20 signs you’re a member of the Nervous Flyers Club.

Image source: Bridesmaids

For the majority of people, hopping on a plane is an ingenious way of covering large distances while picking up some cut-price M.A.C make-up.

This is the ultimate beauty product for travelling.

For the other estimated 25-40% of the population, the plane is about as appealing as a trip to an STI clinic where you’re examined by a male model and told your vagina has fallen off.

Basically, traumatic.

In theory, we know the odds of survival are excellent. Recent US research showed that travelling by motorbike is 3000 times more deadly than flying, and car 100 times more so. You’re more likely to be killed by a shark, lightning, or even falling out of bed than a plane. But none of this rational stuff matters when you’re clinging onto your armrest for dear life.

What should you eat on a plane?

Sound familiar? Here are the secret signs that you belong in a no-fly zone:

1. You’d rather get a UTI than risk getting up from your seat to use the toilet.

2. Plane smell. It’s a thing. And it’s evil.

3. You’ve studied the flight safety card in more detail than the Facebook profile of the guy you’re dating.

4. When booking an early morning flight, your biggest concern isn’t the ungodly hour you’ll have to get up – it’s whether the bar will be open.

5. You’ve actually practiced the brace position. For fun.

6. Joining the Mile High Club is about as thrilling a sexual prospect as getting told you have to lose your virginity all over again.

7. Sensing your nerves, you may have been asked if you’d like to meet the captain. You politely decline. You’re sure they are very lovely, but averting the eyes of the person keeping the plane in the air AWAY from the controls is not your idea of reassurance.

8. Getting frisked by security is actually one of the more enjoyable elements of your journey.

9. You know the likelihood of getting sucked into oblivion through the toilet bowl is around zero. But why is the flush soooo violent??

10. In periods of turbulence you’ll grab anything within reach. Seat, hands, inner thigh of the old man next to you.

What not to do when someone is having a panic attack.

11. You can’t look at a mini-bag of peanuts anywhere without feeling nauseous.

12. When the pilot announces that the flight will be “reasonably smooth”, you wonder if you should text your mum to tell her you love her.

13. 6am is a perfectly acceptable time for the first alcoholic drink of the day. Everyone* knows that the laws of time cease to exist the moment you’ve cleared check-in. (*Except physicists, but we’re working on them).

14. A little huge part of you is genuinely relieved every time you land and have lost nothing more serious than two gallons of sweat.

15. At least one time in your life you will have decided to avoid a two-hour flight and go by land. Twenty-four hours of bus travel later – AKA an entire day and night of breathing in other people’s farts – you decide to give flying one more go.

16. The only thing worse than turbulence is being stuck next to someone who screams out IN PLEASURE during turbulence.

17. If gripping plane armrests were an Olympic sport, you’d be guaranteed a place on the national team. Fingers of steel.

18. When travelling with a partner, you ask, ‘Are we nearly there yet?’ as often as a small child. If you could get away with it you’d throw a tantrum, too.

19. Thanks to the intoxicating double act of nerves + the drinks trolley, any movie has the ability to emotionally destroy you. Disney animations, wildlife documentaries, even Justin Bieber’s reality show will result in a breakdown.

20. You consider being able to sleep on a plane as elusive a goal as having a multiple orgasm every time.

On a scale between 1 and 'I will never get on a plane,' how would you rate your experience with flying?