November 11, 2011
What is Fear of Flying?
Without getting too technical, the fear of flying is an anxiety disorder. Such fears can come about during a flight, or even well before a person gets to the airport. Often, the fear has more to do with elements of the flying experience that has little or nothing to do with the risks associated with the flight. Depending on the person, the fear of flying includes one or more of the following fears or concerns:
- Fear of heights
- Fear of being over water or having the aircraft land on water
- Fear of the dark (flying at night)
- Fear of the unknown
- Concerns about airline accidents or from hijacking, bombing, and other deliberate attacks
- Being in an enclosed or crowded space
- Being idle for long periods of time
- Loss of personal freedom
- The security screening process
- Concerns about turbulence and other weather conditions
- Not understanding the sights, sounds, and sensations of a normal flight
- Loss of control, or being dependent on technology or people
- Issues from past psychological or physical trauma
Signs you may be afraid of flying includes include becoming anxious while imagining yourself in elevators, having panic attacks thinking about boarding a plane, or going out of your way to avoid air travel.
How Does Fear of Flying Affect People?
Every person responds to fear of flying differently. A common reaction is to avoid flying as much as possible. There are a number of celebrities, including John Madden of video game and NFL football fame, who go out of their way to arrange their personal and professional lives to avoid flying. Other reactions include the kind of physical reactions associated with a white-knuckle flyer, such as sweating, rapid heartbeat and breathing, and nausea. Some reactions, like seeking answers to common questions about Airline safety , can have a positive effect on such people. Other reactions can be more dangerous for the passenger and other on the aircraft, such as using drugs or alcohol deal with the experience, or being abusive to other passengers, the cabin crew, or to airline representatives.
Statistics and the Fear of Flying
Often, the aviation safety experts point to the statistics associated with flying risk to show how flying is safe and that passengers and aspiring crew should not be afraid. For most who have anxieties associated with flying, these statistics are meaningless because in most cases, the fear is not associated with flight risks. In other words, risk and safety are two different things, and you can’t use risk statistics to convince someone that flying is safe. Even if the chance of something bad happening is a million to one, most people are worried about whether their flight is going the be the one that doesn’t end well.
Please keep coming back to read more on this topic in our subsequent blogs