Are You Afraid To Fly?

[Jman]

Give me a prop plane any day. You can keep the iron lung.

Still, two shots of tequila and a beer and I'll climb on any thing.

Jim

[h2osport]

I am good to go with flying, but only do it for vacations. 1 or 2 times a year. However, flying with a migraine is no fun. Thank god for barf bags.

Randy

[dajarrel]

I don't fly much anymore but I always enjoyed flying when I did. Like others have noted, it's the crap at the airports that I don't care for.

Somewhere in the humor forum is a list of airplane one-liners. The one that always tickled me the most was a (fictional, I'm sure) flight attendent who said,

"Thanks for flying XYZ airlines. We hope that the next time you get the insane urge to hurl yourself through the air at 500+ MPH in a pressurized aluminum tube, that you will consider us!!"

fwiw

dj

[ap38]

Not afraid to fly, but I hate it.

It has to be worth the 2 hour drive to the airport, 2 hour drive home and the wait, the TSA inspection, the crowded seats, the overly large person taking up half your seat to make me fly.

Not a fan of long distance driving, but at least I control the vehicle, and can stop when I want to.

[3GunF1Guy]

I am not afraid or nervous to fly, It’s my guns that get real nervous. They are really never sure whether they’re going to show up with me or not.

They get lonely without me and hate going home to some they don’t know.

Scott

[kevin c]

Interestingly enough, I am more than a little acrophobic, but flying doesn't phase me at all.

[Fast Shooter Wannabe]

LOL, They always appreciate it when you consider them!

[davidwiz]

I'm afraid of the morons manning the "security" checkpoints, a/k/a/ TSA.

[Viggen]

I'm not afraid to fly, I don't know enough.

But a friend of mine, an aerospace engineer, who spent his life designing and building aircraft here in the US refuses to fly anywhere unless he has had several days of "medication". He does not believe any of them to be safe because as he says, " I know how they were put together and who put them together."

It does rock my confidence a bit......

[shootingchef]

I was ok with flying till 1999 when I had my first Panic attack from being inside a MRI machine, I never knew what hit me. After that I became horribly claustropobic. I won't fly, take a bus, a shuttle, or even ride in a back seat. Life sucks sometimes.

[JayWord]

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...

Darn, I'm sorry I missed it. It sounded like great fun.

What will scare you is being in a plane and going over the outer marker beacon and still can't see the runway due to fog. That was interesting in a Cessna twin.

Jay

[SoonerPast]

I'm not afraid, but I surely do dislike it. It has become a royal pain, I think. That wasn't an option on the poll.

It is a real life example of how much freedom people will give up in order to "feel" more secure, plus an industry that shows the result of extraordinary economic stress.

[Jim Norman]

You need a 5th choice here.

#5, Not afraid to fly, I'd just rather drive cause I like to see the country.

So that said;

IF and it is a BIG IF, you have Time, DRIVE.

You get to see the country.

It is cheaper than flying if you travel with more than one person, about equal with only one and MUCH CHEAPER if you go over 3. Remember, you have to factor in: Parking, Hotel, Car Rental and all Meals eaten out.

RV Travel is great and cheap (Just don't amortize the RV into the trip, any more than you amortize your guns and ammo)

I drove NJ to Tulsa last year and was ready to do it again. The trip out was fine, the trip home was a bit taxing as the Hurricanes and high winds were on my tail, but that said, I would still do it again. Flying is OK, I will fly, I just flew to Ark and Tex for a Match and a meeting. I didn't have the time, 4 additional days, to drive it. And the cost was somewhat covered by company.

Jim

[Miranda]

some where around 1,200 miles is where flying commercial beats driving.

I avoid airframes, if at all possible.

I build model airplanes and fabricated aluminium race parts

and used carbon-fiber parts.

alu cracks and fails pretty darned quick.

vibrating aluminium is worse.

the only way to know you have a defective carbonfiber part is to stress it....

and since every part in those planes is vibrating aluminium

and untested carbon fiber, I get a little nervous.

since I know how to make an airframe and that EVERY part is important.....

I get even more nervous.

I am very impressed at how well the aviation industry has done to keep those things flying.

I'll drive thanks...

miranda

[HRider]

I have not flown very much. I have been to Germany in coach. The best part of flying is taking off and landing (even more fun in a storm), the rest of the experience pretty much sucks (you know, stuck in a tube for 10 hours at a time, dealing with security at the airport, checking bags, claiming bags, looking at the damage to your bags, food, high airport prices, layovers). I am sure that I left out a few things.

Hurley

[Pitmaster]

I used to be scared of flying pre-9/11 and would not fly at all. Shortly after 9/11 happened my attitude changed to "BLANK the terrorists, I'm flying to support our country and not let terrorism win." My first flight was about 6 months later and I've been flying for trips and vacations 4-5x per year now. I'm a big guy so comfort is my only real issue anymore. I sit on the aisle cause terrorists are going to have to go through and over me to get to the pilots.

Homeland Security is a joke and IMO irrelevant. Passengers are not going to let terrorists or hijackers take over a plane in the U.S. again. I would prefer a decrease in airport security and an increase in airplane safety.