Published: July 09, 2009 07:15 pm      

STAWAR: Flight fright

A family friend recently told us she was worried because her son was flying to Europe on an Airbus aircraft. In June, an Air France Airbus crashed, killing all 228 people on board. And who can forget that image of passengers standing on the wing of the US Airways Airbus that ditched in the Hudson River in January.

After discussing this, I started worrying about our own son, who was flying into Louisville from Newark on Continental Airlines. I hadn’t realized that it was a Continental flight out of Newark that crashed into that house in Buffalo in February, killing 50 people. We didn’t try to change the flight, but it’s easy to start imagining the worst.

In a recent CNN interview, Dr. R. Reid Wilson, a psychologist who specializes in anxiety disorders, said that fear of flying often intensifies when there is extensive media coverage of airline crashes. The Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, for example, lead to a worldwide increase in air travel anxiety that is still reverberating.

For many phobics, such reports are all the proof they need that their fears are fully justified. Others experience vicarious trauma by actively visualizing themselves in the crash scenarios they see and read about. These internal images can have quite an impact.

Some people even seek out small details to make their visualizations more realistic. The nervous system responds mostly as if these imagined situations were real, creating many of the same stress hormones produced during actual traumas. It is as if people construct their own virtual reality just to generate anxiety. Ironically, real virtual reality devices are the latest technology being used to successfully treat such phobias.

Flying phobia affects about 20 percent of the population and can be quite complex. The “constellation of fears” which underlie it may include: claustrophobia, fear of dying or injury, fear of heights, as well as the fear of not being in control.

Even without crashes to worry about, air travel can be very stressful. On our last trip to the airport, we left a half an hour later than planned, my credit card wouldn’t work to pay the baggage fee, I misplaced my wallet, a boarding pass was left in the car, and at the last minute, my son noticed that his connecting flight in Cleveland was scheduled to depart a half-hour before he was suppose to arrive.

I cannot say that I have ever had a fear of flying, but I don’t respond gracefully to turbulence or strange flight noises. According to Dr. Wilson, many of us scare ourselves by misinterpreting routine aircraft sounds. My worst flight to date was during a bad thunderstorm that really rocked the plane.

What bothered me most, however, was the hysterical passenger in front of me. He kept loudly broadcasting our imminent demise, despite the flight attendant’s best efforts to calm him down by plying him with alcohol. It would have been much easier if they simply issued tranquilizer dart guns to the crew.

I also have an overactive imagination. When flying on a stormy night, I always get that “Twilight Zone” episode into my head, in which a terrifying gremlin — who is destroying the airplane’s engine — peers into the window at an unstable passenger. I was once frightened by my own reflection in such circumstances, and now during night flights, I always keep the window shade closed.

Over the years, you heard a lot of hair-raising stories from fellow passengers, like the time in St. Louis when a jet engine fell completely off an airplane while it was waiting for clearance. My favorite, however, is when a pilot announced that they had just repaired the aircraft, and that as soon as the glue dried, they would be taking off.

Deep down, many people, like me, don’t really believe it is possible for a craft weighing several hundred tons to effortlessly float through the air. To address this concern, Dr. Wilson and an experienced pilot co-created the Achieving Comfortable Flight program. This self-help course provides information about the scientific basis for flying, as well as personal coping strategies to increase comfort and confidence.

MIT statistician Arnold Barnett — who researches for the FAA Authority — puts the odds for perishing in a domestic commercial jet crash at about one in 70 million. The probability for a fatality depends on factors, such as weather, type of aircraft, location, airline, presence of geese, etc.

The odds, although still astronomical, start going down for international flights, smaller aircraft, certain airlines and bad weather. Even then, however, statistically you are much more likely to be killed by lightning, murders or by legal execution.

We all know that the riskiest part of any flight is the automobile ride to the airport. On the bright side, there is also a 33 percent chance that you will survive a crash.

Experts say you can increase your odds slightly by sitting in the rear half of the aircraft, riding larger commercial planes and avoiding trips when the weather is especially bad. They also advise taking flights with the fewest connections possible, since most accidents occur during landings and takeoffs.

This creates a major conflict for me since direct flights are often much more expensive. My kids have often bitterly complained about how I book them on cheap flights that have long layovers and multiple plane changes. At least they get to see a lot of the country, even if it’s only dingy airport terminals. They also grouse because all that is ever served on these flights is tiny bags of peanuts.

If you are traveling by air this summer, try to keep things in perspective as you wing your away across the skies, six miles up in the air, surrounded by 650 tons of metal, plastic and peanuts.

Just remember to keep your seat belt on and your glue dry.



Terry L. Stawar, Ed.D., lives in Georgetown and is the CEO of LifeSpring, the local community mental health center in Jeffersonville. He can be reached at tstawar@lifespr.com or 812-206-1234. Check out his “Welcome to Planet-Terry” podcast at www.lifespr.com/podcast.