I am also a lucky guy. My wife got her PPL after meeting me… Unfortunately she doesn’t have it any more. We both dropped our PPLs at the same time (growing family meant lack of time and money). When I took it up again she considered it but decided she already had too many hobbies. In any case she loves going flying with me. The only drawback is that her and my risk assessments are not always the same and as she really understands what is going on I have to take her views seriously. 
I am not sure this was the original intent of this thread, but I really enjoy hearing your stories and support you get/don’t get. Thanks for sharing!
loco wrote:
I came with the TBM while my wife came with Ryanair…
Maybe you want to be a little more open with her about the business practices of said airline and potential impact on safety to put things into perspective.
To cover a slightly different angle of this topic: When I got into flying, I assumed naturally that everybody would at least be as willing to fly along as they’d be willing to drive along with you in a car – actually I thought most people would share my enthusiasm. Obviously, that isn’t the case. In reality, while many friends (and family members) are intrigued and do fly along, and some others keep talking about how they’d like to, but then never do when the opportunity arises, there is also a good number of people around me who simply won’t. That surprised me initially but I got used to it. I try not to try to convince people to come along but leave it up to them to bring the topic up.
One close friend of mine, we keep having this argument, says she won’t fly in small airplanes. Then I ask her, why, don’t you fly in big planes, too? Yes, she answers, but they’re bigger! Then I say – ok.. it’s about the size? But you do drive in cars of a similar size than the planes I fly? Then she says: Well, yes, but they don’t fly? Circular reference… She also is convinced, for some strange reason, that the metal skin of the small airplanes is too thin and hence they’re unsafe to fly… She is an intelligent woman, but no way I could argue her way out of this yet. ;-)
loco wrote:
I came with the TBM while my wife came with Ryanair…
Wow, that’s drastic! Perhaps send her on a flight with United, that’ll get her into your TBM presto!
My wife still flies with me despite us having the nasty, self inflicted (my fault) experience of door flinging wide open on the upwind in the Aerostar. That was a pretty stressful emergency. Recently she’s started to hint that we could have had a bigger house, or less mortgage on the one we’ve got if I’d just sell the plane… I will have to quell this development soon by showing her some great utility on a vacation trip.
Peter wrote:
GA may be statistically comparable to motorbikes in terms of deaths per mile, but in GA at least 90% is under the pilot’s control (the residual % is due to mechanical failures, a fair % of which is due to crap maintenance), whereas with motorbikes the majority of accidents are caused by a car driver (that was definitely the case when I gave up 2 wheels c. 1980 having traveled c. 100k miles on them)
My observation is pretty much the opposite: I’ve ridden something like 300K or 400K miles on motorcycles since the mid-70s and have yet to sustain an injury. I’ve known other people who have been injured once a year riding motorcycles on the same roads in the same traffic. The attitude and studied experience of the rider are factors #1, 2 and 3 in avoiding accidents. In relation to aircraft, the injury accidents I’ve brushed up against are almost always more serious, often fatal, and have often (maybe 50% of the time) been related to equipment failure, weird unpredictable winds or other things that are hard to foresee. I’ve never known one person injured on a motorcycle as a result of equipment failure or weird unpredictable weather phenomena. With those factors in mind, you’ll understand that not withstanding my enjoyment of flying, when I’m the ‘nut behind the wheel’ I feel less at risk riding a motorcycle than flying my plane. YMMV.
@Patrick, I had the same experience after getting my Private and was similarly surprised by people avoiding rides in small aircraft. I think the reason is simple, it really scares them I’ve forgotten who it was that said the human mind cannot dictate human emotions… I don’t like roller coasters myself, despite them being perfectly safe, and I think you’d have to pay me a lot to parachute from a plane 
AdamFrisch wrote:
elf inflicted (my fault) experience of door flinging wide open on the upwind in the Aerostar
@loco Is that a private TBM (aka yours)?
@Silvaire I think the statistics of you getting into an accident on a motorcycle depend on a few things, which are in common with flying GA I believe.
First, obviously if you have good maintenance on your stuff, you can reduce the chances of failures quickly. Statistically, your wheel on your motor cycle could fall of at any time as well. Second, I believe that it depends on where you drive your motorcycle. If you are driving in the San Francisco Bay Area your chances of getting into a serious accident are much much higher than maybe in a Kansas Suburb. This correlates to flying by flying in San Jose, CA where the weather is nice most of the year compared to flying in an area with lots of fast changing weather, fog, and mountains. Third, your chances to get into an accident in both plane and motorcycle can be very much determined by how you drive or fly. If you are trying to do barrel rolls and loops in a C172 or if you do line splitting while driving 75, your chances of getting in trouble are greatly increased. I don’t have my PPL yet, so I am obviously speculating, but I think these are fair comparisons.
Patrick wrote:
One close friend of mine, we keep having this argument, says she won’t fly in small airplanes. Then I ask her, why, don’t you fly in big planes, too? Yes, she answers, but they’re bigger! Then I say – ok.. it’s about the size? But you do drive in cars of a similar size than the planes I fly? Then she says: Well, yes, but they don’t fly? Circular reference… She also is convinced, for some strange reason, that the metal skin of the small airplanes is too thin and hence they’re unsafe to fly… She is an intelligent woman, but no way I could argue her way out of this yet. ;-)
Well, airliners are much safer than light aircraft, so maybe your friend’s right – though perhaps for the wrong reasons.
My boyfriend is not scared at all, he even likes the flying. When I go for a little bit circuit training, he is always keen to be pax.
My mother is another story. She is scared of everthing. Even to step into CAT herself. But at this time she has no issues anymore with my flying. I can tell stories but she is not really aware of the reality. And I think she is even a little bit proud.
Although flying is a non issue, she still has issues with me, driving my bike (R6) and he was even there before I started flying.
After flying, I started last year also with skydiving. It seems strange, but this is a also a non issue for her.
For those who are simply scared of flying, and great many are, there are various methods to reduce or remove this.
A year or two ago I met a guy who does some sort of hypnosis/counselling to remove the fear. From what I could see he was very good at it. His facebook page is here
Virgin did/do a programme for “nervous flyers” which includes a presentation by pilots (real ones, with the gold bars and the reassuring voice and great hair with just the right amount of grey – the exact sort which most course attendees find attractive ) and some music to play back on an MP3 player during the flight.
This is a real huge problem (difficult to do holidays abroad, etc) and may not have a solution for a particular person. Many years ago I met a girl (about 30) who would almost have a panic attack when shown the photograph of a light aircraft sitting on the ground… However she was happy to be “friendly” with a load of drug dealers in Crawley so risk perception can be non-obvious.
