I’m familiar with the various ins and outs of flying. I must say, though, the excitement of galavanting across continents has lost its sheen. This is mainly because of the tedious pre and post flight process that involves endless queueing, waiting, undressing and shunting stuff around. Not only that, travelling is such an exhausting exercise - getting up before dawn to catch a flight, dealing with time zones, traipsing around unfamiliar cities on foot for far longer than you’ve ever done in your own. Who has ever arrived at their destination feeling alert and refreshed after several hours of travel? Certainly not me.
It’s partly because of this that it makes me think about the fact that flying is one of the most unnatural things we as humans can do. Just consider the actual flying machines themselves: giant pressurised tubes laden with thousands of gallons of highly flammable fuel in the wings, screaming through the sky at hundreds of miles an hour, reaching altitudes that would make your blood boil and your heart explode. One mistake by the captain or ground crew can result in catastrophic failure of the vehicle’s primary purpose - to defy gravity with maddening ease. And that’s what gets me about aircraft. They are magical. Unbelievably complex machines with millions of parts, much of them constantly moving, and many of them exposed to mind-boggling temperatures and alarming levels of pressure. Manuals for these things come in several ring binders which must be consulted during an emergency. Thousands of human minds have come together to create them and hundreds work on them day and night across the globe just to satisfy our desire for a ‘bit of a holiday’.
What’s more, it’s easy to forget that hundreds of these giant metal hulks are whizzing through the stratosphere at this very moment. Whenever you are reading this, a million people are suspended in the air sitting in rows watching a movie or consuming an overheated jumble of slop in a metal tray. Most of them aren’t really thinking about the miracle of flight and the absurdity of it all. They are completely oblivious, no doubt thinking about more mundane things.
Now, every time I board a plane I think to myself ‘this is madness, utter madness - what the blazes are we all doing?’. The way we willingly put ourselves in mortal danger like this astounds me. It must be because I’m getting old, of course. I never had these thoughts when I was younger. I absolutely loved flying in my 20s and 30s. I’m the same about rollercoasters. Used to love them before I had kids. Now, whenever I step on board I eye up the spotty teenager manning the controls and whisper a little prayer.
It’s just as well I never get to meet my aeroplane’s pilot – I’d probably be thinking he or she is far too young to catapult us into the wide blue yonder while physics tries desperately to unceremoniously bring us back to earth. I'd want to see their pilot's licence and all of their credentials before sitting back down in my cramped seat among all the other human cattle. Of course the fact that it's very hard to get into a passenger jet's cockpit without substantial training, numerous levels of security and all sorts of other checks is by the by.
I’m well aware that all of life is a risk - we face potentially fatal scenarios on a daily basis. Driving on the motorway, taking the train, eating in a restaurant. Anything could go wrong.
Thankfully, most of the time it doesn’t.
God, luck, statistics or whatever you want to believe in is on your side, most of the time. And the same is true of flying (statistically, the safest way to travel apparently).
So next time I get on a plane I need to learn to relax - and trust that the teenager up front is just as anxious not to crash as I am.
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