Fear of Flying

The world is divided into two kind of people: normal, intelligent, sensitive people with some breadth of imagination, and people who aren’t the least bit afraid of flying. 
          ~Szafi, White Knuckles: Getting Over the Fear of Flying

                      

It was almost 30 years ago, yet I remember it like it was yesterday. About 2 days before the trip I woke from a sound sleep with a nightmare. I sat up in the dark with my heart pounding. The dream was that I had been in a plane and it was crashing. I could hear the other people in the plane screaming. Luggage was falling out of the overhead bins. The force of gravity pushed on my chest. It was so real I was terrified...

Two days later I flew to Buffalo to attend a family wedding. The flight there was uneventful. The wedding, though wonderful, had been somewhat tarnished by the illness of the bride's mother, who was a favorite aunt of mine. So, on the return trip, I was not thinking about the flight, but rather how my aunt was doing.

The date was August 16, 1987. My flight from Buffalo to Indy was in two legs. First I flew to Detroit. I remember the pilot speaking on that flight about the usual stuff, and then adding some editorial comments about a recent criticism of air safety that had been in the news. Our flight was fine to Detroit. I had to change flights, and that meant hunting up the correct gate. I had to move from one concourse to another, and there wasn't much time so I was walking very fast. I arrived at the gate a little out of breath, sat down and then noticed how crowded the gate was. It was a double gate. My flight was leaving for Indy, the other side was a flight out to Arizona and California, Northwest Flight 255. There were lots of people milling about, including a young family. The parents were about the same age I was at the time. They had a little girl, about 4 years old, and a little boy who was just a bit older. Both were active, happy children. I spoke briefly to the mother, chattered a minute with the little ones. Then they called both flights to board, and I got on my plane, and they got on theirs.

My plane taxied out to the runway. It was a hot August evening, and I remember noting some storm clouds in the distance. We bounced our way slowly to the point where the pilot called for the attendants to sit down and was starting to rev the engines. Then the engines stopped. They just stopped. We sat there for a most unusual length of time, and then somebody said, "There goes a fire truck! There goes an ambulance! Look at the smoke!!"

We sat on the runway, on that hot August evening, for about 2 hours. The pilot of our plane didn't give us much information, other than to say that there had been "an accident" and we had to sit on the runway until the tower directed us to either take off or go back to the gate. Eventually we were sent back to the gate and then we waited until the middle of the night for another pilot to take us back to Indy.

Flight 255 crashed on take off, killing 154 aboard except a little four year old girl named Cecelia. It also killed several people on the ground. Eventually the cause was determined to be "pilot error". The pilot had not had the wing flaps configured correctly. I never saw the crash, but having spent just a few minutes with some of the people on that plane, including perhaps little Cecelia and her family, had a lasting impact on me. It took me 10 years to be able to fly in an airplane again. And I remain a "white knuckled" flier to this day. I know what can happen. I know how suddenly everything can change.

I have flown many times since and still, on take off, I sit very still and send as much psychic energy as I can to the pilots to get the flaps right... get the flaps right... GET THE FLAPS RIGHT!!!

Tomorrow I am flying again, this time to visit my best friend who just had a joint replacement surgery. She needs a little help. I could use some girlfriend time. But I am hoping out there is a pilot who is getting enough sleep. Who uses the safety checklists. And who will GET THE FLAPS RIGHT!!!