I used to be the same. Probably a bit OT, but I broke my longest standing irrational policy of always touching the outside of a plane (i.e. somewhere around the door as you enter) prior sitting down in my seat. When I travelled as a kid with my father (he worked for the U.N. at the time, so we, as a family, travelled a lot with him to sometimes very obscure places), my fear peaked when we flew into Brazzaville, Congo and the conditions (plane, airport, ground crew) looked unstable, at best. My father told me to pat the plane like I did my dog at home and that would ensure nothing would happen to the plane or us. Well, fast forward thirty years and hundreds (if not thousands) of "pats" later, I decided to stop the ritual. Even though that same year, I expreienced two emergency landings (1st in LAS while flying from CVG - LAX for running out of gas and 2nd time in STL for an engine fire), I've never looked back. Well, almost never. I snuck a "pat" in on 9/15/01 flying from LAX to AMS .