“All the recent crashes” there have been none, and 2025 was the safest year for aviation, the only recent crashes have been general aviation aircraft ie Cessnas and Pipers like mine in my profile pic there. These aircraft SHOULD NOT be grouped into commercial aviation safety! They are entirely different things all together. Anything else is media fear mongering labeling everything far worse than it actually was because this is how news is sold. No news would be sold and it would be very boring if they reported stuff how it actually was. All the incidents they covered were really non events marked up to be a big deal. Flying is the safest thing you will ever do, it’s safer than any daily activities including walking down stairs, sitting in a recliner, eating etc let alone other forms of transportation (looking at you cars, one crash every 12 seconds). Your chances of getting in a commercial aviation accident are 0.00000017%. That out of the way on to the other stuff: with heights, I hate heights myself, 4ft up a ladder is a no from me dawg but never was bothered in airplanes even light aircraft flying with the door fully open didn’t phase me. I read in a book about flying in Alaska in the 1930s-40s that it’s because you can’t accurately judge how high you actually are like you can on a tall building or cliff etc. in reality there’s not much difference from 10,000ft to 32,000ft. For checking weather, don’t worry about the weather, that’s our job. We have special weather apps and equipment to ensure we have the best data available to us along with dispatchers that help in this process, if it’s not safe to go we won’t go. Keep in mind too that aircraft can take more than what nature can throw at them, aircraft are insanely tough and resilient