Despite having a longstanding aversion to flying, Shepard allowed Chuck Yeager to take him up in a jet plane in 1982, in preparation to play the pilot in the film "The Right Stuff". Shepard cited his fear of flying as a source for a character in his 1966 play "Icarus's Mother". He went through an airliner crash in the film "Voyager", and apparently vowed never to fly again after a turbulent trip on an airliner returning from Mexico in the 1960s.