For the first time since 2008, Travis Barker boarded an airplane. On Sunday, Travis, 45, and his girlfriend, Kourtney Kardashian, Kris Jenner, and Corey Gamble, got on a private jet headed for Cabo. For a KarJenner, this was nothing out of the ordinary – a nondescript private flight for another vacation in Mexico – but for Travis, who nearly died thirteen years ago in a devastating crash that killed four, this was a huge step…and he has Kourtney, 41, to partially thank for it. “Kourtney has gently been trying to get Travis to fly for months,” a source close to the couple tells HollywoodLife EXCLUSIVELY.
During this leadup to the flight, Kourt has let Travis know that she’d “be there for him with whatever he needed every step of the way,” the insider tells HollywoodLife. “She never pressured him, but they’ve been talking about it for months. This didn’t just happen overnight. He’s been working very hard to get to this day for a long time now. He’s dealt with so much emotional trauma from the accident, and it really was because of Kourtney that he was ready.”
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“The way he loves and cares about her is different, so it makes sense that this was the moment he was finally ready. He’s telling people he’s never been this happy,” the source adds. “He always had a massive crush on her, but to be with her is a dream come true for him. He’s a total romantic, and she’s mysterious, and they work together. It’s easy.”
In June, Travis hinted that this day was coming. Out of the blue, the blink-182 drummer tweeted, “I might fly again [airplane] emoji.” The previous month, Travis called the Learjet 60 crash – which killed both pilots, passengers Charles Monroe Still Jr and Chris Baker, and left Travis and Adam “DJ AM” Goldstein covered in third-degree burns – a “wake-up call” about his drug use. (DJ AM would die a year after the crash from a drug overdose.) “People are always like, ‘Did you go to rehab?’ And I [say], ‘No, I was in a plane crash,’” he told Men’s Health. “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.”
Travis also said he underwent therapy to deal with the PTSD and the lingering survivor’s guilt. Travis said that things got so bad that he couldn’t walk down the street, and whenever he saw a plane in the sky, he was “determined” it was going to crash, and he didn’t want to see it. After years of recovery, he says there are days when he wakes up and never thinks about that horrific accident.