Whether it’s the dreaded ‘triple bing-bong’ of the cabin call bell or an anxious look on the faces of the cabin crew, if you’re a nervous flier – and up to one third of us are – one of these is all the evidence you need that your aircraft is about to fall from the sky. In your mind, the memories of a dozen airline disaster movies are pouring petrol on to the already-incendiary images your imagination is throwing up, and within moments you know with unflinching certainty that a screaming, horrific death awaits you. But then the trolley passes, a woman hands you a hot towel and… Nothing happens.
Anyone who is scared of flying is their own worst enemy. They feed their fear with stomach-churning thoughts of disaster and translate the tiniest jolt of turbulence into an iron-clad guarantee of impending doom. Half-truths and myths combine with overactive imaginations to devastating effect, and at 20,000 feet they can transform a normally rational person into a blubbering wreck.
And yet flying has never been safer. According to newly released findings from the Aviation Safety Network, you could now reasonably expect to fly every single day for 123,000 years before you’re likely to die in a plane crash. Your chances of being killed in a car accident are hundreds of times greater. It’s no joke when they say that the most dangerous part of your trip is the drive to the airport.
Why do we feel the fear?
With statistics like these, it should be easy to get anyone on to a slick, modern jet. Crashes were for the 1960s and 1970s, when the industry was in its infancy and mistakes were there for the making. Today pilots are better trained, passengers are meticulously screened, and mind-bogglingly complex technology is making tiny adjustments to a flying aircraft by the second. In fact, you might ask, why is anyone still scared of flying at all?
“The reason that people still have a fear of flying is that for the majority of them it’s not about rational thoughts or fears,” says Professor Robert Bor, a consultant clinical psychologist and co-author of the book Overcome Your Fear Of Flying. He explains that a multitude of sensations during a flight can add up to a serious fear of flying – including concerns about heights, claustrophobia, not being in control, and separation anxiety from loved ones, or even your luggage. “People also worry that their feelings of fear may escalate and they won’t be able to do anything about it,” Professor Bor adds. “It’s not so much about safety and wings falling off and engines stalling, all of which we can answer.”
Reassuring stats, then, are clearly only half the picture, and only going to be of comfort to a very particular type of person. Paul Tizzard, co-founder of Virgin Atlantic’s long-running Flying Without Fear courses, knows exactly who that person is.
“It helps if you’re very logic-oriented,” he says. “We had a fellow come to see us for help who was a professor of maths with a very senior job, and he absolutely loved all the stats. He went through all the statistical analysis about safety, weighed it up and said to us, ‘You know, the figures really stack up.’ Other people, you can tell them 50 times that it’s the safest form of travel but it won’t make a difference until they actually believe it.”
Virgin Atlantic’s programme is designed to do just that and is split into three parts. The day starts with a bombardment of reassuring safety information from industry professionals and is followed by an afternoon of self-help techniques. Finally, there’s a short flight on an actual aircraft, and almost everyone makes it on to the plane. They don’t actually measure success by ‘bums on seats’ because many attendees already fly anyway, but their surveys show that around 98 per cent of people leave feeling better about flying than when they arrived.
Virgin Atlantic’s monthly courses are undoubtedly a step in the right direction, and come with the approval of the big boss himself, Sir Richard Branson. The entrepreneur proved good to his word that he wanted to hear new ideas from his employees and responded to Tizzard’s suggestion within 24 hours, way back in 1997.
Since the course started, the Flying Without Fear team’s understanding of people’s anxieties has grown ever more acute. “You can basically group fears into some quite straightforward categories,” Tizzard says. “Claustrophobia, fear of turbulence, fear of falling, fear of crashing, fear of dying. Those fears all exist.”
But what many people don’t realise, he says, is that a nervous flyer’s fear is unique to them. “Perception of what is a ‘bad flight’, for example, is different for everyone,” Tizzard explains. “People might say that in turbulence, the aircraft was shaking all over the place, but that doesn’t actually happen: what happened is that their body decided they didn’t like it and that this was a bad flight.”
Once your mind is set, it can be hard to convince yourself otherwise. Witness unfortunate British schoolboy Joe Thompson, stranded in the UAE last July after suddenly developing an acute fear of flying. The 11-year-old’s terror was so severe that his dad had to plan an overland trip back to Britain – not the easiest route to arrange.
“We shouldn’t be too hard on ourselves, though,” says Professor Bor. “We’re still meant to be hunter-gatherers on the ground and we’re not very well equipped to deal with tremendous acceleration speeds, big noises, enclosed spaces, people in very close proximity and going to foreign destinations. I know it happens every day, but we’re not that used to it as a species.” The problem is that we just don’t seem capable of helping ourselves. Just as jittery flyers’ eyes are drawn to headlines of aviation disasters, you can pretty much guarantee that half of the people glued to their TV set every time a documentary about downed jumbos is on will be exactly the kind of people who hate to fly.
“These shows and the movies especially are often inaccurate,” says Virgin Atlantic’s Tizzard. “But people believe what they see.”
What people also forget is that when an airline accident does happen, the whole industry learns from it and does everything possible to make sure it never happens again. “Compare that with what people learn after there’s been a 50-car pile-up,” Tizzard points out. “They learn nothing. We won’t all be retested on our driving skills like a pilot would be. The airline industry learns from mistakes and builds that knowledge into training. And that’s one of the reasons that flying has got safer and safer.”
Would you get on a pilotless flight?
The holy grail, of course, is an industry in which flying becomes “accident-free” – which might not be as far-fetched as it sounds. Giovanni Bisignani, the then-head of the International Air Transport Association, said in 2010 that by 2050 he sees a world where air travel will have, “Very close to zero accidents.”
The answer seems to be in ever-more rigorous pilot training and advanced computer systems that can anticipate a problem long before it arises. But you can never remove the man in the peaked cap entirely – even if ‘human error’ is almost always to blame. As Tizzard says, “I don’t know of any passenger who would get on a pilotless flight – do you?” It’s a good point. When we’re already getting heart palpitations if one of the cabin crew looks at one of their colleagues ‘a bit funny’, we’d be unlikely to breathe any easier if a robotic voice came over the PA to tell us that today’s pilot is named ZX-1000 and that he hopes we all have a good flight.
“People really do look at the cabin crew for clues,” says Tizzard. “What they don’t realise is that if the chicken dinners run out, for example, it’s a major trauma for the cabin crew.” Other in-flight eyebrow-raisers that many people buy into are the bing-bonging call bells – which nervous types think are sending ‘secret messages’ to the crew – and turbulence. More specifically, rampant fear of a mythical ‘air pocket’ that will make you drop hundreds of feet in half a second.
“We’re flying along at 500mph,” Tizzard smiles. “It’s not possible! You can change your altitude over a few miles, but most turbulence is a matter of a couple of feet.”
All of which goes to prove what a bunch of stressed-out, scaredy cats so many of us are at 20,000 feet.
“Your journey really starts before the flight, when you book the tickets,” says Professor Bor. “The main thing is not to avoid it, because fears don’t go away unless you do something about it.”
He recommends learning deep-breathing techniques to help deal with the multiple anxieties that sufferers will inevitably face during their journey. “By doing that, you will reduce your heart rate, and once that happens the physical feelings, like trembling hands and a dry mouth, will start to reduce. Another thing you can do is take any muscle group and clench it really tight for five seconds.” He recommends your fists: by doing this you’re taking control of tension, which is an involuntary response. In effect, you’re turning it into a voluntary response and by doing so you help the brain to switch off its system of sending out stress messages to the body.
Professor Bor further recommends that you eat well, carbs especially, take non-sugary drinks and make sure you have plenty to occupy your mind. “Distract yourself and put yourself in your own little cocoon,” he says.
“And stop watching movies about flying!” adds Tizzard. “Whether it’s Snakes On A Plane or Passenger 57, they’re all ridiculous, with pilots wrestling with the controls and sweat pouring off them. It’s nonsense.”
If you do have to watch one, Tizzard says you should plump for the 1980 Leslie Nielsen classic, Airplane!. “That’s obviously the most accurate movie about flying ever made,” he says, with a grin. He’s joking, of course – but at least you’ll get a laugh out of it.
