Fear of flying is an extremely common affliction. An early study by Boeing found that one in every three to four adult Americans – roughly 30 percent – experienced a significant (although not necessarily crippling) degree of anxiety about flying. However current research suggests the worldwide figure of anxious (though not fearful) flyers is higher, up to around 40 percent of all passengers.
Although the number of people who seriously fear flying is much smaller, it’s still significant. The US National Institute for Mental Health puts the number of people who avoid commercial flying altogether simply because it scares them stiff at around 6.5 percent of the population: nearly 20 million people.
Fear of flying is not a condition that can be resolved by willpower alone, say experts. Telling sufferers to “harden up” or to “relax” or that “nothing’s going to go wrong” and other ill-informed advice just doesn’t cut it. Although the percentage of accidents measured against all flights is falling steadily – in short, flying’s getting safer all the time – it doesn’t convince sufferers because their fears are irrational in nature.
Pills and placebos
Medications don’t do the job either, at least not in the long term. A study by Stanford University’s school of medicine suggests that the use of tranquillising drugs can rebound in an extremely unpleasant way, triggering a tenfold increase in panic, while homeopathic treatments were rated virtually useless in a 2005 study published in The Lancet, operating merely as placebos.
Indeed there are health risks from medication. According to a 2007 study by the World Health Organisation, flyers who knock themselves out with, say, Valium over a flight of four hours or more run a risk, albeit small, of developing deep vein thrombosis. That is, a blood clot developing in a deep vein, usually in the lower leg.
An alcoholic drink may help calm nerves but a few too many drinks can produce an atypically violent reaction in some, because the lower levels of oxygen in pressurised cabins accelerates the effects of alcohol.
The best solution, report all authorities on the subject, is to deal with the problem rather than run away from it. There are often sound reasons why people fear flying, although those reasons may not be obvious. A naturally nervous disposition, a childhood trauma, an aversion to closed spaces, a sense of helplessness; all may lie at the heart of fear of flying, also known as aerophobia, aviophobia or aeroanxiety.
Indeed, what we call fear of flying may not really be fear of actually flying. Rather, it’s an emotion that is only expressed before or during flights. For instance, people who suffer claustrophobia often find aircraft cabins frightening, just as they do underground trains. Others are afraid of heights, suffer from panic attacks, are uncomfortable when not in control or, increasingly, worry about a terrorist attack.
And it’s not unusual for the condition to turn up almost out of the blue with advancing years. “For many it develops later in life as we realise how precious life is and that we are all mortal beings,” says Stacey Chance, an American airline captain who has studied the subject.
Underlining his point, psychologist Dr R Reid Wilson, a specialist in anxiety disorders and founder of American Airlines’ Fearful Flyers program, says the average age of onset of fearful flying is 27 years. Some sufferers report their anxiety developed after the birth of a child. Another contributing factor may be rising stress levels, for instance from a particularly demanding job, that translate into markedly increased nervousness over other things besides flying.
There are still others who aren’t so much afraid of flying, as Dr Wilson explains, but fear that they will behave in embarrassing ways such as “freaking out.” And some flyers have excellent reasons for being nervous, like a late uncle of mine who served as a tail-gunner in bombers during the 1939-45 war and was permanently scarred by the horrors of aerial combat. As take-off time approached, he would turn pale and have to visibly force himself to board.
Not turbulence
In flying, ignorance is not bliss. Take turbulence, a common occurrence in the jet stream. Many passengers fear the plane will hit an ‘air pocket’ and plunge thousands of feet. In fact, not only is the plane designed for this and many other forms of stress, aircraft don’t drop out of the sky as is commonly believed. The distance that aircraft typically fall when they encounter turbulence is 50mm, roughly the thickness of a book. It just feels like a lot more.
Incidentally, there is no such thing as an ‘air pocket;’ it’s just a wave of downward-travelling air that is promptly negated by an upward-travelling wave (but again, don’t try telling this to a sufferer).
And while deep clouds may throw an aircraft around, flight crew will typically access 20 different weather reports from ground stations as well as their own weather radar on even a relatively short flight of 1,000km and make sure to skirt any hostile conditions.
Similarly, nervous flyers often believe aircraft will plummet earthwards if an engine fails and are hugely relieved to know that all planes, even the biggest, can glide immense distances. “An aeroplane doesn’t defy the laws of gravity, it uses them,” explains Captain Keith Godfrey, author of Flying without Fear, a popular and commonsense book that addresses what he calls “the seeming abnormalities in flying that are in fact perfectly normal experiences for pilots.”
Nor does the media help. While it never reports the safe landing of a plane, fatal crashes invariably get the full treatment. Experts call this “confirmation bias” – the embedding of an already irrational view. In fact, flying is almost tediously safe. “Statistically speaking, you could board a plane every day and it would take 26,000 years for your number to come up,” explains Dr. Wilson.
Put another way, a fully loaded 727 would have to crash every day of the year for the number of aeroplane fatalities to equal the number of automobile fatalities in a year.
Education is empowering
What appears to dispel flying nerves most effectively is reassurance from those in the know: highly experienced pilots and clinicians. Over the years, UK-based fear of flying course Aviatours has developed a practical programme based on education and the sharing of fears and doubts with other participants in the programme: 45,000 people have used the service, with a reported 98 percent success rate.
The one-day course starts with a briefing by fully-fledged commercial pilots who explain through slides and diagrams how aeronautical science and technology is designed to handle turbulence, security and other issues that prey on the minds of fearful flyers. In between the briefing, participants share their own experiences over coffee and lunch. “It is a relief to know you are not alone in your fears,” explains one attendee.
With the technology behind them, a clinical psychologist explains the “mechanics of fear,” running through a range of methods for dealing with anxiety and feelings of panic including some practical pre-flight relaxation techniques.
Finally comes the ultimate test of the programme’s effectiveness – a 45-minute flight with a full complement of crew plus psychologist. At a recent course nearly all the participants were able to walk straight aboard. However half a dozen congregated ashen-faced at the foot of the gangway and had to return to the airport. Therapists say these people will probably require individual and longer treatment. Otherwise the plane was nearly full.
The failure rate – those who fail to board the flight – is put down to a variety of reasons. “It may have been just too much for them on the day and they went as far as they could in challenging their fears,” says Captain Peter Hughes.
“Or perhaps they decided they didn’t really want to be there at all. They only signed up because of pressure from partners, family or people at work… and sometimes it’s a step too far. Often these people come back for another go at just the flight.”
As the flight proceeds to takeoff, passengers get a running commentary from one of the pilots, straight from the flight deck, about exactly what’s happening. This run-down lasts all the way through take-off, the flight and landing. The purpose, points out Aviatours, is to reassure the flyers through a process of instruction.
Simulating terror
There are effective alternatives to group sessions. For instance, books and videos often work for those who cannot attend or afford group sessions. Captain Stacey Chance’s Prepare to Fly scores good reviews – “a wonderful tool in my arsenal of fear,” enthuses one reader. And Captain Godfrey’s aforementioned Flying without Fear has “helped hundreds of people to go flying.”
A consultant to aerophobia courses, Captain Godfrey has since gone one better. He has developed a system for recreating on a flight simulator practically every kind of fear-inducing situation. A highly practical tool, it puts the terrified flyer in command: he or she can program in whatever particular occurrence upsets them to see how pilots handle it and what happens to the aircraft. Thus they can dial up landings, thunderstorms, flying at night or over sea, extreme or light turbulence; just about every conceivable situation.
American airline Captain Tom Bunn, also a trained therapist, founded the organisation Soar for fearful flyers nearly 30 years ago. Over the years he has come to the conclusion that in the long run, individual therapy works better than group sessions because it can be tailored to the sufferer’s specific condition.
Indeed Soar started out by conducting USA-wide group courses but changed direction when research showed that better results were obtained through individual counselling, even when given by phone. And instead of taking the all-important flight straight away, they were able to wait until the therapist was sure they were good and ready.
Some aerophobia courses don’t go near an aircraft. In so-called cognitive coping strategies conducted in professional rooms, qualified therapists will track back through an individual’s background to identify the anxiety triggers that lie at the heart of the distress. Having done so, they will work with the client to train them to take charge of the thought processes that have gone awry. As such, these therapies treat anxiety as a condition rather than as a specific state related to flying.
Relaxation techniques like measured breathing, yoga and focus therapy – concentrating on something that induces good feelings – are also effective; but no programme provides all the answers. But fearful flyers can dramatically reduce their anxieties through an enlightened approach to the problem and an aerophobia course is one of the best places to start.
