I Am Not Aviophobic

I've flown a lot of times in my life. So many that I can't actually count the number of flights. I've never been scared of flying. Never second guessed getting on a plane. Never got jumpy during turbulence. Never held my breath while landing. I am not aviophobic.

However, while I was sitting at the airport on Monday night waiting to board my flight to Saskatoon a sudden wave of fear struck me—hard. The weather was nice in Calgary and I had no idea what the conditions were in Saskatoon. I can think of no reason at all that I started thinking about plane crash statistics. I knew that WestJet had never had an accident, although it did have one incident where it had to make an emergency landing and no one was hurt. But for some reason I couldn't help but think that eventually a plane somewhere is eventually going to crash. Then I became convinced that it was going to be my flight.

I managed to reason my way out of this ridiculous notion—until the pilot started talking.

The take off was fine and I was calm, cool, collected and enjoying the city lights as they faded away below me. Then the pilot came on to update us. He let us know we would be climbing to 39,000 feet and then said "the current weather conditions in Saskatoon... well, I don't think we want to go there. It's very wintery, currently -11, overcast with light and blowing snow." Shit.

This made me a little nervous as all of my pre-flight thoughts came rushing back, but I was able to put them aside. We flew at 39,000 feet for what seemed like four minutes, then the captain announced our descent into Saskatoon.

Then the clouds came.

And they really came. I could barely see the tip of the wing. After descending for a minute or so, and still not being able to see the ground I started to get nervous again. Then we started banking a turn, which made me even more nervous, not knowing how close to the ground we were, wondering how the hell the pilots could possibly know.

I finally saw the ground just as we were flying above Saskatoon, and for a minute everything was alright. Then I remembered that there was blowing snow, and the plane started rocking back and forth as we were coming up to the airport—very close to the ground. The pilot managed to land the plane perfectly.

As I said earlier, I have never had any qualms about flying and have absolutely no idea where this mental episode came from. Maybe it has something to do with me stressing out for the three and a half hours prior to the flight trying to get a taxi. Anyway, I hope that this won't happen again, because I seriously love flying.

According to Wikipedia, fear of flying can be caused by fear of having a panic attack, of which I've had a couple. It can also be caused by fear of heights, as I was when I was a child. Maybe I should see a therapist. Maybe I am aviophobic.