Travis Barker is considering one day getting on an airplane again, nearly 13 years after being involved in a devastating plane crash that killed four passengers.
The 2008 plane crash killed his assistant Chris Baker, security guard Charles Monroe Still Jr. and pilots Sarah Lemmon and James Bland.
The fiery accident led to a three-month hospitalization for Barker, who had burns on 65% of his body and required 26 surgeries and several skin grafts. His friend and musical parter DJ AM (Adam Goldstein) was also injured in the crash and died a year later from a drug overdose.
But on Friday (June 25), with an airplane emoji, the Blink-182 drummer declared in a tweet, “I might fly again.”
I might fly again
— Travis Barker (@travisbarker) June 25, 2021
Last month, in an interview with Men’s Health magazine, Barker — who hasn’t been on a plane since the day of the crash in 2008 — said surviving the accident, and the long recovery that followed, inspired him to get clean.
“People are always like, ‘Did you go to rehab?’” Barker, who had developed such a high opioid tolerance that he’d sometimes wake up during surgery, said. “And I [say], ‘No, I was in a plane crash.’ That was my rehab. Lose three of your friends and almost die? That was my wake-up call. If I wasn’t in a crash, I would have probably never quit.”
“There’s a million things that could happen to me,” he added in the interview. “I could die riding my skateboard. I could get in a car accident. I could get shot. Anything could happen. I could have a brain aneurysm and die. So why should I still be afraid of airplanes?”
Of flying again, he told the magazine, “I have to … I want to make the choice to try and overcome it.”
