I sat next to a gal once who had never flown. She was TERRIFIED! She didn’t say anything, but after a few moments of watching her out of the corner of my eye, especially when we took off, I put my hand gently over hers (she had a death grip on the arm rest) and told her everything was fine. Everytime the noise of the engines changed I could see her glance over at me in terror. I just calmly read my book. She finally started relaxing.
The landing, though, was one of the WORST I’ve ever encountered. I don’t know if the co-pilot was landing for the first time or what, but as we were coming in on our approach the plane suddenly took a really hard downward dip to the right. It looked like the wing almost hit the runway! My hand (and book) flew up in the air, stuff was falling. It was all over in a sec, the captain righted the plane. I glanced over at my seat mate, my eyes were a little wide, and she said, “THAT wasn’t supposed to happen, was it!”
I said, ‘Um. No. Interesting, huh.”
She said, “I just kept watching you through the whole flight, and if you weren’t scared I’d tell myself not to be scared!” :)
When we disembarked the captain had the cockpit door open and the copilot sat there with his head down, obviously embarrassed. The captain was enjoying every minute of his discomfort. because he had a shit-eatin’ grin on his face!