Travis Barker is conquering his fear.
The Blink 182 drummer is once again braving the skies, jetting off to Cabo, Mexico over the weekend with girlfriend Kourtney Kardashian, her mom Kris Jenner, and Corey Gamble. The group flew in Kylie Jenner’s private plane for the trip – TMZ was able to snap photos of Travis appearing to disembark from the aircraft in Cabo.
The trip marks his first plane ride in over a decade. Travis hasn’t gotten on a plane since 2008, after surviving a deadly plane crash that killed all but two passengers – he and Adam “DJ AM” Goldstein were the only survivors – and left him with serious third degree burns that covered 65% of his body. The two pilots, his security guard Charles Still, and assistant Chris Baker, were killed in the crash.
Back in 2015, Travis opened up about his slow and painful recovery from his critical injuries, telling ABC News at the time, “I stayed in burn centers for, like, the next four months.”
He underwent 26 surgeries and multiple skin grafts, and the ordeal had taken a toll on his mental health. It was his two children that helped get him out of the dark place he was in.
“I tell my children, ‘When you’re ready to fly, I’m ready to fly,'” he said in the interview.
His fellow survivor, Adam, died a year from an overdose of prescription drugs a year after the crash. Travis said it was a “wakeup call” and has since taken steps to lead a healthier lifestyle.
“People are always like, ‘Did you go to rehab?'” the drummer told Men’s Health in May. “And I [say], ‘No, I was in a plane crash.’ That was my rehab. Lose three of your friends and almost die? That was my wake-up call. If I wasn’t in a crash, I would have probably never quit.”
But the terrifying experience continued to take a toll on his mental health.
“I was dark… 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,” he told the magazine.
“The closer I was to it, it felt like I was closer to the bad stuff than I am to the good stuff. 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,” he continued. “That haunted me for a long time.”
In the years since, Travis has chosen to travel by land or by sea – cars, bus, ships, etc. However, he remained hopeful that he will one day get over his fear of flying.
“If I do it, and the angels above help me in my travels and keep me safe, I would like to come back and [tell my children], ‘Hey, I just flew here, and then I flew home. And everything was fine.’ I have to tell them, because I almost left them,” he went on. “That’s a perfect day.”
And, in June, he went on Twitter to share that that possibility was close to becoming a reality.
“I might fly again,” he wrote, adding a plane emoji in his tweet.
