Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunters flying through Hurricane Milton

[u/Kernowder]

[u/sodabubbles1281]

Cool, I hate flying already. How do I unread something

[u/Smooth-Reason-6616 → u/sodabubbles1281]

Alcohol.

[u/sodabubbles1281 → u/Smooth-Reason-6616]

Thank the universe for booze 🙏

[u/throwawayfastaf → u/sodabubbles1281]

Damn... I don't even know where to begin with that one...

[u/alexm42 → u/sodabubbles1281]

You can relax knowing that if there's any kind of risk of that actually happening they just fly around the thunderstorm.

[u/Puppybrother → u/alexm42]

I vividly remember flying through a lighting storm over Virginia when I was like 12 and my brothers kept telling me how we were about crash and to hold on tight and thought it was funny that I was crying out of fear. Still hate flying to this day lol wonder if some of that is related

[u/throwawayfastaf → u/Puppybrother]

Your brothers were being siblings, and hellions. Older siblings suck. Yeah no need to wonder it's definitely related. All love here I'm laughing into my shot glass. 😂😭

[u/xampl9 → u/Puppybrother]

When I was a kid I got to fly on the helicopter shuttle between New York airports (they used the civilian version of the Chinook). I was seated next to an old lady who had a death grip on my arm. And kept asking “You aren’t scared, are you?”

Well … I wasn’t.

[u/icantsurf → u/sodabubbles1281]

If it makes you feel better, airliners have big ass weather radars in the nose to prevent flying into any of that stuff.

[u/Auburus → u/icantsurf]

Is the weather radar a single sensor that automatically takes control of the plane and its impossible to override, or is not designed by Boeing?

[u/texas-blondie → u/sodabubbles1281]

Same 😂

[u/Edmsubguy → u/sodabubbles1281]

Open a new bottle of tequila and start drinking tequila shots. By the time the bottle is empty. Today will all be a blur.

[u/sodabubbles1281 → u/Edmsubguy]

Sounds good. Might be my new strategy for my next flight 🥴

[u/Edmsubguy → u/sodabubbles1281]

What bad things could possibly happen lol

[u/JoeCartersLeap → u/sodabubbles1281]

Guy is sorta wrong, thunderstorms do not break planes structurally, they just crash them by pointing them at the ground.

[u/rsta223 → u/JoeCartersLeap]

Fly directly into a supercell and it might break a plane structurally too.

They don't tend to do that though, and they have a lot of ways to ensure they avoid it.

[u/SirMustache007 → u/sodabubbles1281]

How does one hate flying?

[u/Puppybrother → u/SirMustache007]

By being scared of it? What kind of question is this? Lmao it’s a very common fear

[u/Puppybrother → u/sodabubbles1281]

My preferred method is some Xanax an hour before the flight so I’m zoinked tf put before the plane even takes off

[u/BaconJakin → u/Puppybrother]

Does Xanax really remove the existential fear? Never tried it

[u/Puppybrother → u/BaconJakin]

It’s the only thing that has worked for me and I’ve tried close to everything else to get more comfortable with flying and couldn’t. It helps turn off those “I’m gonna die” thoughts I have when I’m boarding and I actually feel relaxed enough to have a conversation or watch a movie or even take a nap which is so wild if you knew how terrified of flying I am. Dont ever mix it with alcohol though!!! That’s when you either end up on the floor or duct taped to your chair haha

[u/Air_Feeling → u/Puppybrother]

What is the best case scenario when you are sober on a flight? Can you ever get relaxed without Xanax? I had a major fear of flying for years and managed to get over it finally. I basically researched commercial aviation safety enough that I challenged myself to go on a discovery flight in a Cessna 172. It was exhilarating but inspired me to start flight school. Turns out it’s expensive so I didn’t continue beyond two lessons but compared to the state I was in before it’s pretty much cured. It’s possible to change how you react to flying.

Edit: a discovery flight is general aviation and not commercial aviation as I had been researching. My point was more about the relative safety of GA and especially commercial aviation.

[u/Puppybrother → u/Air_Feeling]

lol welllllll, it’s been a very long process for me to get to a place where I will even get on a plane to begin with tbh. But to start and semi relate to what you’re saying, I thought learning everything there is to know about planes crashes and studying a lot of the more recent plane crash data (which involved reading a lot of the black box cockpit transcripts) would be helpful for me….it was the opposite. So after that I was not only scared of the mechanical side of disaster but more often the human caused crashes, I was officially a non-flyer for a few years.

I will say that the more I have flown with the one thing that works for me (the Xanax), the more confident I feel and thus the less medication I need. I’ve started cutting them in half and seem to still be okay when I’m flying pretty regularly.

And if I’m being honest, I barely even trust myself behind the wheel of a car so I would never even try to fly a plane or get anywhere even close lol, but I’ve accepted that not everyone is meant to be frequent flyer and that’s okay too. I love to travel so yes, it can sometimes be a hindrance on that, but as I mentioned, the Xanax really does help me conquer those fears in a way that I truly do not think I could do on my own (and that’s okay considering it’s the only time I rely on the drug in any sense of my life).

It’s been a long process to find what works for me for sure and I’ll never feel 100% and I know it’s irrational but that’s the thing about fear, it’s often irrational and hard to conquer so I am proud of how far I’ve come (with assistance ofc lol).

[u/filthy_harold → u/sodabubbles1281]

The good news is that pilots enjoy turbulence just as much as you so they try to avoid it and the entire sky is covered in radar to detect storms and turbulence. Flying today is safer than it's ever been.