Around 5 a.m. on a recent Saturday, I found myself at the whims of a drug-sniffing dog at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport. Uncaffeinated and foggy from a sleepless night, my mind suddenly ticker-taped through a list of newly acquired air travel anxieties.
My carry-on and I cleared the detection dog without issue: I wasn’t carrying contraband, and had absolutely no rational reason to fear TSA’s nosiest employees.
But somewhere between the recent news about an off-duty pilot who tried to shut off an Everett flight’s engines, and stories about widespread air traffic control lapses, fresh fears about air travel had invaded my psyche.
Getting to the gate on time came with its own stress. But why was I racing, anyway? Hurtling toward a gate just to hurtle at 35,000 feet toward home suddenly made me feel sick. My meticulous packing skills wouldn’t save me from a midflight emergency, I thought. Nor would a carefully curated set of mindfulness techniques. Onboard, my seat belt clicked and tightened, I fidgeted until we landed (safely) on Sea-Tac tarmac.
Then came the blowout. Last week, a gaping hole opened in a Boeing 737 MAX 9’s fuselage as it ascended above a neighborhood in Portland. What came next: an emergency landing, a nationwide grounding of more than 150 jets, and a personal, internal panic that’s become a lot louder than the logical part of my brain reminding me that air travel is safe.