Fear of flying

Tomorrow, after spending a glorious weekend in Utah--where some surprise snow dumped on our women's journalism conference, keeping me from hiking and biking in the mountain air--i will descend 4,000 feet in a rusting white shuttle-van to get to the Salt Lake City airport.

But, i don't want to come down the mountain.

It's not because Im unsure about the skill level of the shuttle driver--surely he's maneuvered plenty of icy turns in his years as Canyon Transportation's official valet. It's not because I've finally acclimated to the 8,000 foot elevation and finally want to take a tram further up to the lookout point. It's also not because I want to hit up the eucalyptus steam room and rooftop hot-tub one more time.

It's because i've grown afraid of flying.

Somehow, i can no longer lessen my fears by repeating the oft cited mantra--driving around Los Angeles in a car every day is much more dangerous than air travel. Doesn't work anymore--I need specifics! As it turns out...

"Dr. Arnold Barnett, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has done extensive research in the field of commercial flight safety. He found that over the fifteen years between 1975 and 1994, the death risk per flight was one in seven million. This statistic is the probability that someone who randomly selected one of the airline's flights over the 19-year study period would be killed in route. That means that any time you board a flight on a major carrier in this country, your chance of being in a fatal accident is one in seven million. It doesn't matter whether you fly once every three years or every day of the year.

In fact, based on this incredible safety record, if you did fly every day of your life, probability indicates that it would take you nineteen thousand years before you would succumb to a fatal accident. Nineteen thousand years!"

And, compared to cars...

"A sold-out 727 jet would have to crash every day of the week, with no survivors, to equal the highway deaths per year in this country."

And here's the kicker...

"You are more likely to die from a bee sting than from a commercial flight."

The bee sting thing really does it for me--that's what ill be thinking about on my flight home to LA tomorrow. Well, that and how much i miss Wayne and Jake.