Yes, my heart goes out to their families and loved one's. May they RIP.

 

Yes, dead hero’s. Unbelieveable. A Boeing jet came close to colliding with a Blackhawk helicopter just like one a Blackhawk did last year. WTF. I can’t believe all of the crashes and near crashes happening regularly. Between these crashes and the airport nightmares I don’t plan on flying anytime soon.

 

I wouldn't worry about flying. One close call in a plane and a million close calls with autos in the same time frame.

 

How many recent plane crashes have we seen that have had zero deaths? how many where 100% of the people on board died? Now compare to cars

Playing devils advocate a bit here as I am not scared of flying. I am however a bit more anxious about it than before and that is not unreasonable given all the types of issues that have happened lately. Especially the total failure in some cases of the people in charge of keeping things safe or the maintenance issues. If an maintained part on a car, even brakes, fails I have a hell of a lot better chance surviving that than if the plane I am on crashes.

During an avionics internship at one of the major commercial plane manufacturers way back in the day, I got to hear many on our team discuss how much older many of the commercial planes in the air were than their specified lifespan. It was a real concern back then.

Again, not a call to panic but I do not think peoples concerns are unwarranted either.

 

Like I said, "I wouldn't worry about flying." Take offs and landing; if there's a time to worry, that's it. I quickly learned that living on an Air Force base. We all like to think we can control most situations but as a passenger you can't. Flying these days is a pain in the ass and I don't want any part of it. Still I do recall when is was easy and fun..... just like the roadways used to be.

 

I never worried about flying because if it is my time so be it.

 

The most dangerous part of flying in the United States (commercial flying with USA based airlines) is driving to and from the airport. Not by a little bit but by a lot.

For US airlines, statistically, you are more likely to be killed by lightning, shark attack, and bee sting COMBINED before you go down in flames on American.
A number of people over the years have said they don't like flying because you don't have any control. Really? Do you have control over the drunk out of his mind lunatic coming at you on a two lane road keeping one eye closed because he is seeing double? Go to Youtube sometime and look at car crash compilations. Control? ( I might add that after a while you start to see typical behaviors so now I am always looking for that)

Most of the time, aircraft incidents happen at some altitude and impact for those involved, are very dynamic and short lived. You will not feel a lot of pain the way you would trapped in a burning Tesla and no one can open the doors.

 

I hate flying but not because I have any concerns about the actual flight.
I had to bring my wife to the other day. even though it was a 11:40 AM flight, we left the house at just before 7:00 AM.
mostly because of the stories of extensive TSA lines my wife wanted at least 3 hours.
And of course there was dealing with Boston's rush hour traffic to get to Logan.

While we sitting in the stop and go traffic,
I told my wife, "you know that background feeling of anxiety you have right now? That's why I hate flying, it's the pending hard deadline and you have no control."

 

So how long was her wait? She made it OK?

 

We only fly internationally, so a three-hour time frame for arriving at the airport is standard for us.

I have no concerns with flying. But there seems to be this anti-gravity feeling the planes get just after leaving the tarmac , about 20 seconds into ascent, I just think to myself " please don't have an engine failure now" , like the whole plane would drop like a stone if it happened, lol. I am probably way off base, but that is the feeling I get. I like the feeling of acceleration on the runway while taking off, that is cool. I don't like bouncy runways, some of them seem very bouncy as the plane is accelerating.

I am getting more impatient as I age, I don't like sitting down for long periods of time, I hate waiting for my luggage to drop onto the luggage rotisserie , and I hate being in crowds.