[extropy-chat] Fear of flying

[kevinfreels.com]

Well, I am back home and on the ground now. As for the passenger status in
the car, well, I am a horrible passenger and almost never let anyone drive -
especially on long trips (even though most accidents are within 5 miles of
home).
Several years ago I was even worse and would flat-out refuse to get into a
car with a driver who made me nervous. I also had on occasion actually left
a car in which I was a passenger when the car was at a stoplight.
I took a job as a car salesman for a while (aware of my fear) and learned to
better manage that fear. Still, I think the fear of riding left me a bit at
a loss as a salesman.

A few things are different with air travel and I think I have them nailed
down. To begin, while getting on a plane, one does not have the option to
participate in any decisions such as the decision to land in a storm or to
take off at a certain time. The pilot, not flight control, has finaly
authority on these decisions and can at any time choose to  disregard
instructions from the tower.

In fact, as a passenger one knows absolutely nothing of the pilot. A
passenger has no idea what kind of decisions the pilot might make. That
pilot may be starting their day, or they may be in a position where if they
don;t land and take off in a certain time-frame, they may have to overnight
away from home. They may be angry and reckless one day. The fact is, you
never even get to speak to the pilot.

Nor do you know what that aircraft has been through. The pilot does a
checklist before every flight, but it they are preoccupied, it can be very
easy to walk the routine and never even notice things that are blatantly
obvious.

So quite simply, unlike with cars, there is no opportunity to inspect either
the pilot of the plane. You can;t even see forward to say "Hey, are you sure
you want to fly through that?"

Of course, I know that my inspection of the aircraft would probably be
pointless because a failure is more likely to occur somewhere that can't be
seen. I know that I don't walk around my own car before I get in and drive
off, but I also know each and every pot-hole the car has hit. I have done
all the maintenance myself.

I know that meeting the pilot would probably show me little more about the
pilot than the pilot wants me to see. And I know that allowing passengers to
meet the pilot, discussing opinions, and inspect the aircraft would be
totally impractical and would even increase risk due to security concerns.
But I think that this is where the fear comes from.

It is interesting to note that on the way back, I had the opportunity to sit
in the right-side emergency exit row window seat over the wing. This did
some to allay my fears as I felt I had responsibility for something, but in
the end, it was very little help since I had no real decisions to make
unless the plane crashed.

On a side note, I had a cab driver at the airport that scared me MUCH more
than any of the flights!
This fear is really an issue as it actually caused me some stomach problems.
My last flight was better than the first flight which means that I could
probably be conditioned to deal with it if I just fly commercial often
enough (increasing my odds of being in a plane crash). One part that helped
was landing in Atlanta and just seeing the number of jets taking off,
landing, loading and unloading without incident. It's one thing to read the
statistics and quite another to stand there and watch plane after plane come
and go.

What the heck am I to do the first time I ever require surgery?






question: how well do you handle being a front-seat passenger in
> a car? this is effectively equivalent to being
> a passenger in an airliner. except that it is statistically much more
> dangerous.
>
> If you can deal with being a car passenger, how do you do it? can you
> use the same coping mechanisms for air travel?
>
> You are a control freak. Don't apologize for this: you were born that
> way., and there is nothing wrong with it.
> Non-control-freaks cannot really empathize with your situation, so we
> cannot really help.
>
>