Put the fear of flying to rest
Airports offer classes to help potential travelers
Allan Zerfas traces his fear of flying to his youth, when he learned of the 1959 plane crash that took the lives of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and “The Big Bopper.” His anxiety only deepened during his time in the Navy in the 1960s when he served on an aircraft carrier, and in the years afterward.
“We lost a lot of planes,” says Zerfas, 71, who is now retired. “I guess that’s what put me over the edge. I didn’t fly for many years. And when I did, I’d white-knuckle it. ... I’d scream, hang on to the seat in front of me. It was bad.”
But when he grew tired of driving hundreds of miles to avoid flying, Zerfas enrolled in a course to help him overcome his phobia at Milwaukee’s General Mitchell International Airport. “It worked,” he says. “I love flying now.”
Airline representatives emphasize that air travel is the safest mode of transportation. Last year’s crash of Asiana Flight 214 in San Francisco was the first incident of airline passenger deaths in the USA in 4½ years. Friday’s disappearance of a Malaysia Airlines flight bound for China is the first large-scale international incident since 2009.
Despite the statistics of safe air travel, particularly in the USA, the anxiety that once gripped Zerfas isn’t uncommon, even among some business travelers who have to fly for work.
The National Institute of Mental Health says research it has funded found that as many of 6.5% of Americans have a specific phobia, such as aviophobia, the fear of flying.
The good news is that there’s help available and sometimes right at the source, with several airports and overseas carriers hosting or offering classes, courses and stress aids to help fearful fliers.
At Phoenix Sky Harbor International, a fear-of-flying class convenes every month, with an advanced session allowing students to test their coping strategies on an actual flight. Milwaukee’s General Mitchell airport has been offering its course since 1988. San Francisco’s International airport hosts a fear-of-flying clinic that will have five workshops this year.
“The more people that are comfortable with flying, the more they’re going to use our airport,” says Harold Mester, spokesman for General Mitchell.
Of the students who have gone through the Milwaukee airport’s program, 93% have overcome their fears enough to take the commercial flight offered in the fourth session. “We’re generating potentially new customers every time they take this class,” Mester says. “We think it’s a natural fit.”
But fear of flying may be a topic many players in the aviation industry are reluctant to confront. Only a handful of airlines, primarily, overseas carriers such as British Airways and Virgin Atlantic, offer programs to help skittish fliers deal with their anxiety.
“They can do more (or) they will lose a lot of income from people who are afraid to fly,” says Lucas van Gerwen, director of VALK, a Dutch institute that studies and treats the fear of flying and has developed an app to help anxious passengers.
Takeoff and landing are the times passengers tend to feel the most jittery, but turbulence can be particularly frightening.
“Oftentimes, turbulence was a triggering event that set their fear,” Ron Nielsen, a retired commercial airline pilot with a counseling degree who teaches the monthly classes at the Phoenix airport, said of nervous fliers.
Though fear of flying is a specific phobia, passengers might have an array of fears that are triggered by the flying experience, such as claustrophobia or a fear of heights, experts say.
That’s the case with Scott Stossel, editor of The Atlantic and author of My Age of Anxiety, who has practiced breathing techniques and tossed back “a belt or two of Scotch” among other remedies to get through a flight.
After enduring a bumpy plane ride that left him nauseated when he was 9, Stossel says, his fear of becoming airsick led to his fear of flying. Then, “for me and a lot of people with a flying phobia, there’s claustrophobia about being trapped in a thin tube,” he says. The fear of flying “weaves together ... several separate anxieties and turbocharges them.”
But there are ways to cope. Muscle relaxation can be particularly effective, says Amy Bradshaw Hoppock, assistant professor of human factors and systems at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s Daytona Beach campus. Exposure therapy is also useful, whether it’s viewing pictures of a plane, getting used to the idea of flying through a computer-generated simulated environment or taking part in an actual flight.
“If it’s something affecting promotions or ability to see family or friends, if it’s something they can’t do on their own, having the knowledge there are therapies out there ... is good for them to know,” Bradshaw Hoppock says.
Allan Zerfas had to take the course at Milwaukee’s airport twice, but the second time seemed to be the charm. He now travels to Navy reunions and recently returned to his home in Florida from a trip to Long Beach, Calif.
“That was a long flight from Florida, and I really enjoyed it,” he says. “I go to so many places now, places that I thought, ‘I’ll never see.’ ”