9/10/2005 03:33:00 PM|||The Zen Master|||I've always been an irrationally anxious flyer, despite lots of intercontinental and transoceanic airplane experience. Whenever there's a plane crash in the news, my anxiety heightens, and I'm even afraid on the ground when someone I know is in the air. The recent spate of spectacular crashes hasn't done much to help, especially when that Caribbean flight went down in Venezuela a week before my dad and his girlfriend were headed there on vacation, and when the Mandala Airways flight out of Medan burnt up on take-off--I had looked into flying from Malaysia to Sumatra (and landing at Medan) for my October vacation, an idea which never panned out, but one that made the horrific footage on CNN seem a lot closer to home. Still, one thing that has always helped to assuage my flying fears a bit has been reading Salon's "Ask the Pilot" column. I let my subscription to that website expire almost two years ago now, when they were really struggling to survive to the point that they published almost no articles. (I had originally joined in order to show my support--it was even in the days before they resorted to limiting non-subscriber access and installing the electronic sentries of mandatory advertisements--but by then it seemed hopeless and a waste of money.) So I hadn't read Patrick Smith's oddly compelling column in a year at least when I stumbled across it again yesterday. His discussion of the recent streak of bad luck in the air is, as always, rational and calming:

Many people are more anxious about flying than ever. What they need at a time like this is rational and useful information, not rumor mongering, cavalier accusations and hyperbole. Recommending the avoidance of an entire league of airlines is a drastic and wrong course. In the end, the realities of air safety are no more indebted to maintenance budgets or corporate culture than to luck and human nature.

I think I might take up reading him more regularly.|||112633761366730781|||Ask the pilot