19/31: How I (sort of) overcame my fear to fly
If you’d met me a couple of years ago you would know that I was afraid of flying. Not at the point of having a crisis attack in the middle of the flight, but at the point of being very stressed during the flight. Now I can say that, while I’m not completely cured, I can do it without being concerned every minute about my life and the safety of the plane.
My father loved road trips, like really really loved them, we went all the way from Chihuahua, Chihuahua, close to the border with the US; to Cancun, Quintana Roo in the Yucatan Peninsula, a trip of more than 1,800 miles, twice. Not only that, we drove from El Paso, Texas to Los Angeles, California once (800 miles); from El Paso to San Antonio, Austin, Corpus Christi and Padre Island (870 miles), in the same trip; from Chihuahua, Chihuahua to Mexico City, twice (900 miles); to Guadalajara, twice (720 miles); to Monterrey (500 miles), I can’t even remember how many times; to Morelia (810 miles), once; and other trips I can’t recall. So I really didn’t take a plane until I was 19 (well, I did take a plane when I was 7 years old, but I can barely remember what happened during the flight). My first flight completely alone was at 20 and it was from Mexico to Spain.
Also, as some of you know, I’m a little curious, so I investigated about planes, how they work, the types, sizes and, of course, accidents.
My first flight was scary, the second one was scarier. Once in Europe I started taking more and more flight through RyanAir super cheap prices, so I needed to do something about my fear.
First I studied about the probability of an accident during the flight, and I found this image:
Watching these statistics I saw which are the most dangerous phases of the flight, takeoff and landing. After watching this and take a considerable number of flights in Europe, I reduced my fear just to two phases, takeoff and landing.
But my hunger for more made me to investigate more about the issue. From the four main types of airplane, commercial ones are the less common to be part of an accident, usually because all the security measures that take place before, during and after the flight. According to a research made by Harvard University that you can find here.
Also, I found that the probability of being killed by an airplane accident is 1 in 4 million. Let me put it this way, you have way more probabilities of dying on your way to the airport than dying on an airplane accident. Let me repeat that again, there’s a bigger change of you dying in a car accident on your way to take the flight than in the actual flight.
Another good piece of information was that plane accidents are less and less frequent, every year. Also the number of fatal accidents has decreased considerably.
You need to take in count that this is number of fatal accident per year, in terms of percentage the decrease would be even more impressive, since every year the air traffic grows considerably.
And like if this wasn’t enough, I also learned the process of maintenance every airplane has to go through every two years:
This is the called 3C-Check, but an aircraft has to go through other smaller checks every semester or every year to keep it working correctly.
Thanks to a post I read on Reddit time ago, I understood that there are certain procedures each flight needs to go through before having the permission to take off or land, and this is a long and really step by step process.
Also, the air industry tries to investigate every accident to improve its procedures in order to avoid big accidents to happen again, that’s why it’s not really common to see the same accident twice.
Experience and knowledge were my weapons to fight the fear of flying, now I can say that most of the time I’m relaxed during the flight, every time random thoughts come to me about accidents I just remember these statistics (and many more that I can’t remember right now) to come back to whatever I was doing, reading, listening to music, watching a movie or sleeping.
I know there’s a lot of people out there who are afraid to fly, just like me. That’s why I wanted to share what helped me to overcome, almost, this fear. At the end, flying is the most secure way of traveling long distances and most of the time is worth the risk.
This story is part of my 31/31 challenge. Following a friend’s idea I will publish at least one story every day for the next month.
If you see any error please let me know, the idea is to stop over-reviewing my stories before publishing them.
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