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15 Things an Aviophobe Can Tell Himself During Airplane Turbulence

by Jason Roth

1. Airplane pilots are only human.

2. There's no such thing as mechanical failure.

3. The flight attendants look calm because they are calm, not because they get paid to mask their terror during situations like these.

4. This is just like a roller coaster, only you're not connected to a track, you're thousands of feet above the ground, and a loss of power would kill everyone on board.

5. If this is God's will, there's nothing you can do about it.

6. You're not an airplane pilot, so your feeling that the turbulence might be dangerous has nothing to do with the real causes of danger.

7. This is the last damn time you'll ever fly, in one sense or another.

8. Just because you don't feel in control, it doesn't mean the plane won't eventually stabilize then crash during landing.

9. If you did crash, there's a chance you might land on those soft looking trees down there, or at least get a flattering eulogy.

10. A few bumps is nothing to worry about, all it means is that a several ton piece of sophisticated, computer-guided machinery is being tossed around uncontrollably like a lawn gnome in a tsunami.

11. The back of the airplane is the safest, so once the plane enters a nosedive, you'll be one of the last to die.

12. A team of dozens of people maintains the quality of the aircraft, and it's very possible that none of them have ever lost focus even for a second while doing their safety-critical work.

13. If there really were any danger, there probably would be other passengers visibly panicking, and the chances that they're also silently trying to hold themselves together are probably relatively low.

14. Airplane crashes are extremely rare, and the possibility that people who have died in airplane crashes may have recited this fact to themselves right before they died doesn't make it any less true.

15. Your life is being protected by the strength of a large, corporate bureaucracy.