I go through phases. Although I have only ever been SLF, I’ve done quite a lot of flying. In the mob, on MAOTs. Hell, I used to take helicopters to work! Pumas would come and pick us up at Upavon and off to wherever the ex was. Flew in many different helos, Wokkas, SKs, Wessexes, Chicken Legs, Scout, Pumas, Lynx, UH-1 (German), CH-53 (German), UH-70(US). Fixed wing, Hercs, Transall (German), Tristar and VC-10. Never a problem at all.
Then in the 90s I flew to Malta on Holiday from Köln-Bonn. On the way back over the Alps, the flight encountered terrible turbulence. It was scheduled to stop at Munich, and I said to my then wife I was getting off there, and I’ll take the train back. No way in hell I was getting back on that aircraft. As luck would have it, they binned the Munich stop and landed at Köln first. I guess the weather was just too bad to go to Munich first. I didn’t fly again for about 12 years.
I divorced and remarried, and my wife inveigled me into going to the US on holiday. 747. I sat there for 8hrs or whatever it was gripping the armrests with white knuckles. Landed and all was well. I was fine then for years. So much so that when I left the mob and got a job that involved travel, I ended up with about 550,000 flown miles on BA and 1.2M flown miles on Delta (having moved to the US). I think that works out to about 3,000 hours. I would take planes like some people take buses. I’ve crossed the Atlantic a couple hundred times now.
Then I moved to the Knoxville area, and to go anywhere, you pretty much have to take a flight to Atlanta or Detroit and onward from there. It’s only a 27 minute flight to ATL, but I did one about a year ago that scared me again. Every bit as bad as over the Alps. It was a CRJ-70, blown about like a paper aeroplane. I haven’t needed to fly as much recently, but when I do, I look for the flights operated by aircraft type, not schedule. Some ATL flights are 717s. Much larger aircraft. I just don’t do well in turbulence, and the larger aircraft seem to handle it better. Don’t know how much truth there is to that. Then again I’ve been in a 76 that was blown about like a paper aeroplane.
So, I’m a Delta Million Miler, and I hate flying
