When I was a kid, my parents would take separate flights when they went anywhere without us kids. I never thought it was particularly weird, they just wanted to make sure that if a plane crashed, we’d still have one parent. I mentioned this to someone a few weeks ago, and he thought it was a morbid and crazy thing to do and even crazier to let your kids know about. I’ve brought it up with a few people since, and no one else has even heard of anyone doing that.
I was talking to my mom last night and told her that the practice seemed to be limited to her and my dad. She said that one of the reasons that they did it was because there were 6 of us kids, and they were afraid that if something happened to both of them, there wouldn’t be a family member willing to take on 6 kids and we’d be separated.
Anyone here take separate flights? Did your parents?
Did they drive to the store separately too? Because your chances of getting killed doing that are probably 1,000 times higher than getting killed in a plane crash. I’m going to go look for a cite now.
I’ve heard of this. I’m pretty sure my aunt and uncle did it, and my parents might have if they ever went anywhere together (dad’s a workaholic who hates vacations and never went on family trips, much less trips alone with mom).
I agree it’s silly, particularly if they’re willing to get in a car together.
No, but when we visited the Seattle Worlds Fair, they bought cemetary plots before we left. We drove from LA to Seattle and rented space in someone’s basement when we got there. My folks had three young daughters. My younger sister was a baby, so she stayed with Grandma and Grandpa, instead of coming along and being miserable.
I was young enough at the time that I don’t know if they had been considering the purchase for awhile, and that this was the precipitating event, or if it was totally part of trip preparations.
They talked about their reasoning to us kids, though. If we all died on the trip, Grandma and Grandpa wouldn’t have that to deal with. There were two plots, and the cemetary was willing to double-deck us if we all went together. If only they died, then we’d live with Grandma and Grandpa. There was a will to smooth the way for that.
There were mildly pleased with themselves for being so responsible.
On a per-trip basis, air travel is 3x more likely to kill you. Surprise, the old saw about driving the airport being more dangerous than the flight may not be 100% accurate.
On a per-hour basis, driving is about 4X more risky.
On a per-mile basis, driving is a whopping 60X more likely to kill you than flying.
All in all, if a couple wants to mitigate their risk of ending up in an accident together, it would probably make more sense to mitigate the amount of time they spend in the car together. But frankly, IMHO there’s not a whole lot of risk (in flying or in driving) to mitigate in the first place.
I have a friend whose parents did this; one parent would take a flight with one kid, and the other parent would take a different flight with the other kid. Made no sense to me, but she thinks it’s just how parents do things.
I know people who do this and I think it is a good idea. The chance of being in a fatal crash is very small, but if you are one of the ones affected, it’s a personal 100%.
I used to house-sit and care for my nephews when my aunt and her husband went on trips and they always took separate flights. They’re the only people I’ve ever heard of doing it.
Given that no risk can be completely eliminated, how small does a risk have to be before you tell yourself “this risk is low enough that it’s not worth complicating my life or spending my wealth/time to try to reduce it further”?
Note that even when parents fly on two separate flights, the probability of both parents being killed is still non-zero.
Yeah, I remember a partner (I used to work for a Big 8 accounting firm) telling me that they did that for their annual Partners Meeting.
Of course, the people planning this didn’t take into account the fact that to get to where it was that year, pretty much everyone had to change planes in City X to get to City Z… so the leg from X to Z could have taken out half the firm’s partners in one fell swoop.
Re the OP: I don’t think my parents ever flew anywhere together without the kids, at least not until we were all grown and out of the house. But the logic does make sense.
I had travel agencies for many years.
I had many families split and travel “just in case”.
My parents did it, although I haven’t with my family.
As a pilot, I’m fairly confident with the stats, although when it comes time for helicoptor rides, we split- boys on one, girls on the other.
Yes… but of plane crashes vs. auto crashes, if it does happen, the odds of surviving a plane crash are a LOT lower than the odds of surviving an auto crash. So you’ve got to weigh, say, 1/100000 chance of being in a plane crash then 100% change of dying, vs 1/1000 chance of being in a car crash then 10% chance of dying (or whatever).
