Fear and anxiety in the air

A new plane travel survey lands on the desk of Sam Bowring.

A new survey of Australian plane passengers by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority has ranked the worries of flyers. These kinds of surveys are important because they help us understand why some weirdos get freaked out at the thought of being swallowed by a giant silver bird and blasted into outer space.

Coming in at fourth place is ‘human error’. Understandable enough - people aren’t perfect. For example, every time I leave my house, I instantly become worried that I forgot to lock the front door, even though I remember doing it. This is one of many reasons why I should never become a flight stewardess. “I’ll get your peanuts in a moment sir, I’ve just got to check the airlock first – I’m not quite sure that I shut it properly.”

At third place is terrorism, despite the fact that security nowadays is so tight, you can’t take nail clippers on board. I guess this is in case your aim is excellent enough to clip a serrated toe shard into a pilot’s eye from a distance of one hundred metres. Obviously I still have some training to do.

Second place goes to worrying about mechanical problems. There’s speculation this figure could be rising due to the increased popularity of shows such as ‘Air Crash Investigation’ and ‘Snakes on a Plane’ (when a snake chews through fuselage it IS technically a mechanical problem). I totally get this, as I have no faith in machinery at all. I’m one of these people who sits there going “What was that sound? Is the plane meant to make that sound?” It always turns out to be something perfectly explainable of course, such as a steward asking me if I want a drink.

Proudly hijacking the number one source of worry is ‘psychological factors’, or plain old fear of flying. Obviously the airlines do what they can to allay people’s fears. For example they install seatbelts so that, in the event of a crash, your charred corpse can be held in place for easier identification later. I don’t have much faith in plane seat belts myself. I’ve never heard anything on the news like “Disaster today as a Boeing 747 bound for Tokyo crashed into Mt Fuji, killing hundreds. If only they had been wearing their seatbelts. Only the captain survived, as the plane was fitted with a driver-side airbag.”

Have you guessed that I’m not the biggest fan of flying? It’s true - and in fact I recently decided not to fly, ever again. I get the most amazing reactions when I tell people this - they stare at me like I have contagious cancer of the dick, when really all I’ve said is, I don’t feel comfortable hurtling through the sky trapped in a metal rocket. To me it’s amazing that people are amazed by this - as if humans had always flown, as if it wasn’t such a recent development.

Bah. Once again I find myself wishing I lived in medieval England as some kind of nobility with a sixteen-year-old wife, with none of this being my problem. Dying young from a tooth infection may have been my problem, but at least I wouldn’t have to read a survey about it every five minutes.