Travis Barker flies for the first time in 13 YEARS with Kourtney Kardashian after deadly plane crash

Travis Barker celebrated a milestone on Saturday as he successfully took his first ride on an airplane since surviving a deadly plane crash nearly 13 years earlier.

The 45-year-old Blink-182 drummer was glimpsed disembarking a private jet with his girlfriend Kourtney Kardashian, 42, by his side for moral support.

The couple traveled with Kourtney’s mother Kris Jenner, 65, and her boyfriend Corey Gamble, 40, for a vacation in Mexico’s Cabo San Lucas. 

Travis was first spotted at an airfield in Camarillo, California, as he prepared to board the aircraft.

He and Kourtney were reportedly late to arrive for the flight, and Kris and Corey appeared to have waited in the jet for about an hour before they drove up.

Prior to boarding the plane, he and Kourtney embraced, and then she held his hands as they walked up their stairs. 

Travis was dressed for comfort on the trip in a tank top that showed off his abundant tattoos.

He also wore gray pants with a black belt covered in metal studs, and he covered his shaved head with a black ski cap.  

The group jetted off to Mexico in a white jet decorated with pink stripes that is owned by Kourtney’s youngest sister Kylie Jenner. 

Travis hasn’t been able to set foot on an airplane following the deadly plane crash in 2008 in South Carolina in which he was one of only two survivors 

The plane crash happened on September 19, 2008 – Travis boarded a private jet in South Carolina to head back to Los Angeles following a show, while accompanied by his friend Adam ‘DJ AM’ Goldstein, his security guard Charles ‘Che’ Still, and his assistant Chris Baker.

As the small plane was attempting to take off, one of its tires suffered a blow out, causing the craft to overshoot the runway, burst through the airport’s fence and over the nearby highway, and finally crash into the embankment on the side of the road.

The pilot, Sarah Lemmon, and the co-pilot, James Bland, were killed within minutes from smoke inhalation and burns as the plane erupted into flames on impact, according to the Chicago Tribune . Still and Baker were also killed on impact.

Travis and Adam were able to escape from the burning plane via an emergency exit over the wing, but both were engulfed in flames as they slid down the wing and got covered in burning jet fuel.

The drummer had third-degree burns over 65 percent of his body and had to spend three months in the hospital while having skin grafts and 26 surgeries to repair the damage.

Kylie’s jet – which Travis and Kourtney travelled on was purchased from Global Express before the start of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The quasi-billionaire doesn’t just use it for her own purposes, but she regularly lets her sisters and mother travel on it across the globe. 

The jet cost her a whopping $72.8 million, and jets of its size cost around $5 million per year to operate, according to Page Six.

Kylie opted for a Global Express Jet, which is larger than a Learjet and can fly longer distances, but its increased size also means that it is too big to land at many private air fields.

Kris Jenner and her beau Corey Gamble both looked vacation ready as they disembarked in Cabo San Lucas.

The iconic momager wore a lovely black-and-white dress covered in hypnotizing patterns.

She wore her dark hair in her standard bob and had gold hoop earrings on.

The Keeping Up With The Kardashians star also had on a black mask to help slow the spread of the novel coronavirus. 

Corey rocked a casual white button-up shirt with a white patterned bucket hat. He also had on gray shorts and white trainers.

Both carried several carry-on bags as they stepped off the plane. 

Back in June, Travis shocked his fans when he tweeted that he might ride on an airplane in the future.  

He tweeted, ‘I might fly again,’ and his fans quickly launched adoring tweets in support of him returning to the sky.

‘Wow bro! Strong move, but I never doubted your strength!’ tweeted a supportive fan.

Another person replied that they were impressed ‘that he could us his bus for long [sic]’ and that ‘he’s almost ready to leave the bus behind!’

One user admitted to sharing Travis’ traumatizing experience with her children.

‘This is an amazing step for someone with your past,’ she wrote. 

One user had shared in the experience of being in a plane crash, though they were eventually able to get back in the air. 

‘It took me years to fly again,’ they admitted. ‘I fly all the time now, but every once and awhile the fear creeps back in. Breathing helps.

‘I hope you make it back up one day,’ they added.

Travis has recently been opening up about the trauma he experienced during his 2008 plane crash. 

In a May interview with Men’s Health, he shared that the crash helped motivate him to stop abusing prescription drugs.

‘People are always like, “Did you go to rehab?” he recounted. ‘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.’ 

After the crash, Travis was overcome with a debilitating fear even at the sight of an airplane. 

‘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 said, adding that he was ‘haunted’ by the experience of ‘being burned’ and ‘trying to grab my friends from a burning plane.’  

But he also struck a more hopeful not now that nearly 13 years have passed since the crash. 

‘Now it’s been so many years, it’s getting easier for me. There are days where I’ll wake up and never think about it,’ he said.

The incident has certainly been on his mind recently, as last month he got the words ‘Survivors guilt’ tattooed on his forearms.

Travis may have some newfound confidence thanks to his girlfriend Kourtney Kardashian, who’s a noted flier and traveler.

She and the rest of the Kardashian–Jenner family regular travel across the globe on elite private jets, though she’s had to stay on the ground when traveling with her musician boyfriend due to his debilitating fear.

She regularly shares the highlights from her international trips to her Poosh lifestyle site, though her trips were curtailed amid the ongoing pandemic. 

The reality star doesn’t appear to have any issues traveling by air, as evidenced by a 2019 Keeping Up With The Kardashians episode in which she gushed about how much she enjoyed traveling with her children now that they were getting older.

Since she’s taken countless private jet rides, she may be the perfect person to accompany Travis on a short flight. 

The drummer certainly wants to get back in the air, despite how terrifying the idea might be.

‘I have to,’ he said in his Men’s Health interview. ‘I want to make the choice to try and overcome it.’

The musician added that he yearns for the normal, everyday feeling of returning home from a plane trip.

‘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 them], “Hey, I just flew here, and then I flew home. And everything was fine.” I have to tell them, because I almost left them,’ Travis said, adding, ‘That’s a perfect day.’