Flight Induced Misery

Posted on 2012/06/24 10:43:49 (June 2012).

[Wednesday 20th June 2012]
Got a bit down in the dumps today. Possibly it was partly a post holiday slump, but the main catalyst was that I've been roped into going on a business trip next month, and had to book the flights today. My anxiety about flying starts from the moment I look at the airline website, and will now be a constant background thing (and sometimes a foreground thing) until I land back in Heathrow again at the end of the trip. I've realised the anxiety is significantly reduced if its a familiar route and airline, so I think I would have been less distressed this time had it been Tokyo, San Francisco or even New York (the fact that I thoroughly dislike being in New York is somewhat orthogonal to the unpleasantness of the flight). The part I'm particularly frustrated about this time is that, for what appear to be completely arbitrary reasons to me, Portland has been chosen as the venue for this meeting. There are no direct flights to Portland from London, and for some reason we couldn't even seem to get flights to Seattle, the nearest hub, with any kind of sane fare. So I've booked flights to Vancouver, and still haven't really figured out how I'm going to get from there to Portland and back. On the way out I have a day spare, so I can probably get the train. Trains there are ridiculously slow - it takes about 8 hours from Vancouver to Portland, which I think means it must average 40 miles an hour. It's roughly the same as the distance from London to Berwick upon Tweed, which can be done in about 3 and a half hours. On the way back though I'm much more time constrained, so have a feeling I might have to get a connecting flight from Portland to Vancouver. It's likely to end up being one of those scary little propellor planes, which I had to use the first time I went to Seattle, and it's not an experience I'm particularly keen to repeat.

I argued with the people at work about the whole thing - given that there are a bunch of people coming from San Francisco and a bunch of people coming from Europe, Vancouver would have been a much more sensible venue. It's only slightly longer flight for the people coming from California (2 hours 15 rather than 1 hour 45), and then it would just be a direct flight for the rest of us.

Perhaps I just need to be clearer to them about my fear of flying, and what a traumatic experience it is for me - not just the flight itself, but I typically lose sleep for several days in the run up to it, and it brings about a constant air of gloom from the moment I book the ticket. I would have hoped they would have just figured that out by now, with my constant reluctance to fly anywhere, and the ridiculous lengths I go to in order to travel by train within Europe. Perhaps they just haven't worked it out then.

Anyway, I found it pretty demoralising that these kind of arbitrary decisions about venue were made, oblivious to the fact of all the inconvenience - and more importantly distress and anxiety - they would cause.

I don't understand. Did something happen to you? I thought you enjoyed travelling by plane. Had a bad experience at some point?

Posted by Sheri at 2012/07/02 19:56:58.

Post a comment