I’m uneasy about flying, which is a catch-22 because I love travelling. This isn’t a particularly niche fear and I’m not claiming to be a special snowflake because of it. But it’s not even the fear itself I’m directly addressing, it’s the whole act of flying and the specific culture you have to encounter when you travel.
Liquids under 500 millilitres in plastic bags, taking belts of for scans, putting belongings in a tray to be x-rayed all a preliminary stepping stone to the duty-free (where you buy a smaller less economical deodorant that got thrown away). It’s like a strange sub-culture that nobody really wants to be part of. The existence of speedy boarding, a hierarchy that lasts for about 10 seconds, only when the bodiless voice exclaims that ‘speedy boarding passengers can board’. Thus, the smug faces board the aircraft which wouldn’t leave without us economy class normies regardless.
-But by far the worst, is that plane.
I’m in no way smart enough (or arrogant enough) to claim before boarding the plane ‘excuse me, sir, this all doesn’t seem very safe’; my knowledge of aeronautics extends purely to the fact of knowing the word aeronautics. However, I just can’t shake the feeling, and I’m probably not in alone in the fact, that the whole soaring in the sky thing just doesn’t feel right for us humans.
I know it doesn’t feel right, when I look out the window. As beautiful as the sight of leaving the coastline and elevating above the clouds look; none of it seems real. The way my mind processes the situation is completely dissociating from what’s going on, it might as well be a painting or a scene from a film.
The powder dusted Alps and toy cars zipping around the barely visible roads. Square and rectangular farmland patchwork and systematic rooftops. None of it seems real. Instead of acknowledging the fact I’m 39,000 feet above the ground, my first inclination is to numb myself, as if I’m on a bus to school. Obviously my sub-conscious will never be comfortable with flying.
Occasionally, reality takes a poke at you and reminds you where you are. That comes in the form of turbulence. When you are being shaken up and down like a ragdoll, white knuckled, holding onto the seat rests, being goaded by the obnoxious seatbelt ding, you realise how truly helpless you are. What if this plane drops? That would truly be it, right?
Not to dismiss other forms of public transport for being the pinnacle of safety, but if a train crashed, I could imagine possibly surviving, possibly wiggling out of the wreckage.
-If a plane crashed, chances of survival are very low and even if we did survive the crash, then there’s a 90% chance we would land in water and I can’t swim (I know, I know it’s bad, I need to learn etcetera etcetera). Another element of helplessness is taking off and landing.
Taking off feels like a ‘here goes nothing moment’. The plane is seemingly practicing doing a run up and seeing if it can jump a hurdle. It hurtles down the runaway then lifts up a little, sometimes teetering down a bit or to the side, then lifting up some more. Of course this is all meticulously done, but then why am I still feeling a sense of haphazardness. Oh, and those people who clap when the plane lands, just perpetuate the notion that landing itself was a grand miracle, deserving of an applause.
Taking all this into account it’s a surprise I should be able to board an aeroplane in the first place. But I suppose the stats are on my side, the chances of perishing in a traffic accident for instance, are much higher. Sure, it may be unnatural to be flying, but I’d take that over our previous seafaring ways to get from point A to B (again, I can’t swim, so the whole titanic thing would have been a real downer for me). Plus I still think it’s pretty darn amazing how’ve we’ve managed to mobilise humanity through the skies, so well done aeronautical engineers!
As for that Italian security guard who lectured me about bringing my water bottle on a plane, I’m still salty. ∞