Don’t Kill Me
Fear is a part of life. Fear of heights, fear of water and most definitely fear of flying. Getting on a commercial airplane for some people is an extremely nerve wracking experience usually handled with pills, alcohol or just the simplicity of holding someone’s hand. Even with this fear, people face it knowing that otherwise it would take them a week of driving or riding the train to get them to where they want to go.
I always encourage fearful flyers to talk to the pilots whenever possible. For one thing, I have seen a person visibly feel better and more relaxed as they are about to go back to their seat. I guess just talking to the pilots and knowing who is up there helps. For another, meeting a passenger who is nervous about flying stays with me throughout the flight. Most of the time pilots do not interact with the passengers, so if I have a face in my mind of a person who is experiencing anxiety over being on my airplane, I will do everything I can to make sure that flight is as smooth as humanly possible. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but I will definitely put in the extra effort.
That all being said, I just had an experience with a passenger that I have no idea what to think.
While getting ready for a flight during passenger boarding, the flight attendant comes up and says that she had someone who was scared of flying and wanted to talk to us. When she came in the cockpit, she was crying and sniffing and generally freaked out. A petite girl in her early twenties just crying her eyes out because she had to get on an airplane. My heart really went out to her.
She took another step closer to us and said “I know that over 90% of airplane crashes are the pilot’s fault, so please don’t kill me”.
(This is the part where you insert the screeching tire sound)
After picking our jaws up off the floor, both of us took turns trying to calm her down and explain that we didn’t want to die either and we would do everything we could to make the flight as smooth and safe as possible, but to no avail. She kept throwing various airplane crashes at us and telling us how it was all the pilot’s fault that these people died and that she didn’t want to die.
The kicker of it was that she has been flying quite a bit commercially since she was two years old. She knew what to expect. She knew if something sounded different than normal when the airplane was climbing or descending. She knew more than an awful lot of people do about airplanes.
After a few minutes of this, any nugget of nurturing female compassion on my part went out the window and I was seriously trying to figure out how to get this woman out of my cockpit. I still think back on it and have no clue what was really going on. If she was really that afraid (I can’t imagine being completely paralyzed by a fear like that), why was she getting on an airplane? Was this to get attention? Did she have any clue that by using that approach to get someone to help you will probably backfire? It was a curious situation.
As far as I know, she was fine during the flight. We never heard a peep about her once she left the cockpit, but that was a conversation I will not forget.