u/zayahroman24

Hello everyone!

I posted this same story a year ago. However, I wanted to share it with everyone again because I want people to hear how I overcame my fear of flying to the point where I’ve actually decided to go down to a career in piloting and aviation. I also want you guys to know how investing in kindness and comfort to a random stranger, no matter how brief your interaction was together, is something that can be so meaningful to them without you ever knowing that you’ve changed their entire worldview. Let my voice be an attestment to that and I hope my story at least helps a bit towards your flying worries like how a wonderful man helped me overcome my fear, too.

I have to point out that there were some errors I made on my [old post](https://www.reddit.com/r/fearofflying/comments/1jtazwf/overcame_my_fear_of_flying_from_a_man_i_sat_next/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) timeline-wise. I was sorting out my old emails and I found the old Google Documents that contained our plans for our trip to our competition.

April 3 2025, Thursday: Southwest Airlines Confirmation #2QZUVN Depart Spokane 0640 Flight WN1324 → Phoenix WN579 → Dallas N2031 → Arrive at Memphis 1500CST

This was our schedule I copied from the document. I was surprised because I completely forgot that we flew from DALLAS to Memphis, not Phoenix to Memphis, lol. I’ll make this

I’ve always hated flying ever since I was younger, it felt like I was in a flying coffin as I have no way of controlling my own safety because my life is in the hands of the pilot and the safety of the aircraft. Even medium turbulence causes me to have a panic attack which makes me hyperventilate, get lightheaded and cry. My drone team, along with our coach, has a competition at Batesville, Mississippi which requires us to, of course, fly because we live in Washington State. We were departing from the Spokane Airport and I’ve expressed to them that I have extreme anxiety and fear of flying, particularly fear of turbulence because I believed that turbulence can cause the plane to crash. My friend who is a big plane nerd told me that planes are safe and stuff, and to just not mind the shaking. I tried to heed his words, yet I still let my fear get the best of me.

While sitting next to my friends and after the plane taxied, it finally took off and I started panicking. Tears started falling down my cheeks nonstop and I couldn’t breathe. My friend Josh and the others tried calming me down. Ironically enough, it was Josh’s first time flying in an aircraft, yet he was way calmer than I. Another ironic thing is that we’re travelling for a DRONE competition in which our practices consisted of a lot of research on aerodynamics and aviation. I thought to myself as I bawled, “I should calm down.. I should. I didn’t cry like this when I flew to Japan before (although I did have a really bad panic attack that time where a stranger had to hold me down) and I’m literally just going to the Philippines in a few months, dammit!” I prayed briefly until I calmed down in which my friends helped by just… you know– doing stupid teenager stuff.

Arriving at Phoenix was a huge relief for me. When we landed, I told myself that there’s two more flights before we reach Memphis so I better not cry during that duration! The layover at Phoenix was just about an hour and then we boarded the plane to Dallas, Texas. I got to sit next to my friends again and they kept comforting me before we took off. Luckily, I didn’t cry during this flight, but I still occasionally still got really anxious, like in all of my flights I’ve been at.

We arrived at Dallas and the layover there is about 4 hours-ish. I grabbed some Starbucks and Panera to eat (I’ve never had Panera before at that time) and to be honest, I probably only grabbed food to distract myself from the idea of flying again. I also just walked around the duty-free stores and tested their perfumes to pass time, lol.

It was time to board the plane. They announced that our flight to Memphis will be a full flight so we need to choose our seats quickly. I wasn’t able to sit next to my people but fortunately, there was an empty row in front of their seats. I sat on the window seat, leaving two empty seats next to me. A little later, a Caucasian man who looked like he was in his mid to late 40s came to my row, sitting next to the aisle. We looked at each other and gave a brief nod and a smile. He said something about my bag and chuckled but I didn’t really hear what he said so I just smiled.

The plane began to taxi, I was more nervous on this flight than the last one. I started to pray again, clutching my rosary and praying under my breath to bless the pilot and the plane. As the plane sped up, so did my heart rate and prayer. When the plane took off, it started to experience turbulence already. I started to cry again and my breathy prayer quickly turned into hyperventilating pleas, frantically repeating “Glory to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit” in a panicking manner. As my anxiety increased, it was immediately interrupted with the same man next to me taking my right hand gently as I clenched my rosary with my left. He held my hand over the empty seat between us with his other hand placed on top of mine. In a warm, soft-spoken voice, clenching my hand tightly, he reassured me that the flight we’re in and every flight I will ever be in is the safest type of transportation I’ll ever board. He told me that he’s been to many, many places in Asia and Europe that he can attest that none of us will encounter a dangerous flight in our lifetime.

I asked how safe planes are during turbulence because my boyfriend told me that planes only have fewer accidents than cars because there were fewer planes. The man told me that planes were absolutely safe because of the level of engineering and maintenance it goes through. He said that there was no turbulence strong enough to cause a plane to crash, which was the root of my fear. He even told me that the turbulence we’re experiencing at the moment wasn’t even one of his worst! He grabbed a flyer from our seat and used it to demonstrate a plane wing. Even with the turbulence I’d consider “bad”, yes the plane wings will still bend and shake, but not as much because planes themselves can withstand tremendous amounts of stressors, he simulated with the flyer. He then bent the flyer at about 90 degrees and told me that a plane wing can bend up to 20 feet in the air before it snaps. However, there are no environmental stressors strong enough to cause a wing to bend that high. He explained plane engineering and inspections in such great detail that I barely comprehended it, I just knew that I felt really safe with him during the flight. I assumed he worked in plane maintenance or was secretly a pilot as he was so technical with his vocabulary. He told me he worked with FedEx but works around their planes often. He recommended that I should watch this documentary on wing strength on YouTube. I forgot the title of the video but searching on the internet, I found [this video](https://youtu.be/--LTYRTKV_A?si=Vbkd1wU6y2RCAyL9) which could possibly be the one he was referring to.

His suggestion to overcome my fear is by watching the plane wing during turbulence. Yes, it’s bending but you will see that it will not bend too high back during normal conditions, allowing you to reassure yourself. If it does bend a lot, you are still okay because every time there is turbulence, you’re going up and down because the pilots are actively searching for a smoother path to fly in, showing that pilots want their passengers to be comfortable. It is not a measurement that the plane will crash as turbulence is the least of a pilot’s concern.

The other suggestion he gave is to just anticipate turbulence in every flight you’ll ever be in. It is because if you anticipate them, you’ll eventually get desensitized to it because it’s already expected to happen. The mindset he recommended is to just be unbothered about it or not care at all. Think, “ugh, another turbulence. That’s great.. I’m gonna sleep this one out.” While we were talking, another scary one happened and I looked at him and asked if that was a bad one and he said no. Since we were flying from Dallas to Memphis, he said it is to be expected that we would have a bumpy, but safe flight. I put on my headphones and played music to calm myself down. Everytime I got scared, I looked at him to see if he was also scared or not and that really helped because he was just chilling for the rest of the flight.

I eventually developed my own technique to make the flight less scary during shaking. Instead of playing calming music, I played upbeat and fun songs instead. It may sound counterintuitive but the calming music just reminded me that I’m trying to distract myself from the scary situation. Their ambience also just didn’t match the entire shaky situation. I put on [Etran d’L'Aïr - Toubouk Ine Chihoussay](https://youtu.be/IxMvKqUC93o?si=QeMPJZ-6KhqBkeBT) during turbulence, a Subsaharan blues band (I highly recommend checking their other songs too). I can’t explain it properly but just my whole demeanor and opinions about flight completely changed when I incorporated this method. Coupled with the man’s words, my status immediately switched from fear to excitement. The contained adrenaline I had from my nervousness was finally put to use when I went from thinking that the plane would crash to feeling like I was on a roller coaster. Oddly enough, I started enjoying turbulence during the entire flight! I ended up looking forward to turbulence in my future flights.

At that moment, April 3, 2025 at about 3 to 4ish PM, all of my aviation doubt and anxiety went away– all because of one stranger that stepped up and comforted me.

I do not remember his exact name. It was either Stefan or a variety of it like Stefen or Stephen. However, he was one of the kindest people I have ever met. He was an extremely well-spoken and wise gentleman and I assume he was probably a father because of how understanding and comforting he was. The rest of the conversations we had were actually more on social issues and politics than aviation because we shared a lot of views together. We talked about sustainability, corporate greed, etc.

When the plane landed, that’s when I asked for his name because I was too preoccupied talking about cool stuff with him and finding ways to calm myself. When we were getting out of the plane, our coach went up to Stefan and thanked him for helping me get my nerves out of flying. Our coach was our Air Force JROTC instructor so it is even more ironic that I was really afraid of flying when we literally learned about planes in class, lol. Stefan told my coach and me that I should really get into policymaking.

What Stefan did was instead of swaying me into politics and diplomacy (my original career path), he opened my eyes into pursuing aviation instead. I originally had piloting as a career I would never, EVER pursue but because of him, he opened a door for me to look at a potentially new career path. For a brief moment, a small but kind gesture made a huge impact on my life. I wanted to say more things to him, I truly believe he was an angel in disguise sent by God as it did not feel like luck or coincidence just meeting him and having this much of an impact from our interactions. It may be extremely unlikely, but who knows? In the future, I may become one of his pilots in one of his flights. That’d be funny.

I decided on becoming a pilot rather than doing diplomacy months after our encounter because I felt that I can still execute diplomacy through aviation positions. Pilots, flight attendants, etc. are able to foster positive relations with their passengers and counterparts and give a positive impression about the country they are representing with their airline. There is also a huge shortage of pilots which can potentially decrease the sharing of other cultures and ideas. I want to become a pilot because I know what it's like to fear planes. I want people like me to feel safe and secure while they travel to their destination successfully. I do not want people who fear flying to cancel their flights and miss out on all the good things that await them.

Remember, my friends. Fear is only powerful when you give it power, you have control over it. I believe in you, I trust in you. You are courageous. If I managed to defeat my once stubborn fear, surely you can as well. Maybe one day, you may also meet a Stefan.