there's a twin of the big black cloud I had seen out the right window.

Things are now starting to get a little bit hairy.

I glance again to the front to see a big red blob moving right down the middle of the screen, it's big !! That scene from Jaws where Brody says "we're going to need a bigger boat" popped into my head, bigger boat my ass, we need a bigger plane !

We fly right through the middle of the storm, the plane is going up and down like a bloody yo-yo, two hundred foots drops in a couple of seconds, the words from Don McLean's "American Pie" going through my head. I'm being bounced around in my seat, I can hardly think straight. This is it, I thought, we're going down !

The plane is twisting side to side, one wing up then the other wing, dropping and climbing. One guy sitting ahead of me is calmly reading a newspaper, he either works for the big guy or he's a dumbass. Doesn't he know we're about to crash ?

Suddenly we break through the cloud, the sounds of the engines pick up, the pilot has put the peddle to the metal to get ahead of the storm. It's moving the same direction we are. The engines are screaming, I'm glad at this point that there's no rear-view mirror, I don't want to see what's bearing down on us.

The Pilot doesn't so much land the plane as throw it at the runway. The wheels and the breaks hit at the same time. We come to a stop. The Pilot throws open the outer door (or as I call it, the escape hatch) and yells out, 'Everybody Out !'.

Everyone dives out of the plane before the lightening gets to us, it's a 30 metre dash to the buildings and everyone is soaked to the skin before we get halfway...

I hate flying...

[Nik Habicht]

I like flying! It's takeoffs and landings that scare the crap out of me. Oh, and after taking a tour of LaGuardia a few years ago ---- there's one airport I'm never flying out of or into. They have two runways only --- that intersect. One gets used for arrivals, the other departures. Every thirty seconds or so there's a plane screaming through the intersection ---- for me that's just tempting the fates a tad much......

[bgober]

I fly, but I hate it. I know at least 2 dozen friends that have been in car accidents and are with us today. I know 1 friend that was in a plane accident. RIP, Timo. Logic has nothing to do with it. I KNOW that flying is safer than driving. I also know that take offs are easier than landings, but my butt eats up the seat cover on every take off. Timo was killed in the Oct 2001 AA plane crash on Long Island. Five months before we were talking about how he flew to and from the Dominican Republic every week. He didn't like flying, but did not want to be away from his family, so when he agreed to run a factory down there he had it written into his contract that he would be home on the weekends. He was a metallurgist and we talked about metal aging and stress and all the things that could happen. It's ironic that as near as they can figure, the part that failed in the suspected wake turbulence was not metal but carbon fiber. I'm flying next Saturday and my palms are sweaty just thinking about it.

Brett

[XRe]

I was on one of the first flights in the US after air travel was reopened after 9/11.

I'm personally embarrassed to live in a country that thinks shaking down granny for her knitting needles makes anyone safer. 

It doesn't.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Not afraid, done it a bunch. Prefer it in a small plane where I can see out the front.

I was in the air bound for Orlando by way of Atlanta when the towers were hit. We were staying 5 days - grounded in Atlanta, managed to get a rental car after a two hour wait, and drove the rest of the way (that's a neat little story in itself). Didn't get our luggage until after the planes started flying again, three days later (or whatever it was). Flew back two days after on a 757.

I agree wholeheartedly w/ Eric, above... and could add a lot more

[kimel]

I still fly, I have to. Driving cross-country isn't an option. Neither is unemployment.

[Merlin Orr]

Your poll leaves out a lot of possible options... ex. "I'm not afraid of flying at all but I AM afraid of long lines at the ticket counter, clerks who don't know what they're doing, delays for no apparent reason, overbookings costing me my "reserved seat", having to take off my cowboy boots that I've had on all day just to prove that I'm not concealing anything in them other than some serious foot stank, forgetting to take my rainbow leek out of my pocket before entering the terminal and having it confiscated, and having to ride for hours in a seat designed for passengers no more than 4'6"  and that holds approximately 1 1/2 of my butt cheeks."

John

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Sums it up....

[LPatterson]

I have never gotten used to the flying part & I hate it when they won't let me bring my parachute on board. I've got a lot of take offs but damn few landings. USPA!

[Lycanthrope]

Survived a take off stall/spin when my instructor screwed up hard.

Saw a LOT of students trash small aircraft or land on highways during flight school and knew way too many pilots who swerve for chipmunks on the roadways...

Heck yeah, I get nervous flying.

[cking]

I fly but don't like it, beside its the guy who works on the plane that worries me!

[diehli]

I'm in the same camp as others here: I'm not afraid of flying, I just hate doing it. "Why," one might ask. See my screenname and consider that most airplanes are built in Lilliput and you'll understand. Even if I lost about 100 pounds, the seats would still be too small and my legs wouldn't fit under the frickin' tray table. Then there's the airports....

[George]

The closest option that worked for me was #3

I am with a number of others in understanding that it is required for speed, but it is not a likeable thing anymore for me. Even though flying in itself is exhiliarating, it the lack of control on an airbus that bugs me. I love doing dangerous stuff like driving on freeways at speed and I used to love riding motorcycles, it's all good when my hands are on the throttle/wheel/bars etc. Someone I don't know and trust implicitly does not make me real comfortable. I hate being a passenger on a motorcycle, but absolutely guarantee you will be absolutely safe if you are a passenger while I am in control on a motorcycle.

It's also a point of personal comfort, over 6' and long legs do not mate well with the cheap airline seat so it's upgrade or suffer for me on any flight over an hour. If it's just an hour, I can frickin' drive just as fast as all the air transfer hoopla allows anyway. I routinely get to LA from my front door in not much different time than the same trip when someone flies.

Side effect of driving, I have my vehicle with me ;-)

I really despise public transport in any way because of the cattle herd aspect of it.

What can I say, I am an ugly, selfish American that wants a hamburger "My Way" ;-)

BTW, I did hundreds of thousands of miles yearly back in the late 70's and through the eighties when I did touring and it burned me on planes as a fun mode of travel. Buses suck hind teat too!

--

Regards,

Edited May 15, 2005 by George

[XRe]

I love doing dangerous stuff like driving on freeways at speed and I used to love riding motorcycles, it's all good when my hands are on the throttle/wheel/bars etc. Someone I don't know and trust implicitly does not make me real comfortable. I hate being a passenger on a motorcycle, but absolutely guarantee you will be absolutely safe if you are a passenger while I am in control on a motorcycle.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Just keep in mind - while you may be in control of *your* vehicle, you can't control the other hundred around you, any of which might do something really stupid at any time. Control is an illusion - though lack of or loss of it is a big mental issue for a lot of us

While we may feel out of control in an airplane, and in total control in our cars, the numbers don't really lie about which one is factually more dangerous overall - though I've yet to see a report that details how dangerous flying might be if the sheer number of "people miles" matched that of people driving cars.

That's not to say that I think you're mentally deficient or anything if you feel that way - I share those feelings to some extent. I definitely prefer my hands on the wheel/stick/handlebars/whatever. It's just strange how we humans operate upstairs

[George]

I should have mentioned that the illusion of safety and control is all I really crave and yes I do understand that. It still feels better to have my hand on the throttle. At least I won't be cussin' someone else out as I go down in flames ;-)

--

Regards,