A woman who was afraid of flying on commercial airliners spent some weeks working with a therapist to get over this paralyzing fear. The therapy culminated with a flight, about a week ago, in an 11-year-old Piper Warrior with our flight school’s most mild-mannered instructor. After an hour of ground instruction, the instructor, fearful person, and therapist were all on the ramp getting ready to sit down in the Warrior. Meanwhile, a 60-hour Private pilot had rented an identical Warrior from the school. Using his new noise-canceling headset, he thought that the engine was making an unfamiliar sound. He then removed the headset and heard a terrifying cacophony of sounds from the engine. He looked at the gauges, all of which were normal except for the fuel pressure, hovering almost at zero. Expecting imminent engine failure, he declared an emergency. The airport fire department raced out to the runway with two trucks. The pilot of the emergency aircraft made an uneventful landing and taxied the still-running plane to the ramp, with two fire trucks trailing behind, their lights flashing. The emergency pilot then parked the Warrior right next to the folks preparing to embark on the therapy flight.
[The minimum fuel pressure in a Warrior is 0.5 psi and it registers on an old analog gauge, which is accurate to perhaps +/- 2 psi. As it is a low-wing design, if the engine is running by definition there is sufficient fuel pressure to pull fuel up from the wings into the carburetor or fuel injection system. The owner of the flight school needed to go to New Hampshire later that afternoon and he took the emergency Warrior up there and back without incident.]
This reminded me of a woman I worked with about ten years ago. Her fear of flying prevented her from going to Los Angeles to see relatives. She spent months in therapy and had finally gotten over her fear to the point that she purchased a Boston to LAX ticket… for September 12, 2001.
Would be interesting to know if she got on the plane. If the therapy was completely successful, she should have.
I’m a pilot, too (not professionally), and love small airplanes, but sometimes I think the people who are afraid of flying are the sane ones. It’s not that flying isn’t safe. Statistically it is. But I’m guessing that if we all really knew what it was like to be on an airplane going down, most of us would consider 1 in 10 million to still be poor odds. At the very least, we wouldn’t see it as something to get the best price on, like a pair of sneakers. Granted, you could probably say the same thing about a lot of risks we take, but that doesn’t disprove my point. Plus, there’s something special about flying; being in a pressurized tube going nearly the speed of sound five miles up into the upper atmosphere is just hard to get your head around.
I’m surprised nobody has ever launched an airline aimed at nervous flyers. They would advertise that they pay the highest industry salaries for the best pilots, give them more rest, will cancel or divert flights to avoid even marginal weather, and will charge twice as much as anybody else to make this happen with free drinks. There’s got to be a fair number of people out there who aren’t so jaded as to think crossing the country at Mach 0.78 is something you should do on the cheap.
But, I’m obviously alone. Nobody seems fazed when Southwest’s over-the-hill 737s start falling apart in midair, as long as they don’t have to pay extra for bags.
Funny you mention Southwest Airlines because out of all the airlines out there they have probably the best maintained airplanes in the sky if for no other reason, the fact they actually have money for maintenance, well paid pilots and ground crews, etc. Remember, they’ve never killed a passenger yet. Generally I fly myself but when weather, distance or one too many the night before prevent, I tend to take Southwest never yet having have experienced a broken airplane unlike well, almost the rest of them. And like they say, everyone flies first class. They are actually not the cheapest option most of the time, but simply the best.
I think a lot of fears suffer a rote/helpful psychological dilution before the fearful one has time to identify the essential ingredients of their fear. Fears may be like the useful “bad” dreams in dreamwork: come to tell you something you haven’t noticed in your waking, rational life.
As I have noted here before, my assessment of flying options could be categorized as fearful, but I don’t subscribe to rote categories. It is essentially fact-based & I can either fly serenely or not fly at all, depending on a few stringent but simple facts. Factors beyond facts I don’t worry about.
I feel the same way about auto travel, so once was enough with a diva driver who steers with two fingers, keeps her arm out the window & carries on eye-contact conversations around the car at speed.
Jonathan: There is an airline for the folks you’re talking about… NetJets. There is no risk of terrorism on a NetJets plane. The pilots are far better rested and somewhat more experienced than a typical regional airline crew. The planes are much newer and have better avionics. NetJets UK sells its better-than-airline-standards at http://www.netjetsuk.com/why-netjets/safety/ and the U.S. equivalent is http://www.netjets.com/NetJets_Differences/Highest_Safety_Standards.asp
Yeah, Southwest has never killed a passenger… They have, however, killed a six year old boy riding in his family’s car. The NTSB identified the psychological pressure to complete their assigned task as one of the factors contributing to the crew’s decision to land at Midway despite unfavorable conditions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines_Flight_1248
phil: I guess if I got enough of my nervous flyer friends together and bought shared in a BBJ, that might actually be cost effective!
Andy: I suspect SouthWest’s perfect safety record is partly due to them being essentially a regional airline for much of their history (less exposure) some due to its fleet being young for much of its history, and just plain old luck of the draw. My worry is that their fleet is aging, and has had a rough life of frequent cycles. As for their maintenance, I’m not sure where you’re getting that. They’ve been cited for some pretty big violations in the maintenance department and I’m not familiar with any reliable information as to them spending more money than most carriers on maintenance. And I think when a hole gets blown out the top of your airplane so that passengers in the last row have their very own moon roof, I’d say that’s prima facia evidence of inadequate inspections. Maybe industry standard, but inadequate nonetheless for such an aging, high cycle fleet.