KellyinLondon: Stories about flying

Rather ironically, I've never been a very comfortable flyer. Take off and landing is always the worst but loud noises, strange smells, odd angles and dizzying heights will make my palms sweat and turn me into one of those crazies who scream at nobody in particular, "We are all going to DIE!"

In recent months my discomfort on aeroplanes has become dramatically worse. I blame it on a fairground ride a friend and I recently took in Hampstead Heath during which the ride literally malfunctioned mid-air, heightening my self-awareness of gravity and mortality.

After that episode, my first realisation that I was going to die on an aeroplane came on a flight to Barcelona from London. Cabin crew were brewing coffee near my seat and I told my friend that something wasn't right with the plane because it sounded to me like the engines were peetering out.

From Barcelona to Ibiza, at about 10pm, while many of my fellow passengers were dressed to the nines, ordering as much booze as possible on a 45 minute flight, I became irrationally angry as everybody talked over the safety demonstration and seemed glaringly oblivious to the fact that a freak storm was going to drive our plane into the ocean, like Lost. I literally bristled with anger, unable to read my magazine, because everybody but me was in such high spirits.

Again, Ibiza back to Barcelona, as the plane flew a half-circle preparing for descent, I became convinced that the plane was going to fall out of the sky... Auckland to Sydney I could smell petrol in the cabin and decided the plane was going to blow up once we got into the skies. Madrid to London and the plane seemed to be travelling too fast for landing so I prepared myself for the fact that we were going to slam into the ground and then probably overstep the runway and crash into a building. Or another plane. And so on.

So you see, I have become rather preposteriously paranoid and have even deliberated for months about whether or not I should jinx myself by writing about this.

However, in an effort to overcome what I perceived to be a major obstacle in mentally surviving a 24 hour flight to New Zealand I decided to do what any other slightly crazy person in my situation would do- I started watching Air Crash Investigation in bulk, late at night.

And, in actual fact, while this has brought home the fact that air crashes aren't usually a survivable feat, it has eased my fears somewhat. I've learned a few things.

Number one- planes don't really fall out of skies (my biggest paranoia). They just don't. And if they do, if the pilot is a smart cookie, he should be able to reverse a stall. Which brings me to my second point.

Number two- Planes don't crash. Pilots do. In every episode of ACI I watched, the reason for each crash was pilot incompetence. Every. Single. Time. So the mind boggling feat of how a plane manages to get up, and stay up in the air is negligible, compared to some of the mind boggling mistakes pilots make under duress or pure tiredness.

Which brings me to number three- if something does go wrong with the plane or the flight, the pilot has been trained to fix it. And if he can't fix it, he can contact ground team who can tell him how. Usually, if something goes wrong, there is generally plenty of time to be able to correct the problem and continue a safe flight.

So everytime I fly I now run these three points through my mind, over and over. To be honest, they don't help much. But memories of past flights do - in spite of my fears I have to admit I have had some amazing, life-changing experiences that have all begun with a flight. For example-

- Flying in a helicopter over the New York City skyline (incidentally, this helicopter later plunged into the Hudson River, killing everybody on board, including the Kiwi pilot, mere months after my trip).

-Flying from San Francisco to London for the first time. We swooped over the Golden Gate Bridge which was the perfect ending to my time in California, paving way to an exciting new beginning in London.

-Verona to London and witnessing a truly beautiful sunset from 37,000 feet high.

-Taking off during an electrical storm, Brisbane to Auckland.

-After a week in third world-like Vanuatu, stepping onto an Air New Zealand flight with all it's high-tech gadgets seemed the height of luxury and reminded me of how lucky we all are to have the things we do.

-Greece to London and because our flight was early we had to fly in circles above Heathrow for about 20 minutes, along with about five other flights. Absolutely bizaare sight.

-Leaving Auckland in 2010, after an emotional good-bye with friends and family, unable to stop crying, not knowing when I was going to be back, but very, very excited. And then landing at the same airport, exactly a year to the day later, feeling unbelievably excited to be back.

These days, my life seems to be all about the airports, the travelling, the flying. If I'm not departing Gatwick or Stansted, I am waiting for my latest visitor at Heathrow. The arrivals area is always the happiest part of flying. Which I guess is why I keep booking them.