Ben Hickey for Business Insider
The plane suddenly dropped several feet, flew up, then lurched back down. I held my breath, bracing for the inevitable bobbing to repeat. The flight attendant offered me a barf bag and a conciliatory smile. The turbulence wasn't her fault — it wasn't even the pilot's. Yet for 20 minutes on my flight from Denver to my home in Indianapolis, the plane jerked up and down, sometimes so violently passengers let out a collective gasp that rattled me — I'm frightened of both flying and heights — to my core. I wondered if it was the last flight I'd ever take.