Fear of flying

It’s exactly a week until I jet off on my new “exciting adventure”. I must admit I am a little more excited than I was this time last week and I’ve begun to acknowledge the fact that I have to go; it’s compulsory after all. So here I am trying to approach the situation a little more positively, yet something keeps dragging me back down to the realms of negativity: the flight. I hate flying. I loathe flying. Flying is unnatural. Supposedly a fear of flying can be referred to as aerophobia, aviatophobia, aviophobia or pteromechanophobia. To be honest no matter what name they give it, call it “cuddlyfluffywarmbearophobia” for all I care, the anxiety of boarding and sitting on the aircraft will be exactly the same. I do fly, occasionally, but only because when I have no choice. I usually sit there and try to distract myself from the situation. This involves reading a magazine word from word, stuffing my face full of chocolate and other comfort food and talking to my travel companion. I say “talking” but it’s really me sitting rigid in my seat stating the obvious; “we’re landing”, “look a cloud”, “I see the sea”.

The problem is that this time I am flying alone. I have never flown alone before. I am going to be sat on an aeroplane with no one to calm me down, to hold my hand, to reassure me that everything is ok. I’m terrified. I’ve tried my hardest to book the most stress free flight possible. I’m flying into Köln/Bonn airport rather than Frankfurt, because it knocks off 30mins of flight time. The extra 2.5 hour train journey that I will need to now take to my German destination is adequate compensation. Also I know both Köln/Bonn airport and my UK departure airport reasonably well, which will hopefully keep me calmer. The most important decision for me was choosing who to fly with. I was adamant that I would not fly with an airline that I had no previous experience with, and I thus chose the airline that I have flown with the most and had the least stressful flights with.

I’m more than aware that this is all a little OCD and you’re wondering why I am not just hopping on the Eurostar (I too ask myself this on a daily basis. It all comes down to money. The journey by train would have cost me at least 5 times more than the budget airline tickets. Trust me if I had a spare £200 lying around, I would not be writing this post.

The next dilemma will undoubtedly involve the 20kg weight restriction, but I will save that for another day.