OT (i guess)....say it ain't so....that plane crashed due to thunderstorm????????

[disneyholic family]

so as some of you may have noticed, i am VERY afraid of flying...
no....not afraid of flying, afraid of crashing....

people always tell me it's safer than driving.....possibly true, but when something happens to your car, you're not 6 miles up in the sky...

until now i thought that midflight we only had to worry about mechanical problems or pilot error....but now what's this i hear about that Air France airbus going down over the atlantic due to thunderstorms????
that's a scary thought....
i've always been especially leery of the ocean crossing part of the flight.....
i really hate it when my flight heads out over the atlantic....as we cross ireland and start across the water, i'm always more nervous than the rest of the way....that water is pretty unforgiving....

by the time we get to the atlantic, we've already been up in the air for about 5 hours, but as we make our way over the north atlantic, i'm almost counting the minutes until we're in striking distance of the north american coast....

i know, i'm totally nuts.....and this last crash certainly hasn't helped matters.......
i wish i lived in the US - it would be road trip for me every time....you wouldn't catch me getting on an airplane...ever....

 

[disneyholic family]

oops, i meant to put this on the main podcast board, not the podcast cruise board..


ok...i'm off to sleep - 2 am...
just modified my WDW reservations - they're so hard up for guests, they still have free dining available at pop century at this late date...unbelievable...

(of course, how am i going to get there if i'm so terrified about getting on a plane?????????????)

anyway...sorry about posting this on the wrong board..

 

[mikelan6]

What happened to the Air France jet is still unknown, but statistically speaking, flying is still safer than driving.

(Fly El Al ... and don't worry ... )

 

[firsttimemom]

As the wife of a former FAA official and the daughter of someone who helped develop planes for Mcdonnell Douglass, flying IS safer than driving. Planes generally are able to withstand lightning strikes and continue flying. Until this plane is found and more info is known, we can only speculate.

Having said that, I'll admit to being nervous when I hit turbulance.

I have a friend who takes xanax before a flight and she says it works wonders. Do you think something like that might help? It might be worth asking your doc.

 

[disneyholic family]

What happened to the Air France jet is still unknown, but statistically speaking, flying is still safer than driving.

(Fly El Al ... and don't worry ... )

i do (it helps a wee bit) - but then i have to get from NY down to orlando

As the wife of a former FAA official and the daughter of someone who helped develop planes for Mcdonnell Douglass, flying IS safer than driving. Planes generally are able to withstand lightning strikes and continue flying. Until this plane is found and more info is known, we can only speculate.

Having said that, I'll admit to being nervous when I hit turbulance.

I have a friend who takes xanax before a flight and she says it works wonders. Do you think something like that might help? It might be worth asking your doc.

one of my neighbors has to fly to the US every other week ....
so he told me he takes a sleeping pill at the beginning of every flight, since he has to be in meetings the moment the plane lands...
so i asked him what happens if there's an emergency on the plane and he's taken that pill....
his response? "if something happens on the plane that i have to be awake for, i don't want to be awake for it"...
sort of makes sense i guess...

 

[DVCsince02]

My husband takes xanex before flying and says he is much more comfortable when flying.

 

[ADP]

I never used to be afraid of flying or light turbulance. It took one incident to change that. I flew out of Dallas/Ft Worth once with a connecting flight to Las Vegas. The pilot/traffic controllers tried to beat bad weather approaching the air field. Well, we ended up right in the thunderstorm. The turbulance was bad (or at least what I consider bad).

I've never been the same. Everytime we hit any turbulance I'm grabbing onto the chair in front of me and start wondering how bad it will get.

 

[DUHgreg]

My second time on an airplane was a flight from Miami to NYC. It was a very rough flight. However, at the time, I didn't know any better, so I thought it was a typical flight and had no problems. Now, I know better and start checking the wings whenever anything happens.

 

[Dodie]

I am a fearful flyer too. It got much worse 10 or so years ago when DH Phillip and I were flying to Florida and went through a terrible thunderstorm with bad turbulence...the kind where the plane actually drops and everyone onboard screams...and then they cheer when the plane lands.

After that, I found something simple that has been very helpful to me:

This little paperback book, Flying Without Fear, that explains everything about how a plane flies, what all of the little noises are, why turbulence isn't the big deal you think it is, all of the reasons a plane isn't going to just fall out of the sky, and coping tricks to get you through the fearful parts. VERY HELPFUL!

As for the Air France flight that went down, I heard on the news this morning that the storms that the plane flew through were fairly unprecedented. Thunderstorm clouds that reached over 50,000 feet in height and went on for hundreds of miles. According to CNN.com, "Flight 447 vanished in what is known as the Intertropical Convergence Zone, a place where the Northern and Southern hemispheres -- and their tradewinds -- meet, spawning some of the world's most severe thunderstorms." This isn't a situation most of us would ever find ourselves in. Pilots avoid storms when they can and in most places, even if you do face turbulence, it wouldn't be the extent of this.

I cannot imagine what those folks went through and, although I am very sorry for the loss of life and their families, I am not going to let myself imagine it. That wouldn't be good for me and my active imagination.

 

[disneyholic family]

there's a free online interactive fear of flying course - by a pilot..
i haven't gone through it yet...i might try it...

but all those air crash investigations shows i've watched have sort of negated the possible impact of a fear of flying course...

anyway, the online course is at:
http://www.fearofflyinghelp.com/

and the air crash investigation shows can be watched in their entirety on google video - probably not a good idea to watch them....
a couple of my favorites (both due to extreme human error, or more like negligence really):
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7025897569830845243
and
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5708837349392662188

 

[robind]

I have to fly almost every week for my job and about 9 months after I started I all of a sudden had a huge fear of flying - it was so bad that I was flying home from Boston one Thursday connecting in NY, when I got off the connecting flight I refused to get on the next flight and took a train home.

I saw a therapist for a couple of weeks and just as sudden as it came on, it was gone. I seemed to have control issues - as in I don't want to give it up.

These days I'm so exhausted, I'm asleep before we even take off.

It did make me feel a little better when I read more about the very unusual circumstances that may have caused the accident.

 

[disneyholic family]

I have to fly almost every week for my job and about 9 months after I started I all of a sudden had a huge fear of flying - it was so bad that I was flying home from Boston one Thursday connecting in NY, when I got off the connecting flight I refused to get on the next flight and took a train home.

I saw a therapist for a couple of weeks and just as sudden as it came on, it was gone. I seemed to have control issues - as in I don't want to give it up.

These days I'm so exhausted, I'm asleep before we even take off.

It did make me feel a little better when I read more about the very unusual circumstances that may have caused the accident.

at that online fear of flying course, it talks about how it's very common for people's fear of flying to increase as they get older - marry, have kids, etc.
that was true for me..
i grew up flying all over the world with my family and i was never ever scared...
only when i had a family, in my 30's did the fear suddenly kick in...
until then, i LOVED to fly...anywhere any time...

so far, i've never actually not gotten on a plane like what you describe...though i've often thought about driving or taking the train....i always threaten that i'm going to drive from NY to detroit (after landing at JFK)....but so far i've never carried out the threat...i just don't have enough time when i'm visiting the states, to waste it on a road trip...and it's sort of silly, since by the time i reach NY i've already been flying for 12 hours...

maybe i should take a sleeping pill....i probably should try it on the ground first, since i've never taken one in my life...

 

[DVCsince02]

All this flight talk is making me nervous. My DH is due to return home this evening and scattered severe thunderstorms with high winds are predicted.