Flying is Dangerous!

Many people believe flying is dangerous. Well, I couldn't agree more. It is dangerous. Everything in life is dangerous, life itself is dangerous as it ultimately has to end with death, a dangerous thing!

Seriously though, living in the United States of America and rest of the world is dangerous. It just seems that the media gets a tickle out of telling us all this bad news every day. As a race, the human race, I think it is our maternel instincts that tell us to be careful, not to take risk and our male instincts to go out there and just do it. Perhaps this is why there are few women in aviation. Maybe it boils down to female instincts not being compatible with risk taking and that learning to fly, is perceived as high risk, even though walking across the street, driving your car or living in certain neighborhoods is probably riskier.

To be fair to this perception of danger, planes are very safe and rarely misbehave. I think the idea that you are hanging in space, with a lot of altitude between you and a hard surface, is daunting, but only when you are on the ground. For example, you are looking out the window of a skyscraper. Your first instinct is not to get too close to the window. After a few years in the office and after tapping the window and understanding it is an inch thick and won't break easily, you relax and allow yourself to lean up against it every now and then. Flying is the same, experience and understanding are the keys to not being afraid.

Actually, even though I have always been interested in aviaton and flying, I must admit, I became afraid of it. I was working for Scandinavian Airlines as Key Account Manager for Tour Operator sales. Basically, it was a great job inasmuch as I had to travel with my clients to Scandinavia to show them destinations where they can send tourists. I would fly with them up to Norway, Sweden, the arctic circle, Finland, whether in winter or in summer. Now this meant that I flew a lot and sometimes on my own. I wasn't ever capable of working and relaxing in an airplane. My brain would always stay active and I would be listening to all the sounds and feeling all the movements of the airplane. I knew if I could only be in the cockpit, I would feel better. I just needed to know what was going on before it was going to happen, as opposed to it happening and then trying to understand. Well, the problem got worse before it got better. I started suffering from flight anxiety and once, it got so bad, I cancelled a trip because I was afraid of flying.

My ex-wife, wife at the time, suggested that I should take flying lessons. She has her own tour operating company and loves to travel all over the world, so you can imagine what a ball and chain I was, not wanting to fly. I guess I was lucky, not many pilots have supporting spouses when it comes to sharing their enthusiasm for flying. So here I go for a few lessons, stalls, turns, understanding the aircraft's operational limits, wow, what an eye opener. It was much bumpier than the big planes too, but it was great and much less dangerous than I thought. I just had to make that leap of faith, trust my instructor on that first flight.

That's all it took, now 4 years down the road, I have my private pilot license for single engine land airplane and glider and, my instrument rating.

I still don't want to fly with the airlines, but now it's because it is a lot more fun flying myself around in a small plane!