Hi!
This is the second part of Chris’s experience of Virgin Atlantic’s Flying Without Fear course, which he attended last year. The article follows on directly from part one, which was posted yesterday. Please follow this link to it and start reading from the beginning if you haven’t done so already.
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Two Kinds of Fear
There are, broadly speaking, two kinds of fearful fliers.
Type 1: They are scared of the plane crashing, that don’t feel that it is rational or reasonable for human kind to fly, and they worry that turbulence can break a plane apart and send it plummeting to the ground. These people are scared of terrorism, hijacking, structural failure and severe weather.
All of their fears are unfounded as long as they stick to commercial passenger jets which either start or terminate in Europe, North America, Japan or Australia. Because of safety standards the chances of anything terrible happening on these flights is too miniscule to worry about.
Type 2: These people tend to suffer more anxiety than fear. They are worried about claustrophobia, heights, being out of control, and losing control and going mad/dying due to panic. In essence this type suffer from exactly the same kind of condition as an agoraphobic person, although in more specific circumstances.
Often type 2 people are not so concerned about the safety of the plane. They are not in any great doubt that the plane will land safely. There doubt is that they themselves will still be safe/alive/happy when the plane lands.
Obviously, these two types are heavily stylized and many people will straddle parts of both. But most people will fit into one predominantly and this is important.
The Course was Great for Type 1s
The two pilots and the group leaders did a great job of educating people as to the mechanics of flight. They explained how actually the plane climbs very gently and moves very little during turbulence, it only feels more because there is nothing to measure it against as there is when say a car goes up a hill. And at take off although it feels like you are climbing at a 45 degree angle it is actually never more than 11 or 12 degrees. Really very gentle.
What is more, a plane is never more than gliding distance away from an airport. Amazing to believe, but apparently even on a run say from London to New York across the Atlantic, in the extremely rare (literally much much less likely than winning the lottery) event of complete engine failure, a jet could glide to airports in Ireland, Iceland, Greenland, Canada or elsewhere. Indeed in one such event over the Atlantic an Air Transat Airbus 330 lost all power and glided to a safe landing. It’s total glide distance? 150 nautical miles!
The afternoon session with a psychologist was meant to be the focus for Type 2 people like me. I will come to that later. First, it was time for lunch.
Lunch
Major grumble time. A lot of people who suffer from anxiety are affected by what they eat. The course catered for vegetarians and diabetics etc, but it did not cater for wheat intolerance. What’s more tea and coffee were flowing like there was no tomorrow and all that caffeine, as well as biscuits, are bad for anxiety even if they can feel calming in the short term. Things may have changed now, but at the time this struck me as an area on which they could improve.
In the third and final part we will talk about the afternoon session with the psychologist and the all important flight!
Part three of the fear of flying course – click here.
being a vegetarian helped me reduce my body fats .`*