We live in an exciting age of air travel. A plane that just a few years ago could hold only 50 people now holds 200. And it’s not even bigger. It just holds more people.

Yet, despite all the advancements, 40 percent of people still have some flying anxiety. Which means that if it’s not you, it’s definitely one of the people crammed into one of the two seats immediately next to you, gripping your shared armrest in a panic every time the plane does anything.

Who wouldn’t be scared of flying? It combines all of the major fears—heights, small spaces, strangers, foreigners, social situations, germs, drowning and clowns. You come to a real understanding of how clown cars work.

Of course, everyone has advice on how not to be scared. For example, they’ll tell you, “Don’t worry, air travel is actually safer than driving.” This is true. You’re statistically safer in a plane than in a car, provided that the plane hasn’t left the ground. We have to compare apples to apples here. Not only that, but you’re also statistically safer in a plane that has left the ground than in a car that has left the ground, particularly one 30,000 feet up in the air. So we don’t even know what you’re worried about.

It also happens to be—people point out—that plane crashes are very rare. Sure, you hear about them on the news, but that’s how you know they’re rare. When you stop hearing about plane crashes on the news, that is the time to worry. Or be really confident. We don’t know.

And yes, there’s always a safety lecture, though that in itself is scary, because you’re sitting there wondering, “What do they know that I don’t?” But realize this: That flight safety demonstration is actually built in to pass the time while the pilots go over a 200-point safety checklist. Two hundred points. They’re flicking every switch (“Okay, so that’s what this one does…”) and making sure the plane has all the pieces and that none of them fell off at the last airport. So we all know that by the time they get the plane up in the air, those guys are going to be exhausted.

My point is that there are lots of good reasons to not be scared, but if you want to be scared, you’re going to be scared. Nothing people say to calm you down is going to calm you down because you’re going to keep poking holes in it. So what do you do?

Here’s my idea: I’m going to give you more reasons to be scared. And hopefully you’ll be scared of these things and not the big things. For example:

Your plane might hit a cow.

This is a real concern. Recently, a plane containing 117 passengers and flying into Indonesia actually hit a cow. This wasn’t in midair, though. It hit the cow on the runway. Supposedly, there were three cows on the runway at the time, so it actually missed over 60 percent of the cows. Optimism.

I’m not sure why cows are allowed on the runway. I can’t even get onto the plane with shampoo.

You might land at the wrong airport.

This actually happens. There was a recent news story about a 747 from JFK that landed at Colonel James Jabara Airport in Wichita, Kansas, and then realized it was the wrong airport. The airport he was aiming for, McConnell Air Force Base, was actually 12 miles away.

They didn’t realize they made a mistake until after they landed, at which point they thought they were actually at a third airport—Beech Factory Airport, which is also in the vicinity. Apparently, Wichita has 11 airports in a 10-mile radius. This is what happens when you have a lot of wide, open land.

And guess what happened next? That’s right. The plane hit a cow.

Kansas.

OK, so it didn’t hit a cow. Or maybe it did, but it’s so common over there that that part didn’t make the news.

What happened was that the plane got stuck.

It turns out that the plane needed a 9,000-foot runway to take off again, and Jabara only has 6,000. Jabara doesn’t normally handle jumbo jets. It doesn’t even have a control tower. It has like a barn.

So the engineers were up all night making calculations until they figured out that the plane actually could take off from that airport, because it didn’t have a lot of fuel left, so the plane was lighter. So they said, “We have good news and bad news. The bad news is you don’t have a lot of fuel.”

“That’s OK. I’m only flying 12 miles.”

So they flew the 12 miles, which took them 19 minutes. They had to get to the airport two hours early.

But my point is that the safety lecture doesn’t cover any of these things. What on earth are you supposed to do when the plane hits a cow, or lands at the wrong airport? I hope the pilots at least added these things to a checklist.

Mordechai Schmutter is a freelance writer and a humor columnist for Hamodia, The Jewish Press and Aish.com, among others. He also has four books out and does stand-up comedy. You can contact him at [email protected].

By Mordechai Schmutter