Travis Barker took on a major life milestone with his girlfriend Kourtney Kardashian this weekend: his first airplane flight since his traumatic crash in 2008. The Blink-182 drummer was in a serious plane accident at the time, and he has never flown since. On Saturday, he finally faced that fear with Kardashian.
Barker lost some of his closest friends in his 2008 plane crash, and he needed several months to recover from the ordeal himself. He has never been shy about describing how that accident changed his life, and how the trauma continued to impact him on a day-to-day basis. After nearly 13 years without flying, Barker took a huge step on Saturday by joining Kardashian on a private jet to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Photos of the couple boarding the plane were published by The Daily Mail.
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Barker and Kardashian got on a plane at a small airport in Camarillo, California and disembarked safely in Mexico. They could be seen holding hands and staying close, though there is no word on Barker’s state of mind. They traveled with Kardashian’s mother Kris Jenner and Jenner’s boyfriend Corey Gamble, and the plane itself belongs to her youngest sister Kylie Jenner.
Barker was one of only two people to survive his 2008 plane crash, the other being his friend Adam “DJ AM” Goldstein. The crash happened in South Carolina, and it killed four people including the pilot, co-pilot and two other passengers. Both Barker and Goldstein were left with severe burns.
Goldstein was burned while trying to put out the flames engulfing Barker, using his shirt to smother them. Barker was left with third-degree burns on 65 percent of his body, and he needed 26 surgeries in total to recover. That process took about three months, followed by an intensive rehabilitation program.
That process was complicated by Barker’s addiction to prescription drugs. He has been candid about the agony of undergoing withdrawal and painful treatment at the same time. He described much of this process in his 2015 memoir Can I Say: Living Large, Cheating Death, and Drums, Drums, Drums.
Since then, Barker has generally traveled by land or by sea to get where he needs to go. He has generally used tour buses and cruise ships, but he did hint that he might be willing to fly again back in June. He tweeted simply: “I might fly again” with an airplane emoji. Many fans were touched by the thought that it was Kardashian who made Barker feel secure enough to get back in the air.
