but couldn't due to a crippling fear of heights

I grew up with a 50m cliff as a backyard.

Absolutely stunning view, the kind that super-wealthy people pay many tens of millions for these days. My parents picked it up in 1977 for practically a song because nearly all the construction companies came from the prairies and had no clue of how to develop on anything other than a pancake-flat piece of land.

But still. It installed into me a particularly overactive fear of heights. I have trouble getting onto roofs thanks to it. When putting up Christmas lights, my wife needs to hold the ladder, as I am tensed up six ways to Sunday by the time I’m at the top.

Skiing is just as bad. I can take most any slope up to and including a double black diamond. It’s only the triples I cannot handle, because that involves vertical drops.

So I understand that fear. Just not the desire to bodily leap out of a perfectly functional aircraft. That’s nuts.