Flying

Sometime in the long, long ago - before the Pandemic, but post Brexit, I realised that I had developed a pretty serious fear of flying. This was weird because a) I had travelled a lot growing up and b) I understood that flying was by far the safest mode of transport. Didn’t matter though, because through a combination of decreasing travel opportunities, an increasingly healthy respect for mortality and a million other things even the thought of getting on a flight had my heart rate spiking.

I flew twice in 2019, the outbound and return legs of an incredible trip to Hungary and Croatia and I was white-knuckled holding onto the arm rests. The anxiety would peak during take-off, but the hours before hand were pretty rough too. Once airborne it wasn’t too bad, and for some completely illogical reason landings were no big deal at all. It was reaching a point where I started to believe that this fear would start holding me back, as I was in a serious relationship with someone that loved (and still loves) to travel, when all of a sudden a flu started spreading out of China that put travel plans on hold for a while.

The next two years were, amongst other things, a blissfully flight free time, but by the time 2022 came around a few things conspired to force me to face my fears head on. The world was opening up again, a certain itchy footed explorer was eager to get back out there and I had been accepted into a global career program in work. This confluence of events led to possibly the most intimidating screenshot I’ve ever taken.

I don’t know much about human psychology, or how to treat anxiety, but let me just share my own personal experience. By the time I was sitting on that Aer Lingus flight from Heathrow back to Dublin, I no longer cared what was going to happen when we headed for the runway. I was so tired from hopping across time zones, drained from worrying about each subsequent leg of the journey, grateful for the opportunities life was proffering me and frustrated that this silly fear might be holding me back. I remember clearly settling into my seat in a gracefully empty row and realising that I wasn’t on edge. Something changed across those back to back to back flights, either through exposure therapy or pure exhaustion.

In the years since I’ve travelled a lot more, visited new places, seen amazing things, run through airports to catch tight connections and that early morning flight where it all clicked stays with me. I truly believe that exposure, experience and an intimate knowledge of the subject helps keep fear at bay, and because I’m not a gazillionaire I supplement the actual experience of flying by absorbing some of the plethora of aviation content out there. I’m a FlightRadar24 aficionado, although honestly I prefer ADSBExchange. I watch seat reviews from the likes of Sam and Dan, I follow r/aviation and use the incredible Flighty.app to track all mine, and my family/friends flights. This regime of regular exposure stops anything about the flying experience becoming “foreign”, so that when I actually board a flight it’s nothing out of the ordinary.

All of this has built to 2025, where as we sit at week 44 of the year, I’ve taken 32 flights. I’ve circumnavigated the globe and then some, and have spent over 3 days in the air. These are rookie numbers to real frequent fliers, but for someone who dreaded the single trip back in 2019, it’s hard to believe.