Fear of Flight

I will never not be an anxious wreck on airplanes

Just a few minutes before going through TSA at the Detroit airport, I panicked. I was 14 or 15 years old, about to go on an international flight for the first time with my high school German exchange group. And while I’d been anticipating this trip for almost a year, the reality of being separated from my family in another county for three weeks suddenly felt terrifying.

I turned to my mom and exclaimed, “I can’t do this." My body felt electrified with fear; I felt frozen in place and ready to run away at the same time. But the decision had already been made. I was going to get on that plane, whether I liked it or not.

Somehow I got through the TSA checkpoint and onto the flight. I don’t remember much about being that process, probably because I was freaking out the entire time. My panic attacks were at their worst back in my mid-teens — I hadn’t yet been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder and had very few coping mechanisms. So that only made things worse.

Even though the eight-hour flight itself was fairly forgettable, what I do remember is that that trip to Germany firmly established my fear of flying at a young age. Today I can’t ride on any plane, no matter how long the flight is, without feeling like I’m gonna die. That reality was only solidified last week, when Ryan and I flew to upstate New York to visit my sister.

Statistically, I know flying is one of the safest methods of transportation. It’s extremely regulated, and accidents are super rare. Like, you have a one in 13.4 million chance of dying on a flight. In a car, your lifetime chance of dying in a crash in the U.S. is one in 93.

Pilots have to do a ton of safety checks before going anywhere, compared to drivers who can legally operate shitboxes on the highway with serious engine problems. As long as your car moves, you have a license, and you pass an occasional emissions test, you can legally drive it, mechanical issues be damned. Yet somehow driving feels … safer?

An image from the plane window on a flight I took last year.

I think the element of control is really what makes me anxious about flying. I don’t understand how planes work and I’m not the one in the cockpit, so therefore I have to trust that the pilot knows what they’re doing. In a car, I at least have the illusion of control, since I’m the driver. And yet someone else could easily put me in danger with their reckless behavior or poorly maintained vehicle. It just doesn’t seem like that risk exists when you have survivor’s bias from always arriving to your destination safely.

I haven’t been on as many flights as I have car rides, but I think I’ve been on enough that I should be chill about airplane travel. But somehow, I’m not. The plane makes me anxious no matter what, even if there’s no turbulence and we’re only in the air for an hour. I don’t really know how to challenge this feeling.

Last week, when we were flying to New York, I was relieved to at least be traveling with another person. Usually when I fly somewhere, I’m going alone. That seems to (understandably) make things worse.

But even with Ryan at my side, I still got super anxious whenever we were about to board the plane. My hands got sweaty and I could feel my heart pounding. I tried to remind myself to take deep breaths, but frequently found myself forgetting to breathe or basically hyperventilating.

Holding Ryan’s hand on the plane because I was probably freaking out

The only thing that kept me grounded the entire time was watching the flight attendants. Ryan made a keen observation when were on the plane: if the flight attendants aren’t freaking out about what’s happening on the plane, then everything’s probably fine. Those folks go on so many flights that they become numb to all the sensations and sounds that normally freak out infrequent fliers like me.

But despite how bored our flight attendants looked, I still hated being trapped inside a metal tube in the sky going hundreds of miles per hour. My whole body screamed at me to get out at any cost, even though I logically knew things were fine. I don’t know if that will change, no matter how many planes I ride on.

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