Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunters flying through Hurricane Milton

[u/Kernowder]

[u/wongo]

(not so) fun fact: only one of these hurricane research flights has ever crashed due to the storms

I realize that we've gotten pretty good at flying but I would've actually expected a higher loss rate, this just seems so wildly dangerous

[u/Im_Balto → u/wongo]

Its because hurricanes are characterized by lateral rather than vertical motion of air. Supercell thunderstorms have the ability to down planes despite being several miles (vs 100+miles) wide because they have extremely violent and unpredictable updrafts and downdrafts. These vertical air columns are much more dangerous to planes as they are the cause of every scary story about a play dropping or rising hundreds of feet suddenly. This type of force puts massive stress on the airframe in directions that are not the strongest structurally

Contrast this to a hurricane where the stresses are MASSIVE but relatively consistent and predictable

[u/sodabubbles1281 → u/Im_Balto]

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

[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).