Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker has flown on an aeroplane for the first time since a deadly 2008 plane crash which left him with critical injuries, reports say.
The crash saw the plane’s two pilots and two of its four passengers killed instantly, with Barker and fellow passenger DJ AM suffering serious injuries. Barker then spent 11 weeks in a hospital, undergoing 26 surgeries a number of skin grafts.
Since then, the drummer has sworn off flying. Back in 2016, Blink-182 shared plans to tour Europe by boat to avoid flying, while Barker dropped out of a tour of Australia in 2013 due to his fear. In 2011, he said he was considering hypnotherapy so he could fly again.
Earlier this year, Barker hinted that he may be ready to step on a plane again after over a decade, tweeting: “I might fly again.”
I might fly again ✈️
— Travis Barker (@travisbarker) June 25, 2021
Now, according to TMZ, Barker took a flight on Saturday (August 14), heading to Cabo in Mexico from Los Angeles with his girlfriend Kourtney Kardashian.
“It’s a huge deal that Travis flew to Cabo. The plane crash many years ago was extremely traumatising. He has needed a lot of help to get to this point,” a source told PEOPLE. “Kourtney has been very supportive. She never pushed for him to fly. They have managed to travel in the US without having to fly and Kourtney has been totally fine with it.”
“I was dark,” Barker told Men’s Health earlier this year of his experiences following the crash. “I couldn’t walk down the street. If I saw a plane [in the sky], I was determined it was going to crash, and I just didn’t want to see it.
“The closer I was to it, it felt like I was closer to the bad stuff than I am to the good stuff,” he added. “I felt closer to the experience of trying to escape, [to] being in an accident and being burned, trying to grab my friends from a burning plane.”
Barker has shared a number of collaborations this year, most recently teaming up once again with Machine Gun Kelly this month on new track ‘Papercuts’, the first preview of Kelly’s next album ‘Born With Horns’.