6 ms·

Washington Post is now reporting one dead, though it's not clear if it's the person sucked out of the window - the article says the person who went to the hospi

• rubicon33 9y ago
  Dying of a heart attack is a serious worry of mine when flying. I have extreme, and I mean EXTREME anxiety (190+ BPM) whenever anything even remotely wrong (turbulence) happens. I'm not sure how I'll ever get over it. I've tried many things. Short of a tranquilizer shot, I'm pretty sure a failure like this would take my life through anxiety related heart complications alone.
  • serf 9y ago
    Have you tried any of the common anti-anxiety drugs? Lots of them have pretty tremendous side effects; but they can commonly be used as-needed by folks suffering from specific anxieties -- unlike many other psych drugs.
  • mimiflynn 9y ago
    This used to happen to me when flying, but years of therapy and xanax has paid off. I used to cry on strangers on planes, and now I can fly without medication. I know you tried some things, but perhaps consider therapy.
  • dahart 9y ago
    > I have extreme, and I mean EXTREME anxiety (190+ BPM) whenever anything even remotely wrong (turbulence) happens. You're not alone. I have really bad anxiety during turbulence too, and I used to skydive competitively. I've flown with people who have worse anxiety, but mine seems to be getting worse over time. I wish I could control it, because I know turbulence is natural and not dangerous, and it still makes my blood boil. It's preventing me from traveling more. The things that have helped me most are deep breathing exercises, and noticing what "turbulence" in a car or bus feels like compared to an airplane (as in, often worse in a wheeled vehicle and it doesn't bother me.) I haven't really tried any drugs. Had a good conversation earlier about this, on an article about turbulence, if that interests you... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14993955 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14993955
  • tqkxzugoaupvwqr 9y ago
    Since it is solely a mental thing, you can work on how you think and how you choose to respond to your environment. If your fear is caused by your unbound imagination due to your lack of knowledge of how planes work, you can work on that. Learn how planes take off, stay in the air, land. There are YouTube videos and offline, on-site courses that explain everything in detail, what each thing does, why it does it, what it looks like, what it sounds like, what effects it has on the plane.
  • mlindner 9y ago
    I suggest trying to understand turbulence and what it is and how little harm it can cause the aircraft. (Look at wing bend test videos on how much the wing can flex before failure.) The best way out of anxiety is to convince your psyche that nothing wrong is possible.
  • gdulli 9y ago
    Turbulence used to bother me. Hearing some factoid like turbulence has never (or nearly never) caused a crash (I'm paraphrasing) is what got me over that. Even if a hundred flights had been taken down by turbulence over the decades of modern aviation, those are still great odds. Better than driving, I'm sure. And the fact that an engine can explode like this and the plane still lands safely makes me feel even less like the plane is a fragile or precarious thing.
    • kqr 9y ago
      Yeah. Imagine normal cruising flight level as a bank account with $35000 in it. Something unexpected happens (severe turbulence) and you have to spend $30 (you drop 30 feet). It barely makes a dent. You wouldn't feel bad about the money. You have a huge buffer against those events. As long as you are at several thousand feet, altitude will do a lot of work in your favour. There is plenty of time for a trained pilot to do one of many different recovery maneuvers in the unlikely event shit hits the fan. That high up in the sky, the pilot almost has to intentionally want to crash you to succeed. What personally helps me in the cruise part of the flight is a particular kind of mindfulness. I observe the turbulence, and recognise it for what it is without judging it as good or bad. But since my mind is so strictly sey on judgment, as a substitute for judging each individual event of turbulence, I try to judge the pilots response to it. Do they climb to find a more stable altitude? Do they slow down? Turn to a different heading? And does it work? Is the amount of turbulence, on a larger scale, decreasing? Does it at first increase, and then decrease? That sort of thing keeps me occupied in a way more disconnected from the evolutionary panic of shit-fuck-I-feel-like-I'm-in-a-free-fall.
  • ModernMech 9y ago
    If you live in the right state, take a weed gummy (indica) before going through security. Always does the trick for me.
    • gnulinux 9y ago
      I just want to (anecdotally) note that this does not work for everyone. I had (generalized) anxiety issues and unfortunately weed never helped me, instead it gave me my worst panic attacks. I can rarely handle trace amount of weed in social occasions (say, one puff) but anything more immediately fractals into a 911 call. I probably have an extreme case, but I know at least 3 other people that weed makes them anxious. This is Bay Area, I also tried "high CBD low THC" strains without any luck.
    • Jugglerofworlds 9y ago
      Marijuana can actually trigger anxiety disorders in some people. The fourth time I tried marijuana it kindled a panic attack which led to OCD. My life was completely ruined for three years, and I still haven't fully recovered to how I was before. I hate when people act like weed has zero risks and tout it as the cure for anxiety. Based on my experiences with several different psychiatrists and therapists, it seems that anxiety problems caused by marijuana are fairly common in the patients that they see. Edit: if you actually want something safe to treat flight anxiety, ask your doctor about a medium acting benzo or a beta blocker. These medications have been well studied by the medical community, and pharmacies ensure that you will receive the exact dosing required. This self medication stuff is complete crap.
  • smoyer 9y ago
    When my kids were little and we flew somewhere, we'd treat the turbulence as though it was a roller-coaster - I'm sure the other passengers appreciated "wheeeee" a whole lot more than crying, frighted children. I have no idea whether this helped them as adults or not but I can tell you that my son was more frightened when his (then) fiancee flew back to Malaysia skirting several war zones than when the two of them flew on their honeymoon.
    • gnulinux 9y ago
      Is "wheeee" level turbulance normal in transatlantic flights? I semi-frequently (once every other year) fly Europe <--> West Coast and never experienced a turbulance that felt like rollercoaster. The worst turbulance I remember felt like a ~4 earthquake that went on about 5 minutes which made me pretty anxious. It was above Greenland.
      • smoyer 9y ago
        Summertime after 1600 at the airport where this plane landed - it's very common for there to be thunderstorms nearby from May to September. I've been in some very interesting weather patterns in the Denver CO area and from March to November there are afternoon thunderstorms many days in Tampa and Orlando. The kids were flying on vacation so Florida during Spring break was pretty common. The only turbulence I've experienced over the Atlantic was more than twenty years ago - we hit completely unexpected turbulence and I actually caught a flight attendant as she flew by (all those years of gymnastics came in handy).
        • gnulinux 9y ago
          Wow I really hope that'll never happen to me I'd probably have a heart attack. Even the minor turbulance I wrote above gave me tremendous anxiety.
  • fudged71 9y ago
    I would be surprised if you haven't been prescribed beta-blockers. This worked wonders for my performance anxiety. Dropping my heart rate artificially miraculously makes me less worried.
  • woutr_be 9y ago
    Not sure if this will help anything, but I started to have severe anxiety when flying a couple of years ago, to the point where I almost just left the airport right before boarding. This just happened out of nowhere, I flew long haul before without any issues. This lasted about 2-3 years, every bump was enough to set it off. But out of nowhere, since last year it doesn't happen anymore, I can fly again without much worry, even sleep again during flights. Not sure what caused it, or how I got over it.
• russdill 9y ago
  I'm get the impression the person who died was the woman who got struck by shrapnel. I don't think anyone got sucked out of the plane or even was in real danger of being sucked out.
  • gnulinux 9y ago
    Did you read the article? A woman's half body was sucked out of the plane. A witness even commented that her head and arm were "out of the plane".
    • russdill 9y ago
      The article has since been updated with many additional accounts and details. Previously these seemed like two potentially different individuals: Another passenger, Marty Martinez, said that a female flier suffered a heart attack in the chaos. “Someone on the plane had a heart attack, and it looks like an engine blew out, then a window was blown open,” he said on Facebook. “We are still on the plane and they are trying to revive a woman on the plane.”
• paulgb 9y ago
  > Sumwalt said the death marks the first passenger fatality on a U.S. carrier since 2009. Skimming a list of aviation incidents, it seems like this ends the longest passenger-death-free streak in US aviation history. Given how much more flights there are it's pretty remarkable how safe air travel has become, this tragic death notwithstanding.