Should You Sit in the Exit Row if You’re Scared of Flying?
Last week, I flew from Germany to Portugal. Days before the trip I had my normal build-up of panic: What if these are my last days? Is this my last meal? Is this trip worth risking death? What will my funeral be like?
My fear of flying started out-of-the-blue when I was in university. It started as just a small amount of nervousness during takeoff and has now blossomed into sleepless nights, gripping the armrest, and quietly repeating to myself it's okay, it's okay anytime there's even the slightest rumble of turbulence.
I have no idea where this fear came from or why it developed after I’d already been on hundreds of flights. A few of my friends also developed flight anxiety somewhere between puberty and adulthood, and the best we can figure is that it either stems from recognizing we're not immortal or 9-11, when we realized air travel is not invincible.
Whatever the cause: the fear is here and it continues to grow year by year.
Which brings me back to my boarding gate in Germany…
As I lined up with my group, I took some deep breaths. I repeated all of the safety statistics that I already know about flying and reminded myself that my anxiety is natural and valid, and at least I am not letting it stop me. Then I placed my phone on the ticket machine. I stopped short when it beeped and turned red. I looked at the flight clerk (what is the name of the person who lets you board but doesn't actually get on the plane with you?). He looked at his iPad and waved me over to the ticket counter. There, a woman told me I was sitting in an emergency exit row.
"We just have to make sure you are physically capable of sitting in that row," she said, looking me up and down. "I don't see any broken bones!" She pressed a button on her computer and waved me through the gate. "Have a nice flight!"
In the line to board the plane, I wondered if I should have mentioned my fear of flying. Would that disqualify me from sitting in the exit row? Being put in the exit row was a total coincidence as I'd bought a cheap ticket that didn't allow me to choose a seat. The sudden beep and red gate had thrown me off-guard so much that I'd only had the wherewithal to nod about no broken bones rather than ask a follow-up question.
On the plane and in my seat, I texted my boyfriend. "Should I have told them I'm afraid of flying?" I asked.
"Honestly, I think you should have," he said.
His answer annoyed me. Mostly because it wasn't what I wanted to hear. What I wanted to hear was Nah, you're fine! Everything will be okay. Have a great flight, Sexy!
Instead, now my normal fearing of flying was mixed with a new anxiety: was I putting the plane in danger?
Who Can’t Sit in the Emergency Exit Row?
There are several rules set by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) about who cannot sit in an emergency exit row. This includes:
- People who are physically unable to do the lifting, standing, pushing, and pulling that is required to open the emergency door
- Children under 15 yrs of age (personally, I don't know if I trust a 16 yr old to open that door, but that's just me)
- Pregnant women
- People caring for a small child
They also must be able to speak the language that is dictated by the crew. (In my case, Lufthansa was clearly okay with the fact that I was only speaking English, although I suspect my last name made them assume I was German.)
In all of the legalese of the FAA's website, I cannot find anything that says a person cannot sit in the exit row if they are afraid of flying.
Unwritten Rules When Sitting in the Exit Row
According to an article by The Washington Post, there are unwritten rules to sitting in the emergency exit row, although they're not always enforced. One of the rules is that you shouldn't drink alcohol while sitting in that row. To me, that makes sense because, if an emergency were to happen, you need all of the emergency-related people sober, right?
Another unwritten rule: you shouldn’t sleep in the exit row. Again — if there’s an emergency, you have to be alert!
I’d also read in another article that flight attendants are trained to suss out whether the person in the exit row should be there or not. As in: Do they seem mentally/emotionally capable to help during an emergency? Do they look like someone who will follow the rules or will be ornery?
Frequently, experienced travelers or off-duty crew members will be sat in these rows for obvious reasons. And other times, you get a traveler, such as myself, who was suddenly thrust into the seat and now doesn’t know if this is a too big responsibility or not.
Going Back to My Exit Row
Sitting in the roomy seat, I continued to think about my boyfriend’s text. Should I tell the crew that I’m afraid of flying? My main hesitation was a silly one: I didn’t want them to move me in front of the other passengers and then have the whole plane thinking What’s wrong with her? I once told a flight attendant I was scared of flying before a trans-Atlantic flight. Before take-off, she came over to me to address my fears and assure me flying was safe. While I really did appreciate her efforts, I felt like the other passengers near me must have been waiting for me to have a viral-video-worthy meltdown for the entire trip.
When it comes to my fear of flying, the only blessing is that, unless I tell you I’m terrified of flying, you would never know it. I fly multiple times per year and my usual trips last anywhere from 3–12 hours. I don’t start shaking or crying. I don’t yelp during turbulence or fidget. Mostly, I just sit there quietly resigning myself to death. Panic-laden dialogues run through my head and my blood pressure probably takes years off my life, but no one around me is aware unless they were to ask.
The last remaining passengers boarded the Porto-bound flight and a crew member came over to me. She asked if I’d ever sat in an exit row before. I shook my head. She explained that, in the event of an emergency, I would pull on a plastic casing, which would then allow me to access the door handle.
“Then you pull on that and throw the window out of the plane,” she said.
“Out of the plane?” I asked, stupidly imagining this happening 30,000 ft in the air.
She mimed tossing it like it was a ball being thrown for a toddler.
Because we were on a German airline, I asked if not being fluent in German was a problem. She said no.
And with that, we left the gate.
As we taxied onto the runway, I wondered if I was somehow going to bring about every passenger’s demise. I thought about the few emergency situations I’d been in in the past: a restaurant guest having a heart attack, one of my students falling down the stairs, a friend who called me after she’d been in an accident. In each situation, I’d been quick and calm to respond (although with the student, it took me a few moments to realize that I was the adult the other students had run to for help and that no one else was coming). I have a lot of anxieties, but I’m good at compartmentalizing in order to do what needs to be done.
The plane picked up speed. I thought about what I actually feared when flying: it was having no control over whether we crashed or not. People always tell me how planes are safer than cars, and while I get that, I don’t feel that. In a car, I prefer to be the driver because I feel safer being the one in control (trust issues? me? nahhhhh).
In a plane, I have absolutely no control over what happens. My fate, and the fate of everyone else, is completely in the hands of a giant metal bird and the two people in the cockpit.
The exit door, however, was something I would have control over. If we crash-landed and survived enough to use the door, my fear of flying wouldn’t render me catatonic. Instead, it would propel me to get the hell off this plane and I’d toss that 45–55 lbs window with much more intensity than the gentle toss the flight attendant had shown. And besides, my fear was more intense during take-off and while we were in the air — both instances when I am fairly certain I’d never be asked to open the emergency exit.
We hit cruising altitude and the seatbelt signs turned off. A few people got up to move around. Because of Lufthansa’s distancing rules, I had the entire exit row to myself. I turned to the side to stretch out my legs. That’s when I noticed that the man in the row in front of me was staring at me. I did the usual thing that women do when a man stares at them: I looked somewhere else as if I didn’t notice, but kept him in my periphery.
Several minutes went by and he kept staring. I decided to look back at him and give him one of those what do you want? glares. I realized he wasn’t looking at me — he was looking at the exit door.
Immediately, I looked at the exit door, too. Why was he looking there? He was sitting in an aisle seat. Was he just craning his neck to look out a window? Surely the windows in his own row were more convenient. Why strain your neck just to look out the exit row window?
He stood up and moved to the row right behind Business Class. Me, being the paranoid person that I am, watched him. He sat in the new row for a minute before craning his neck slightly to look at the exit door again.
It was at this point that I knew: I was not going to leave my exit row post.
Now, this wasn’t a long haul flight — Munich to Porto is less than three hours by air, so don’t start thinking that I was making a huge sacrifice, but I did suddenly feel like I had a real duty towards the exit door. I imagined the man walking down the middle aisle, looking like he was just heading to the bathroom, and then suddenly lunging at the door. Did he want to open it? He had to. Why else would you lunge towards a door that’s already closed and secured tightly? Would he want to open it out of panic or because he wanted to take the plane down?
As I envisioned him lunging, I imagined myself bracing my back against the door and kicking him square in the face. I hoped I’d say something cool like, “Not on my watch!” or “Not my door!” but in reality, I would probably just get out a muffled fuckfuckfuckmotherfuck.
Then, Staring Man stood up again and walked down the aisle just as I had imagined. I (insanely) straightened my back as if I really was bracing myself to kick him should he lunge. Instead, he took a seat near the back of the plane.
For the next two hours, I stayed beside the door feeling beholden to it. I wanted to text my boyfriend: “See? I’m scared, but I’m not hopeless! I will not leave this my door unmanned!”
My boyfriend and I have flown together only a handful of times, and each time no longer than three hours. Having him on a flight makes him an unfortunate sounding board for the panic ticker tape that scrolls through my mind. Whereas I normally just think to myself Ohmygod what was that WE ARE GOING DOWN, with him there I can clutch his hand and incessantly say, “Don’t go to sleep! I’m scared. Talk to me.” For someone who is not afraid of flying, I know this is wearing on him. The last time we flew together and I gripped his hand, he rolled his eyes and sighed (which, to me, is not a nice reaction to have because I can’t really control the fear, but I get it). I can imagine he’s already dreading the day when we fly across the Atlantic to either his native Brazil or my US.
Finally, the plane began to make its descent. Staring Man got up and moved back to his original seat. I wondered if, instead of being the door-lunging psycho I imagined him to be, he was also scared of flying? Maybe getting up and moving around helped ease his anxiety the same way listening to podcasts and doodling eased mine. Maybe he wasn’t looking at the exit door maliciously. Maybe he just wanted to know there was a way out of the plane. Or, maybe he thought I wasn’t capable of opening the door, and while I was imagining kicking him in the face, he was imagining pushing me out of the way and gallantly opening the door to bring everyone to safety.
So, Should You Sit in the Exit Row if You’re Afraid of Flying?
My answer to this question is going to sound like a bit of a cop-out: I think it depends on you and your individual fear. For me, I don’t think my fear of flying is quite high enough to ban me from the exit row, but I won’t ever intentionally book a seat there because it does make me feel like maybe I’m breaking some airline code of ethics. If you’re scared of flying in the way Staring Man was and you have to constantly move about the cabin, then you probably shouldn’t sit there.
If you’re afraid of flying and you sit in an exit row, ask yourself the following questions:
- What are you actually afraid of when flying and will it inhibit you from responding during an emergency?
- Does your fear paralyze you? Or will it boost you into action?
- Will you be able to listen to the flight crew while you’re panicking? Or will you react wildly like a kindergartner with a sugar high?
I think if you can put you panic aside and do exactly what the crew tells you to do, then you should be fine. If you can’t, then sit somewhere else, tell the crew you’re scared, and let them help you. Even if you think the other passengers will think you’re nuts, it’s better to do what you can to have a good flight than not.
