[Challenge] Post 1: About Flying.

I don’t remember when it started, but lately, I kinda felt scare whenever I needed to fly. I did not have any bad experience by far (knock on the wood), only sort of mild turbulence just like many flights would experience. My very first flight was looonnggggg time ago when I was still a high school student and had no clue at all about what it felt inside the plane and what could go wrong during your flight *what a stupid naive girl :)))*  It was a long haul flight from Jakarta to Frankfurt *oh, I miss that time* with a whole bunch of friends in a mission to introduce angklung to the European. I had no clear memory at all about how was the flight back then, one thing for sure we had to stop in Middle East *and of course people there thought that I and few of my friends were domestic workers who’re ready to work there :)))*

In my bachelor time I learned from a friend who’s doing aerospace engineering that people should not feel afraid to fly because statistic always shows that the number of people who die because of car accident is wayyyy more than those who die because of plane crash. Ok, fair enough. Since then, I’ve been trying to hypnotize myself and put that kind of doctrine that flying is a pretty much safe business. Aviation industry is getting better and the technology keeps on improving. Yeah.

But, the thing is, the older I am, the more I read/hear anything horrible about flying. Whenever you read  non-fiction books about pilot error, they write about the Tenerife Airport disaster, one of the deadliest plane disaster ever. It occurred to PanAm Air and KLM (which had a good reputation for safety and punctuality, plus, the pilot at that moment was one of the most senior pilot with tons of experience. See? Human is not immune of irrational behaviour, does not matter how experienced he is). Two planes collided, not in the air but on the runway. Other example is about the seniority between co-pilot and pilot/captain. Whenever co-pilots see something wrong or sense the error done by the captain, they don’t really dare to challenge the pilot. Some pilot and co-pilot could be buddy and they are so familiar with each other. Communication becomes so good and seniority is not  a problem, but that familiarity makes them underestimate little details, ignore them and lead to an accident. And there are still tons and tons of other example. Don’t forget the fact that terrorist could just hi-jack the plane or some separatist just launch some bombs and explode one plane. Horrible.

Back to the statistic, ok, I believe that the number of the people killed because of car accident is way more than those who killed by plane accident. Any people, even without driving license and proper driving skill could just sit behind the wheel and start pushing the accelerator. Unlike plane, you have to be a pilot with tons of training before you can fly commercial plane. But, I mean BUT, we rarely hear about car accidents that happen outside our country. We only hear some, yes, SOME of car accidents that occur inside our country from local news. Why I said some? Because if the accidents were not the extraordinary one (e.g involving kids underage [whose the father is an arrogant rockstar] who killed many people *cough*), local news would not even air it.  So, even though the numbers of people killed by car accidents are very high, the exposure to that type of news is low. Maybe by the time I type it, some just killed in high road in America or accident just occurred in Autobahn. Who knew, rite? But once there is commercial-plane accident, all news portals will talk about it, even for minor accident with no death toll. And once the accident killed many people, the news will last forever, people start talking about it, your social media timeline full of horrible story. You really can't escape. Just like now, couple minutes ago, I read about Lufthansa that had to deviate from its destination because one of passenger (who had mental problem) wanted to open the door because he wanted to...smoke *face palm* Everybody’s fine, the pilot was so good, it just caused 3-hour-delay, but still, the news spread, rite?

I don’t want this fear grows and consumes me, then prevents me from traveling. There are so many places on earth I haven’t seen yet. I still want to fly here and there, the only thing I could tell myself that thing could always go wrong and endanger us inside or outside the plane.  If something meant to happen, it’s just happen.