My Son's Engine Failed at Altitude. Here's Why I Put Him Back on a Plane the Same Day.
My son was headed back to college on a United 767 about 10 minutes out from Geneva airport when the engine exploded and stopped running. It shook him up. He's just old enough to drink in the US, but he was stone sober, and for a while there at altitude, he genuinely didn't know if he'd land the same person he took off as.
I know that feeling of fear better than almost anything else in my life. I spent half of my life afraid to fly. Not nervous — terrified. The kind of fear that makes you start doing the math on every trip before you've even booked it.
So when he called me after, shaken, I had a decision to make as a father. Let him avoid the next flight — reasonable, understandable, nobody would blame him. Or help him get back on the plane before the fear had time to calcify into something permanent.
I chose the second one. Not because I don't take fear seriously, just the opposite. Because I know exactly what it costs when you don't face it early and face it head on.
Here's what I told him, and what I fully believe: a 2024 MIT study found the risk of a fatality on a commercial flight is roughly 1 in 13.7 million boardings — and that number keeps improving, not worsening, year over year. I also made a comment about my bigger fear being his mother's driving, but that's another fear. I also reminded him modern aircraft are engineered to fly and land safely even with an engine not functioning. What happened to him was frightening. It was also, statistically, about as safe an emergency as you can face.
He got back on a plane a few hours later.
I didn't get back on one for years, and it cost me some great opportunities.
Fear is fuel if you use it early. It's a cage if you let it sit.
If someone in your life is white-knuckling their way past a scare right now — the flight, the deal, the diagnosis, the break-up, whatever it is — sometimes the most loving thing you can do isn't protect them from it again, and it isn't to tell them to go to their “safe space” either, that's a coward's way out. Your job is to help them walk back through the door and grow their courage center (the sgACC) before that door closes for good — like the Stoics say, Premeditatio Malorum: imagine your death and let it help you live. Good job, Cool Breeze. I'm proud of your courage.