Fox news asks aviation and search-and-rescue experts what clues can help locate Malaysian crash

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Captain Tom interviewed on msnbc March 8th 2014

Capt Tom appeared on MSNBC Saturday morning to comment on the Malaysia Airlines crash.

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Flight Anxiety After 2014 Air Disasters: One Pilot’s Opinion

Flying can be a rather stressful activity. You’re boxed in a tight, closed space for several hours on end with people who may or may not have a cold, the flu, or Ebola, and every few hours you’re hit by a round of inexplicably unnerving turbulence. To add insult to our mental injury, we’ve had to overcome the fear surrounding our highly publicized year of aviation tragedies and anomalies, such as the disappearance of MH370, the shooting down of MH17, and the fatal demise of Virgin Galactic‘s VSS Enterprise. While it’s no wonder flight anxiety is on the rise, commercial pilot and licensed therapist Captain Tom Bunn explains why travelers shouldn’t be afraid to fly. 

For anxious flyers, what should have been one of the best of years of travel has been one of the worst. Since 2002, no U.S. airline has caused a passenger fatality. However, things that have happened outside the U.S. have thrown anxious flyers for a loop.

Those of us in the industry recognize that flying is safer in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand than it is in other areas. In these countries, airlines follow well-developed methods to ensure safety. All major airports are equipped with modern navigation systems that guide planes down to touchdown on the runway with great accuracy. Planes are tracked on airways by radar. As a backup, planes are equipped with devices that prevent mid-air collisions even if air traffic control makes a mistake. Other cockpit systems keep pilots from making navigational errors.

If an accident were to happen in one of these countries, it would—at least initially—seem inexplicable. Every past accident has led to measures to make sure that kind of accident cannot happen again.

Anxious flyers who are generally not part of the aviation industry may not understand that when a crash happens in some other parts of the world, it has no bearing whatsoever on the safety in areas where aviation is thoroughly up to date.

In addition, anxious flyers tend to avoid thinking about such details. They feel better when they can keep flying out of mind. In extreme cases, phobia keeps the person from looking skyward for fear they might panic at the unwanted sight of an airplane.

As one of the worst of years, the unthinkable happened: a plane simply vanished, and did so almost without a trace. All that was seen of it were a few blips on a radar screen as it ventured unaccountably off course, and all that was heard was a “handshake” signal to an information system the airline did not subscribe to.

I’m referring of course to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, and to the disbelief that in our day and time an airliner can just disappear. The reaction from both anxious and confident flyers has been the same: “That just can’t happen.”

Eyes stayed glued on cable television waiting for the thing that just can’t happen to “unhappen.” We needed to find that plane, for unless the unthinkable could be replaced with the thinkable, how could a person get psychological closure.

Anxious flyers said they were simply not going to fly again until the plane was found. There was a primal fear that if it happened to those people on board that flight, it could happen to me.

This is the crux of flight phobia. If fear is going to be ruled out, the possibility of disaster has to be ruled out. It does not seem that it matters whether a crash happens in one flight in a thousand, a million, or a billion. What matters is encapsulated in the statement, “planes crash, and since they do, if I get on one, it can happen to me.” It doesn’t matter to the anxious flyer how rare disaster is. It matters that disaster is possible.

This is where the border exists between phobia and non-phobia. A non-phobic can choose to stop thinking about possible disaster because it is improbable. If something awful is possible, the phobic flyer cannot stop thinking about it. Thinking about it, of course, triggers the release of stress hormones. Stress hormones, in turn, keep the mind focused on it.

The impossible quest is absolute safety. Without absolutes, the phobic cannot rest. Since absolute safety does not exist in aviation, the phobic’s mind cannot rest in the air. So, being in the air is ruled out.

Even though surface travel is not absolutely safe, the phobic’s mind is relieved by the idea that if something bad happens, they may be able to walk away from it.

As anxious flyers were reeling from Malaysia 370, there was Malaysia Flight 17. Still searching for closure, and searching in vain, another plane flown by the same airline, probably an airline was shot out of the sky.

Again, another thing that can’t happen happened. It begins to be easier to see how the mind is undermined. When things repeatedly happen that can’t happen, there is nothing a person can count on.

Many having given up on aviation forever were not surprised when an Air Algeria plane went off course, disappeared from radar, and crashed in “bad weather” in Mali.

When these events were capped off recently with the crash of an experimental spacecraft, messages on Twitter expressed hope, for the fear they had long considered irrational had been validated as making perfect sense.

How do I deal with this as a therapist and pilot? I asked people to consider automobile racing. When there is a crash at the track, do they fear driving on the road? No. Of course not. They know racing is different. I ask them to consider that they should understand that airline operations are vastly different in different parts of the world.

When a crash happens to an airline that they had never heard of before, they should ignore it. A crash in some part of the world where they would never fly means nothing about flying in the part of the world where they do fly. Military crashes need to be removed from concern; a military crash means nothing about the safety of flying on an established airline. Plus, flying experimental aircraft, riskier than automobile racing, is meaningless when it comes to airline flying.

So, put the worst of the year’s events into context. In spite of the notion that “planes do crash,” you do have to go back to November 2001 to find one that belonged to a major U.S. airline.

That may not be absolute safety, but if there is anything you could be doing right now that is safer than being on a modern U.S. airliner, I don’t know what it might be. Statistically, if you grab the “red eye” tonight from L.A. or San Francisco to New York, you will be safer sleeping on the plane than sleeping in your own bed.

For more flying advice from Captain Tom Bunn, check out:

• A Pilot’s Secrets to Conquering Your Fear of Flying
• The JetBlue Emergency Landing: A Pilot’s Perspective
• Afraid to Speak Up? Cockpit Politics & Asiana 214 Crash
• A Pilot’s Perspective on the Disappearance of MH370

By Captain Tom Bunn for PeterGreenberg.com. 

 

 

 

After tragedies, how can an anxious flyer find the courage to set foot on a plane?

By Captain Tom Bunn

 

The dull roar of the airplane was rapidly becoming the only noise I could hear as we bumped up and down and rocked side to side, 32,000 feet in the air above the Caribbean Sea. I could feel tears in my eyes, but I was concerned that if I took my lorazepam then – my first time ever using the anti-anxiety medication – I would have an allergic reaction and nowhere to go because I was hurtling at 550mph in a metal death trap.

Virginia, the stranger next to me, had taken a similar pill before takeoff. So had her two sisters, whom she was vacationing with. She encouraged me to take mine. The flight attendant happened to be at my side with our white wines.

“Is this normal turbulence?” I asked, putting all of my courage into the positive response that had to be coming. “No, I think we’re flying over some unusually severe weather.” Eyes wide, I looked at Virginia and took the pill.

There are people who don’t particularly like flying, and there are people who start feeling like the room is closing in on them as soon as they book plane tickets online. Their anxiety levels also skyrocket when there are reports of a catastrophe like the Germanwings flight that crashed into the French Alps this week.

Flying is the safest form of transportation, but that doesn’t matter when you are convinced that the small bag of salted peanuts you just ate is your last meal.

“The phones have not stopped ringing,” said captain Tom Bunn, a trained pilot and licensed therapist who estimates that he has worked with “tens of thousands” of people to overcome their fear of flying since starting his popular Soar course in the 1980s.

Plane crashes can lead to a spike in this phobia-fighting business, but sometimes they drive people away from the industry altogether. Bunn said that nobody called him after September 11, because people did not want to get over their fear of flying. A similar thing happened after MH370 went missing in March 2014. “People were saying things like ‘I’m never going to get on an airplane again if they don’t find that plane’,” he explained.
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Bunn said it is individuals who need to be in control and probably have trust issues who tend to be afraid to fly. “They are people whose anxieties push them towards control and escape,” he said. And the problem is, he notes, that you cannot escape from a plane. After he said this, my heart rate increased and my lungs felt like they were constricting.

Bunn’s strategy for overcoming this feeling relies on the theory that the positivity-inducing hormone oxytocin can be applied to flights. Mothers might remember that feeling from nursing a child, other people when they have had good sex. Researchers are optimistic about oxytocin’s potential to have an anti-anxiety effect.

“If you can remember a moment when there was good sexual chemistry between you and another person and you could feel your defences melting, that’s oxytocin doing that,” Bunn counselled me. “Just pretend that your lover has a picture by their face of a plane door closing in, then you switch to a picture of a plane taxiing out and then a picture of the plane taking off.”

Fear-of-flying expert Dr Martin Seif adds that avoidance helps quell anxiety in the short-term, but it reinforces anxiety in the long-term. “You have got to get on the dance floor and make mistakes, and then learn from the mistakes,” he said.

He’s right. Less than 10 years ago, I would not have been on any plane. That’s why, at 18, I would seclude myself in the quietest room in our house and listen to an exuberant British man instruct me to imagine my ancestor’s experiences to account for the source of my fear. This required relying heavily on memories that I don’t actually have and almost certainly did not happen.

The program also used positive emotions in a similar way to Bunn’s Soar course, which manifested for this program as me lying in that room and imagining the people I love the most as I pinched the fleshy area between the thumb and forefinger, to be pinched again during takeoff or turbulence – a sort of Pavlovian response.

It was weird and scientifically dubious, but it worked. Sometimes I even enjoyed turbulence on flights. But these personal victories took a sharp turn sometime in the past three years, and I now once again rely on the medically discouraged combination of lorazepam and whiskey.

Bunn says such backtracks are unusual, but he is confident it can be fixed. He had one final reassuring thing to add: “There are going to be procedures put in place immediately after this crash that’s going to keep this from happening again,” Bunn said. “At least people aren’t going to have to get on an airplane worried about the same thing happening.”

For now, I’m sticking to the miniature bottles of whiskey.

 

 

 

 

This is why you’re afraid of flying—and how to get over it

By Captain Tom Bunn

 

It’s perfectly reasonable to be afraid of flying. According to several studies, even pilots get flight anxiety.

Some fearful fliers are concerned about the safe arrival of the plane. Others are not afraid the plane will crash; they fear “crashing” psychologically. They are afraid they will have a panic attack in an environment where they have neither control of the situation, nor any means of emotional relief.

Paradoxically, it is cruising—the safest part of the flight—that causes the greatest psychological stress.

At cruising altitude, of course, the plane is far from the ground, and thus far from your most logical escape route. But it’s also when passengers are most likely to encounter turbulence. Most of us know we can keep anxiety about flying at bay if we stay occupied. When the flight is smooth, the anxious flier might accomplish this by focusing on a book, music, or a movie. But when the plane feels like it is falling, even for a momentary jolt or drop, stress hormones are released. These hormones force us to pay attention to danger—in other words, to notice that we’re suspended 30,000 feet in the air.

In turbulence, a plane might drop again and again. Each drop triggers its own shot of stress hormones, causing stress to build up. As stress levels rise, cognitive ability declines. Without you being aware of it, your ability to discern and test reality fades or become completely disabled. In this state you might begin to believe the turbulence you are experiencing is not, in fact, normal. In other words, it becomes possible to experience your plane falling out of the sky, even if it isn’t, and to panic accordingly.

It’s a self-reinforcing cycle. People with severe fear of flying will leave even a perfectly normal flight with the impression that they have survived a life-threating situation. That stress leaves its imprint on the brain’s stress system, and can condition you to associate flying with mortal danger. No matter how many good flights you subsequently have, you will feel anxiety before and during the flight.

The good news is, you can reverse this process. To combat fear of flying, or aviophobia, my fear-of-flight treatment program SOAR helps fliers to turn off their stress response when flying.

How do we shut the stress response down? We look for a source of oxytocin in the person’s interpersonal life. Oxytocin, also known as the “love hormone,” is well-known for inspiring feelings of trust and intimacy, and can interfere with your brain’s fear response.

Triggers for oxytocin release in females include nursing a child, seeing a newborn for the first time, good sexual chemistry, and gazing into your dog’s eyes. In males, one reliable source of the love hormone, other than his dog, is an orgasm. So, in training, I direct men with a fear of flying to recall a moment of sexual afterglow. I ask the client to imagine his partner’s face, touch, and voice, all of which are already strongly associated with oxytocin production.

With oxytocin circulating in the brain, the amygdala—regardless of what it has learned to perceive as danger—is kept from releasing stress hormones. Thus, by consciously linking various moments of the flight experience to an oxytocin-producing moment, we can keep the brain’s fear system shut-down during flight. This can also be applied to non-flying situations.

Fear of flying, and flight-related demand for anti-anxiety medication, often seem to increase after plane crashes make it into the news. In particular, the Malaysia Airlines flight 370, which completely disappeared, continues to haunt people with a fear of flying because it lacks closure. I’ve heard my clients say, “Unless that plane is found, I’m never flying again.”

I believe that the Germanwings flight 9525, which crashed Mar. 24 in the French Alps, will be accepted more easily. Why? It has a fix, and the fix is already in place in the US. When a pilot needs to leave the cockpit, protocol calls for a flight attendant to enter the cockpit and remain inside by the door. This way, there are two people in the cockpit at all times, and if necessary, the flight attendant can open the cockpit door for the returning pilot.

Since these protocols will likely be put into place across Europe, the Germanwings crash may seem a less daunting worry. Anticipatory anxiety can be worse than flight anxiety; anything that rules out one more source of anticipatory anxiety—in this case, a change in protocol—goes a long way toward giving anxious passengers relief.

Given this year’s several highly-mediatized flying incidents, aviophobia should be more seriously discussed and treated. After all, anyone boarding a plane is putting their life in the hands of an unknown pilot and co-pilots, and giving up their ability to escape from the situation. They should know that there are ways to train the mind to inhibit its stress reaction, and to reliably control panic.

 

 

 

How people deal with a fear of flying

By Quentin Fottrell (featuring Capt Tom Bunn)

 

A lot of people have fear and anxiety about traveling by airplane. And it’s understandably heightened after high profile crashes, like the Germanwings plane that went down in the French Alps on Tuesday with 150 people on board.

And they won’t be assured by seeing statistics that show how safe commercial flying really is.

“I’ve had a lot of inquiries from people who are afraid to fly this week,” says Tom Bunn, a former airline captain and president of SOAR, a Westport, Conn.-based organization that helps people overcome fear of flying and the author of the self-help book “SOAR: The Breakthrough Treatment for Fear of Flying.” (Perhaps less surprisingly, Bunn has also received several calls from members of the media.)

Although it varies in terms of severity, fear of flying is not that unusual. “I’m the first one to acknowledge that everybody, on some level, is afraid to fly, that’s normal,” says Patrick Smith, a Boston-based pilot who has flown Boeing 747 airplanes around the world, and is the author of the “Ask the Pilot” blog and the book “Cockpit Confidential: Everything You Need to Know About Air Travel.” “The accident rate is still down, considerably, from what it was 20 or 30 years ago, when multiple large-scale accidents were the norm, year after year,” he says. “In years past, we didn’t have a 24/7 news cycle with media outlets spread across multiple platforms, all vying simultaneously for your attention.”

“These fixations tend to be short-lived, but they are intense enough to give people the impression that flying has become more dangerous in recent years, when in fact it’s become safer,” Smith says. “The cluster of serious accidents over the past year, tragic as they’ve been, is unlikely to change the overall trend.” They include an AirAsia Flight 8501 from Indonesia to Singapore, which crashed into the Java sea on Dec. 28, 2014 killing 162 people, and an Air Algerie jetliner traveling to Algiers from Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso on July 24, 2014 with 116 people on board. On July 17, 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashed in the Donetsk region of Ukraine, killing all 298 people onboard, and on March 8, 2014, Malaysia Airlines flight 370 disappeared while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people onboard. (Read: It may take years to find Flight 370)

Tragedies such as these and the Germanwings crash can have a big impact on fliers, especially those who must fly regularly for business. It took Elizabeth Hudson Willingham, 53, co-founder of a software development company in Charlottesville, Va., a decade after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 to fly again with relative ease. “I started taking trains and driving,” she says. One particular train trip from Charlottesville to Chicago took her 17 hours, due to delays, and it took her 24 hours to get back. (She took a sleeper car.) “I think some of it had to do with being a mother. When I was single parenting a young child, I had a lot of conflicted feelings about leaving her and that lack of control about putting my life in someone else’s hands,” she says.

For Willingham, it helped to share her fears with others. “There is a stigma against fear of flying in the business community,” she says. “Some people think it makes you look weak.” When she opened up about her fear, however, others with similar feelings came out of the woodwork. And now that her daughter is 24 and independent, her flight anxiety has dramatically improved and she has traveled by plane to many countries, although she usually doesn’t sleep well the night before. “Weather is still my nemesis,” she says.

Airlines may cancel some flights due to bad weather, but if a customer cancels a flight due to bad weather, they will almost always have to pay a cancellation or “change” fee of up to $200. “It’s a huge dilemma, knowing you will be penalized,” she says.

There are, of course, many reasons why people suffer from a fear of flying — and not all of them are related to air crashes. Jaime Nanci, 38, a musician and milliner based in Dublin, Ireland, used to love flying until he discovered that his father had a fear of flying and, since then, started having panic attacks and nightmares (about sleepwalking on a plane and accidentally opening the emergency doors) weeks before a flight, especially before he’s due to take long-haul flights to visit his parents, who now live in Australia. “I have tried pretty much everything to get over the fear, from Xanax and whisky to meditation and hypnosis. Nothing works,” he says. “On board, I am usually just trying to take my mind off all the possible scenarios by reading or watching a film.”

“We ask people to recall a moment of good sexual chemistry or a time when a mother nurses a child.”
Tom Bunn, president of SOAR, which helps people overcome a fear of flying

Taking drugs for a flight to ease anxiety can backfire, says SOAR’s Tom Bunn, “and it’s not a long-term solution.” Research has shown that anti-anxiety medication doesn’t always work for people who have flight anxiety. One Stanford University study found that alprazolam (or more commonly known under the brand name Xanax) “increases physiological activation under acute stress conditions and hinders therapeutic effects of exposure in flying phobia.” Willingham prefers a stiff drink to medication because she never wants to feel groggy before a business meeting. Bunn agrees, saying it should be a last resort. “You should only prescribe benzodiazepine when every other method has failed and, yet, some people take them like candy,” he says.

Trying to combat flight anxiety is not an exact science. Aside from breathing techniques and mental exercises to focus the mind, Bunn uses a method that he says helps people produce oxytocin, a hormone produced by the brain and, according to studies, plays a role in helping to reduce anxiety by blocking stress-related hormones.

“We ask people to recall a moment of good sexual chemistry or a time when a mother nurses a child,” he says. Oxytocin is thought to be released before sexual intercourse as people lose the fear of becoming physically intimate, he says, and during lactation so that the mother focuses on the needs of the child. “It’s very basic psychology.” SOAR has worked with around 10,000 people over the last 30 years, Bunn says, and charges around $300 per client.

Some families choose to fly separately. Christine Schnabl and her 5-year-old son were killed when Air France Flight 447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris crashed on June 1, 2009 over the Atlantic Ocean with 216 passengers and 12 crew onboard. Her husband Fernando and their daughter were on a separate flight. While news reports at the time said that they took different flights to maximize their rewards points, some families do it solely for safety reasons. Rebecca Eckler, a Toronto-based author and writer, recently wrote that she never travels with her family.

“This may seem very far-fetched to many to worry so much about being on the same flight,” she wrote last year. “And, it is. But I cannot live with the thought that if our entire family traveled on the same flight and something happened.”

 

 

 

 

9 Ways to Ease a Fear of Flying

By Joanne Chen (featuring Capt Tom Bunn)

 

Feeling stressed about a trip? Follow these expert tips for easing your fear of flying.

If you become an anxious mess every time you board a plane, you’re not alone. “It’s a fear that’s particularly difficult to tackle because we need repetition to overcome our fears,” says Reid Wilson, Ph.D., a Chapel Hill, N.C.-based psychologist who has worked with American Airlines to devise fear-of-flying programs. “When it comes to flying, repetition is costly. Most people don’t fly frequently enough.” That’s why therapists often work with patients to dissect what exactly might be bothering them, whether it’s the fear of heights, enclosed spaces, or not being in control—and then zeroing in on those issues. But what if you haven’t resolved them yet, and you take off next week? We asked Wilson and other experts for some quick solutions.

1. Learn how planes work. According to the National Safety Council, the odds of dying from a car crash in a lifetime is 1 in 112; the odds of dying from “air and space transport incidents,” which includes airplane flights, is 1 in 8,357. The problem with these stats, of course, is that it contains the word “one,” says Tom Bunn, a former Pan Am pilot who is now a licensed therapist. So it’s helpful to understand how an airplane works, says Bunn, who also runs SOAR, a program to help fearful fliers. “Everything you really need to fly a plane, there are two, three, or four of them, on board,” says Bunn. “Anything that can break, you have multiples of it.”

2. Understand turbulence. Most airplanes can handle up to 5 G’s of turbulence, and all are built to sustain at least 2.5. In mild turbulence G-forces vary the same as in a moving elevator, from .8 to 1.2 G’s. Moderate is from .6 to 1.4 G’s; severe is from .4 to 1.6 G’s. If you need convincing during a flight, download the SOAR app; among other tools for calming your fears on-board, it contains a G-force meter. The next time you hit bumpy skies, you can whip it out, read how much G-force the turbulence is causing, and confirm there’s no reason to worry.

3. Train your brain. The amygdala, the emotional region of the brain, is wired to stress out a little when it feels like you’re falling. Take the edge off by doing this exercise before you fly: Ask a friend to take one step up on a flight of stairs with you; now turn around so that you’re both facing the floor, and put your arms around each other. Now jump down to the floor together. You just experienced free-fall—exactly what you fear that the plane will do, but less terrifying. Ideally, your brain will associate the sensation of dipping, albeit in small part, with that positive experience.

4. Focus on the purpose of your trip. Travel isn’t about about sitting in a plane for three hours—it’s usually about exploring a new culture or seeing a loved one. So keep a picture of the destination or person on your smart phone. Notice the details, including the faces, shapes, lights, colors and other vivid features. Notice how these details awaken your intentions for the trip and remind you what the trip is about. “Focusing on the higher purpose of your trip puts the fear into perspective,” Jonathan Bricker, Ph.D., affiliate associate professor of psychology at the University of Washington in Seattle.

5. Accept your anxiety. “The more you don’t want to feel worried, the more that feeling will come back,” says Bricker. So instead, be open to it. Notice the sensation in your stomach and other parts of your body. Let it come and go. Don’t judge it. Just observe it. “Now mentally pack it into an imagined carry-on bag, which you can store above and below you—the idea being that ‘the anxiety is with me, but I bring it with me and still travel wherever I want,’" says Bricker, who uses this concept as part of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, a program with the goal of managing anxiety as opposed to fighting it.

6. Try relaxation exercises. Wilson suggests this breathing exercise: Fill your lower lungs, then your upper lungs with air; then exhale slowly while relaxing the muscles in your in your face, jaw, shoulders, and stomach. Turn your attention to the sound of your breath; if worries interrupt your focus, observe them coming and going, then go right back to focusing on your breath and the present. Wilson also suggests the “10-Second Grip”: Grip the arm rests while contracting your upper and lower arms, stomach, and legs. Hold for ten seconds, then let go as you take in a nice full breath, and then exhale slowly. Repeat. “If you can loosen the muscles in your body, your anxiety will reduce automatically,” says Wilson, who is also founder of anxieties.com.

7. Avoid alcohol and coffee. What’s worse than feeling anxious? Feeling dehydrated, sick, possibly drunk, and anxious. Plus, alcohol is a crutch for avoiding your anxiety as opposed to managing it, says Wilson. If you truly need chemical help to calm down, talk with your doctor about getting an appropriate prescription medication for use before boarding or during your flight. (It takes about 30 to 45 minutes to take effect.) While there’s no scientific evidence that natural remedies can treat jet lag, it wouldn’t hurt to try a calming herbal tea as opposed to coffee (which can exacerbate jitters).

8. Tap into your oxytocin supply. Oxytocin is the hormone produced during breastfeeding, when you see a baby animal, or romantic arousal. When your body is secreting this so-called “love hormone,” it has trouble secreting stress hormone at the same time, says Bunn. So try this next time you feel anxious on board: Envision feeding an infant, picking up a kitten, or cuddling with your partner while working a picture of a plane into the scene (OK, it’s hard, but perhaps your significant other, or—in the other scenarios, another person—is holding the picture nearby); in doing so, you encourage the flow of oxytocin as opposed to cortisol in your bloodstream. Practicing before your flight will slowly nudge your brain toward associating planes with warm feelings.

9. Keep track of the flight. When the pilot announces how long the flight will take, write it down. Find a map in your in-flight magazine and draw a line between your departure city and arrival city. Then divide the line up to coincide with the number of hours of your trip. Set your phone alarm to mark every hour. “In Alcoholics Anonymous, you’re told to take one day at a time; here, you can tell yourself to take one hour at a time,” says Bunn.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By CASEY SMITH World Business Writer

Former Oklahoma State University professor John Abernathy’s fear of flying surfaced suddenly.

The early morning flight Abernathy took from Reno, Nevada, to Denver in 2009 wasn’t what would be generalized as a “bad flight,” he said. But for some reason Abernathy said he was overcome with an intense bout of motion sickness during the aircraft’s ascent up the mountains.

“I got sick. I got miserable,” Abernathy said. “Up until that point I absolutely loved to fly. Flying was a treat. From that moment on flying has been a difficult task.”

The fear that morning caught Abernathy off guard, he said. It was inconvenient as well, because Denver was a layover. Abernathy needed to get on another plane to reach his final destination in Birmingham, Alabama.

“It was a white-knuckles (situa

tion),” he said. “I had to force myself to get on the airplane to get home.”

As soon as he made it to Birmingham, Abernathy told his wife that he was never flying again.

Flying is a true phobia for probably 2 to 3 percent of the population, said Dr. Matt Meyer, medical director at Tulsa’s Laureate Psychiatric Clinic & Hospital. Probably as many as 30 percent to 40 percent of people, he said, would say that they are anxious or uncomfortable fliers.

“A lot of people who are afraid of flying, there’s no specific trigger for it,” Meyer said. “It’s just the anxiety of flying. Nothing bad has to happen for people to be fearful.”
Coping strategies

People who have a true phobia of flying probably won’t even entertain the thought of getting on a plane, Meyer said.

Those who fall into the category of uncomfortable fliers might employ various strategies to address the anxiety such as practicing repeat exposure, relaxation strategies or distraction techniques.

“For most people it’s very manageable,” Meyer said. “A combination of exposure — the more they fly the less anxious they become — and using as-needed medications.”

To people who are afraid to fly, it doesn’t matter that statistically airplanes are a safer mode of transport than cars, said K. Renee Marlow, a licensed clinical social worker in Tulsa.

“It doesn’t feel that way and it doesn’t sound that way,” Marlow noted, when two people are killed in a car crash but 300 might be killed when an aircraft goes down.

Of the 99 commercial flight accidents that occurred during 2012 worldwide, 11 were fatal, according to United Nations agency the International Civil Aviation Organization. Those accidents killed a total of 388 people.

Comparatively, during the same year in the United States there were 30,800 fatal motor vehicle crashes resulting in a total of 33,561 deaths.

“Logic doesn’t apply,” said Mike Lewis, who works as a buyer for the American Airlines maintenance base in Tulsa. “I understand how airplanes work and that it’s the safest mode of travel, and I can’t get my mind to wrap around that.”

Lewis has been afraid to fly since young adulthood. Growing up, Lewis said his family flew frequently and he loved the experience. But in 1997, when Lewis was about to get on his first flight since sophomore year of high school, he suddenly became fearful.

“In the parking lot I started vomiting before we even boarded,” Lewis said.

Since that time, Lewis said, he’s become nauseous and anxious leading up to virtually every flight he’s taken. He hasn’t flown in a decade, despite free flights being a perk of working for American Airlines.

When Lewis began working for American in 2000 he would frequently eat lunch on a parked plane to try to desensitize himself. But that didn’t work, he said, and neither has hypnosis, therapy, medication or other techniques.

Fear of flying could be triggered by a traumatic incident on an airplane or a traumatic incident happening to a loved one on a plane, Marlow said.

But often the issue isn’t the fear of flying itself, she said. Rather the problem is some sort of claustrophobia, trust issue, panic disorder or general anxiety disorder that manifests leading up to a plane trip and on an airplane.
Root cause of fear

Marlow’s treatments for those afraid to fly vary depending on the root cause of the issue. Techniques that she uses include cognitive behavioral therapy, hypnosis and desensitization techniques.

Abernathy, who now teaches accounting at Kennesaw State University in Georgia, eventually came across the SOAR program online and purchased the curriculum. SOAR is a program founded by former commercial pilot and licensed therapist Tom Bunn to help people overcome their fear of flight by learning to control fear, panic and claustrophobia automatically.

“In the back of my mind, I always knew that because I had flown before, this is something I can overcome, I can get back to,” Abernathy said.

The program helped Abernathy. It allows him to put one foot in front of the other and get on a plane, he said.

But between the terrible flying experience Abernathy had in 2009 and purchasing the SOAR program in early 2013, he flew probably three or four times — only when it was absolutely necessary.

One year when Abernathy and his family were living in Stillwater, his fear led to them canceling tickets for a flight from Oklahoma City to California to visit his wife’s family. Instead they drove to Albequerque and from there boarded a train en route to California.

“This is how bad it gets — turning a 3½-hour flight into a two-day trip,” Abernathy said. “We turned it into a family trip, seeing the Midwest, but there was still no way I was getting on a flight.”

Abernathy said he had been under significant stress when the fear began. He was defending his dissertation and was a first-time parent.

Marlow said that anxiety over untimely death can manifest itself after people have a major life event such as becoming parents.

“Sometimes there’s an event (such as having a child) that makes you think about what would happen if something happened to you,” Marlow said.
‘Terrified flier’

Megan Baker, a mother of four who lives in Tulsa, said her fear of flying began after having children.

Baker had not flown for several years. When she was pregnant with her youngest child, who is now almost 6, she took a flight from Tulsa to visit her sister in Albany, New York.

It was on that flight that the fear began. She became dizzy, physcially tense and claustrophobic.

The anxiety is expensive, Baker said. When she must fly, she always buys a first-class seat so that she will have more room and be sitting with people who fly often. She also tries to only book direct flights so that she won’t have to go through the discomfort of multiple plane trips.

It also affects her socially, Baker said. If she wasn’t afraid to fly, she’d see her sister more often.

If both Baker and her husband must travel, she insists that they take separate flights so that their children wouldn’t lose both parents if something happened.

“I think just the fear of leaving them without a mother, that’s why we fly separately,” Baker said. “I think (it’s) not having any control over your circumstances and coupled with leaving your kids without a mom.”

On one business trip, Baker looked up the SOAR program while panicking in the terminal, she said.

Baker still describes herself as a “terrified flier” who has not totally overcome the issue after going through the material. But the program’s suggestion of meeting the aircraft’s crew before takeoff has helped tremendously, she said.

“I always go meet the pilots,” Baker said. “They never mind it and they’re so nice.”

Talking with and seeing the face of the people in charge of the aircraft makes the experience more personal and less scary, she said. She also speaks with the flight attendants before takeoff to let them know that she’s a nervous flier.

“Not feeling so alone in that fear has helped a lot,” she said.

The act of naming and claiming any type of fear can help a person deal with it, Marlow said.

“Admitting you have a fear is one of the first steps,” Marlow said. “We all have things we’re uncomfortable about.”

 

 

 

How to overcome your fear of flying
By Kimber Crandall
Published June 20, 2012
FoxNews.com

It’s an opportunity most people take for granted: the ability to book a plane ticket, board a flight and enjoy a vacation without being plagued by a fear of flying.

Samson Frankel says he once drove three-thousand miles from New York to Florida to avoid flying. “I remember looking up at a plane, watching it fly above and thinking to myself, 'There’s no way I can go up there into the clouds,'” Frankel said. “It’s just very all encompassing. You just do not want to take a step on an airplane under any circumstance.”

Frankel isn’t alone in experiencing these feelings. Carey Reilly says she sent her kids on a flight to California with her sister while she stayed home. She missed out on the memories at Disneyland and many other family vacations. “I knew it was safe, but I just couldn’t get myself to embrace that knowledge so I let it paralyze myself for 20 years,” Reilly said. Reilly says on another occasion, she was supposed to fly with her sisters to California to be on the TV show Family Feud. By the time she arrived at the airport, fear had overtaken her. “I had a full blown panic attack,” Reilly said. “I absolutely freaked out. My sister came over and I’m screaming at her, ‘don’t touch me.’ I wouldn’t get on the plane so I ruined the trip for everybody.”

It’s a fear that isolates and limits not only the personal, but the business lives of those it affects. As an event planner, Beth Shubert says she sometimes turned down work projects out-of-state. “You dread the trip going,” Shubert said. “You get to your destination, and then you dread the return flight. You end up ruining your trip. Instead of opportunities or vacations being wonderful times, they end up being something you dread... It’s terrible.” Frankel, Shubert and Reilly all now fly - thanks to “Captain Tom”, as they call him.

Captain Tom Bunn is a retired pilot and licensed therapist. In 1982, he established SOAR - a program aimed at helping everyone fly successfully. Since then, he has assisted thousands of people as they conquer their fear. “He has literally changed my life,” Shubert said.

Frankel says his first flight in more than a decade was after taking Bunn’s course. He flew all the way to Israel for business meetings. “It was amazing,” Frankel said. “It was a 12-hour flight and I was 6,000 miles away from New York, and that’s probably the furthest I’d gone in my entire life.”

So how did Frankel, Shubert and Reilly learn to fly again? Bunn tells us there’s a series of steps he works on with his clients. He encourages them to first try to meet the pilot when boarding. “Giving up control is a major issue, and if you can meet the person that has the control, it’s kind of like then you have a kinship with the person who does have the control,” Bunn said. “You find out they’re real – not just a voice.” Next, Bunn encourages clients to practice an exercise to lower stress hormones once they build up. “It’s an exercise I call ‘5, 4, 3, 2, 1,’” Bunn said. “You will first find something to focus on more or less straight ahead and use that as your focus point.”

The captain says count five things you can see, hear and touch. Then, count to four things you can see, hear and touch - and so on down until you get to one. “It takes about two minutes and by the time you do that – the stress hormones are pretty much gone, maybe totally gone,” Bunn said. “And the particular thing about stress hormones is that when they’re kicking around, it forces you to focus on something that’s problematic. So if you keep focusing on it, you increase stress hormones. But if you can get rid of the stress hormones by using the ‘5, 4, 3, 2, 1’ – then your mind is free to focus where you want to.”
Bunn says there are two main parts to the problem: worries about physical and emotional safety. “Both of the things need to be worked with, but if it’s simply a question of ‘is the plane safe?’ Then, you can get a lot of information on the Internet about that,” Bunn said.

He says as individuals with physical concerns learn more about how flying works, the more reassured and calm they will be. For those dealing with emotional concerns, Bunn says he works with clients on determining what moment sets them off and figures out how to shut down the fear system.Bunn encourages his clients to think about ‘what is’ instead of ‘what if.’ “There’s really no limit to things that you could come up with if you’re imaginative that could go wrong and none of them are,” Bunn said. “So if you can shift away from 'What if the wings fall off, what if there’s a terrorist on the plane, what if this, what if that?'...and away from the imagination, that helps a lot.”

While some people can learn how to successfully fly on their own without professional assistance, Bunn says others require more help. “If a person has a mild problem and doesn’t have panic, that helps a lot,” Bunn said. “But if the person has trouble with panic on the ground, it’s definitely going to be a problem on the plane and there’s no way I know to control it unless we set up a way to automatically control it.”

 

Captain Tom interviewed on msnbc July 6th 2013

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TV stars, travel bloggers not immune to fear of flying

 

Despite recent crashes, flying fears can be overcome
Harriet Baskas NBC News contributor

July 29, 2013 at 12:20 PM ET

Even the most experienced travelers may be feeling some anxiety in the aftermath of the July 6th crash of Asiana Airlines Flight 214 at San Francisco International Airport and the rough landing of a Southwest Airlines plane with collapsed nose gear on July 22 at LaGuardia Airport.

“There are always incidents, but these were bigger than the ones you have day in and day out, like emergency landings or smoke in the cabin,” said SOAR, Inc. founder Tom Bunn, a 76 year-old retired airline captain-turned therapist who’s been counseling fearful fliers since 1982. “In the Asiana crash almost everyone got out. And with the Southwest 737 nose gear problem it was not really life-threatening. Still, it’s understandable that people will be concerned.”

But concern doesn’t have to lead to fear, said Bunn, whose forthcoming book “Soar: The Breakthrough Treatment for Fear of Flying” offers travelers strategies for dealing with flight-related anxiety.

Bunn’s SOAR tips include concentration exercises to control "fight or flight" hormones, focusing on the “what is” aspect of a flight instead of an imagined “what if” checklist, understanding the natural noises an airplane will make during a flight and making an effort to meet the captain before the flight. “That helps you from feeling alone,” said Bunn. “It also puts you in personal contact with control.”

Those strategies worked for Beth Shubert, a 53 year-old event planner and designer in Glen Rock, N.J who used to turn down vacation ideas or any business travel that required flying.

“I have a vivid imagination, which helps in work, but when a plane crash happened I’d feel everything and imagine what it was like to be on the plane. That became a movie that played over and over and made me more fearful to fly,” said Shubert.

When her parents moved to Florida about 10 years ago, Shubert decided she could no longer avoid flying and found the SOAR program online. “What worked for me was learning concrete facts and statistics about what makes flying the safest way to travel and not letting my mind wander and worry about what could happen,” said Shubert, who was eventually able to fly to London to celebrate her 20th wedding anniversary.

The fear of not being fine in airplane is what holds many people back from an interesting job, a promotion at work, the opportunity to visit family or the chance to go on a fun weekend with friends, said Pat Rowe, spokeswoman for Milwaukee’s General Mitchell International Airport. The airport has been sponsoring a course called “Overcoming Your Fear of Flying” for 26 years and Rowe said interest remains steady, “with no spikes in the aftermath of aviation incidents.”

The course culminates with a real airplane flight, which gives students a chance to try out their newly learned travel skills in a real-world environment.

“The program also supports the airlines flying out of MKE,” said Rowe, “which now have hundreds of new passengers who are able to fly comfortably.”

Shubert's experience in overcoming her anxieties has led her to advise those who find themselves approaching the jetway with trepidation to “focus on the fact that the plane is in the air and that you are going forward. You are fine.”

Find more by Harriet Baskas on StuckatTheAirport.com and follow her on Twitter at @hbaskas.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Flight School for Letting Go of Fear
by Eve Nagler, The New York Times

With her hands on the controls of a United Airlines 727 jet, Marie Garabedian of East Hartford said, "I feel a little overwhelmed."

Mrs. Garabedian was sitting in the cockpit of a jet parked at Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks and United Capt. Tom Bunn was explaining the procedures for takeoff and landing.

She was not in training to become a pilot. Instead, she was learning how to be a passenger without going into a panic. Her recent visit to the cockpit was the culmination of Captain Bunn's course called Seminars on Aeroanxiety Relief.

Sitting in the pilot's chair helps fearful fliers "feel a kinship with the person in the front of the plane," Captain Bunn said. "When they're sitting in the back, they can imagine what the pilot is doing up here," he said. "It gives them a feeling of control."

About 25 minutes later, Mrs. Garabedian left the airplane beaming with pride, confident that she was well on her way to conquering her fear of flying. "I feel like I belong here," she said.

An estimated 25 million American adults are afraid to fly, according to a survey done by the Boeing Company. Statistics from the University of Michigan show that flying is 33 times safer than driving don't seem to ease the minds of anxious fliers.

Captain Bunn is a licensed therapist in addition to being an airline pilot. He has been offering an aeroanxiety program for 13 years. Captain Bunn said fearful fliers are invariably intelligent and highly imaginative people who feel trapped and helpless in an airplane because they cannot "fight or flee," the natural human response to fear.

So, Captain Bunn said, when fearful fliers hear a sound or feel a bump during the course of a normal flight, their imaginations take over, and they fantasize a horrible scenario completely unrelated to reality. "It's like they're going into their own movie," he says. "They conjure up every television and newspaper picture they've seen of airplane crashes and actually see in their heads the airplane they are riding in going down in flames."

That's what happened to Mrs. Garabedian. In April 1990, she was vacationing in Reno with her husband, Keith, when she refused to take their return flight home. She went into a panic after seeing a newspaper headline that said air turbulence was expected over the Rocky Mountains.

Mrs. Garabedian had had enough of turbulence flying into Reno (she remembers it as severe; her husband says it was nothing). Her imagination had turned the normal flight into a nightmare and she could not bear the thought of enduring any more time in the air. "I was crying hysterically after I saw the headline," Mrs. Garabedian said. "It was a day before we were supposed to fly home, but there was no way I could see myself getting onto the plane. So we rented a car and drove from Reno back to Hartford. It took us two and a half days and cost about $1000."

Four years later, Mrs. Garabedian, 37, made up her mind to confront her fear of flying in order to take her two children to visit Disney World in Florida this fall. "When we decided to go," she said, "my husband asked me, 'Are we flying or driving?' I said, "We're flying!"

Mrs. Garabedian reserved plane tickets to Florida and then called several airlines to get a recommendation for a fear of flying course.

So Mrs. Garabedian decided to try Captain Bunn's program which is recommended but not sponsored by United Airlines.

It was not an easy decision for Mrs. Garabedian to make. "People considering the course have a dual fear," Captain Bunn said. "Part of the fear is that the course won't work. The other part is that it will!"

Captain Bunn's program, which costs $285, consists of eight hours of audio tapes with accompanying booklets and questionnaires. After listening to the tapes, clients have the option of meeting with him privately at an airport for an additional fee of $95 an hour. The number to call to order the tapes is 800-332-7359.

The tapes are divided into three sections: The first includes relaxation exercises and discusses the psychological basis for aeroanxiety; the second offers an explanation of how airplanes fly and why they are safe, and the third gives practical tips on how to put all the information to use.

 

Overcoming the fear of flying By Allan Chernoff, CNN Senior Correspondent December 23, 2010

(CNN) -- Laura Edmonds has a look of horror on her face as she turns to look out the airplane window.

"I'm not crazy about that shake," she exclaims before putting her hand on her heart and closing her eyes. "I'm going to think about my good place," which for Edmonds is her memory of bonding with her son right after his birth.

Edmonds, a 44-year old realtor from Connecticut, has an intense fear of flying like many fliers.

It's not the threat of terrorism that worries her, but rather the possibility of mechanical failure. She says she imagines the plane plunging to the ground because the engines may fall off. So every few minutes she glances out the window to make sure they're still attached.

It is a fear that has gripped her for 18 years, since her wedding day, when she says she obsessed about the flight she would take the following day for her honeymoon to Italy.

"I couldn't enjoy my wedding day. I had this wonderful wedding surrounded by love and family but the only thing I could think about was the next day," said Edmonds.

Since then she has tried drugs and cocktails to make it through flights. But, she says, they've been no help in easing her anxiety.

She has dragged her family on the train from Connecticut to Florida, insisted on long drives and tried to avoid flying at all costs. Even when friends fly, Edmonds says she worries, counting the hours till they arrive at their destination.

It's been three years since Edmonds has stepped on a plane.

Yet here she is now, 20,000 feet above the ground onboard a turbo-prop that's en route from New York's LaGuardia Airport to Baltimore-Washington International Airport in Maryland. She is hoping this is the flight that will overcome her fear.

"I feel the seat. I feel the seat against my arm. I feel my hands," recites Edmonds, her eyes still closed.

She is attempting to redirect her mind, one of several so-called "strengthening exercises" she recently learned from a video course designed to overcome fear of flying. The idea is to focus on the moment, rather than the abstract.

Former Pan Am and United pilot Tom Bunn is president of the company that produced the videos and that instructs clients in the basic mechanics of flying and teaches them to control their thoughts.

"Most of my work is how do I keep them from imagining the things that they believe are happening when they are not," said Bunn, whose company is SOAR Inc. "When they can tell the difference between imagination and reality ...they are going to be OK."

Before boarding the U.S. Airways flight, Edmonds presents a letter from Bunn to the flight attendant asking to speak with the captain. The pilot gladly obliges, telling her he's been flying for more than two decades and assuring her, "You're going to be fine. We're going to take good care of you."

During takeoff Edmonds looks to the flight attendant for reassurance.

On her lap is a loose-leaf binder of Bunn's tips, Edmond's version of a study guide for her flight.

When the flight attendant offers drinks, Edmonds places her cup of water on the tray table and studies it, tangible evidence that the plane is barely shaking.

Yet another coping strategy is breaking down the flight into pieces, like eating a hamburger bite-by-bite.

"If you think about it in small pieces and getting through each of the pieces, that's a little easier than thinking of the whole hamburger because it's very overwhelming and it becomes paralyzing," said Edmonds.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we are approaching Baltimore," announces the flight attendant.

Edmond is relying heavily on Bunn's coping strategies during the 90-minute flight. But she's coping.

As the wheels touch down, Edmonds' face lights up.

"Yay! I did it," she exclaims to the pilot.

"Congratulations," he responds.

Back on solid ground, Laura Edmonds exults.

"I feel so uplifted. I feel really proud of myself. I'm not trapped. I don't feel so paralyzed."

So much so that Edmonds claims she's ready to fly to the Caribbean for a vacation on the island of St. Barts.

"It'll take some doing," she said, "but I'm ready to go!"

 

The following is a condensed article published on CNNfn

Fight High-Flying Fears
By Staff Writer Rob Lenihan June 28, 2000: 9:02 a.m. ET, NEW YORK (CNNfn)

Whenever "Andrew" had to get on an airplane, his life would go into a tailspin. The New Jersey resident, who requested anonymity, would become sick when he thought about getting on a jet. "I would literally get myself ill," he said. "I would think about an upcoming flight and I would get a severe stomach ache, headaches, sweaty palms. It was really terrible. It really compromised my ability to live." Andrew's case was especially painful because he had relatives in Europe. Just a plane ride away, yes, but for the fearful flier, there's nothing "just" about it.

Andrew is hardly alone. Some 25 million Americans are afraid to fly, and experts believe the real figure is much higher, since many people won't admit their fears. Fearful flyers talk of shame, embarrassment and disappointment. They talk of business opportunities they have missed and vacations they have never taken. And they talk of a bottomless dread that has held them back and isolated them from the rest of the world.

So do you live your life around train schedules and bus depots? Skip family reunions and beg your boss to send somebody else to the important out-of-town meetings? Or do you get help, the way Andrew did?

Statistically, you are at greater risk driving to the airport than you are when you get on a plane. . . . The average person would have to fly every day for 29,000 years before getting involved in a fatal airline crash. But, of course, if you're afraid to fly, the numbers offer no comfort at all.

Tom Bunn, a retired airline captain who heads SOAR (Seminars on Aeroanxiety Relief) workshops, said fearful fliers are an intelligent bunch. "They can think of 1,000 things that can go wrong," said Bunn, who runs the company with Lisa Hauptner. "And they're very visually imaginative. They can put a picture in their mind of an airplane disaster in a heartbeat."

Media coverage of air disasters doesn't help. Counselors say while airline wrecks are rare, they dominate newspapers and evening news broadcasts. "People see the gory images on TV, the families grieving," Bunn said. "It's a very emotionally wrenching experience if you have empathy."

Experts say fear of flying is often associated with a major change in your life: a new home, a death in the family, or the birth of a child."

Andrew said his fear of flying got so serious his wife finally went on the Internet and found out about the SOAR program. He ordered the tapes last year and has high praise for the experience. "It was absolutely fantastic," he said. "The beauty of this thing is that you're taking a course with someone who is a pilot. That in and of itself goes a much longer way than speaking to a psychologist."

When Andrew got on a plane, he admits he was not as comfortable as he would have been in a car, but he wasn't having palpitations either. "It was a wonderful experience," he said. "That abject fear was gone."

Andrew is planning a trip to Spain in August and he has found the flying course has had an additional benefit. "It spills over to other aspects of your life," he said. "You just generally feel better about yourself."

 

USN Health

Afraid to Fly? Check Your Baggage Here
Jettison your fear of flying in time for summer travels

By Rachel Pomerance
June 3 2013

Jettison your fear of flying in time for summer travels

As a college junior, Samson Frankel was all set for a semester abroad. But the night before he was supposed to leave New York for Israel, Frankel backed out, his fear of flying too big to beat. He didn't consider jetting anywhere again until his job with a Manhattan law firm demanded it – ironically, for dealings in Israel.

For Jean Ratner, a clinical social worker based in Bethesda, Md., fear of flying came on slowly and then in one sudden blow. On a flight 30 years ago, a several-second drop in altitude felt to her like a death plunge. She'd never fly again, she told herself, but train travel for work was getting tiresome.

Martin Seif, a psychologist with offices in Manhattan and Greenwich, Conn, studied phobias to try to cure his fear of flying. But the irony was not lost on him when a train delay nearly kept him from addressing a conference on phobias. "I remember thinking to myself, you know, maybe I'd rather fly than die," he says.

Avoidance, as these fearful travelers can attest, only tends to work for so long. When circumventing the fear became as or more difficult than the fear itself, they sought help and eventually overcame the phobia.

About one in three people have a fear of flying, according to Captain Tom Bunn, a therapist and former U.S. Air Force and commercial airline pilot who treats fear of flying with a program called SOAR. Among those who fear flying, half don't fly at all. And since only half of Americans fly, that's one in six Americans who stay grounded, Bunn says.

The precise treatment for the phobia depends on the individual and his or her particular fear, which could involve claustrophobia, turbulence or fear of having a panic attack aboard. But sufferers and therapists (in some cases, the former become the latter) rely on a few basic remedies: knowledge about air travel; calming techniques, like visualization and deep breathing; and cognitive behavioral therapy, guided exposure to the fear itself to finally slay it.

Fear of flying results from ancient stress hormones going haywire in a modern world, experts say. More specifically, the airplane blocks someone from resorting to the coping mechanisms that would traditionally put the stress response to rest by verifying that everything's OK and, if not, either gain control of the situation or leave it, Bunn explains.

He likens the stress response to an alarm system that can be disabled. How? By triggering oxytocin, the hormone that produces a feeling of bliss and bonding. It's released during birth, nursing, sex and amid post-coital comfort. "It sounds crazy," Bunn says. But considering the following scene can quell flying anxiety: "Think of lying there, with someone looking at you the way you hoped someone would always look at you after making love," he says. Before a nervous traveler flies, Bunn says that connecting each step involved in flying with an image of your lover's face or your nursing baby can stop the stress from ever starting.

Robert Reiner, a psychologist and executive director of Behavioral Associates in Manhattan, uses biofeedback and virtual reality to arm patients with a "competing response" to the act of flying. By measuring a patient's breathing and heart rate, Reiner pinpoints the patient's "belly breathing" – deep, abdominal breathing that he says "has the effect of making anxiety impossible to experience. It disables the fight-or-flight response." Reiner then creates a recording – by blowing notes on a harmonica that match the patient's relaxed breathing. The patient practices breathing along with the recording and simulated flights. His cure rate is 92 percent, Reiner says. "I think [fear of flying is] just a matter of bad wiring and bad luck, and that's why it's so easy to correct."

According to Seif, who now runs workshops called Freedom to Fly Now, "The active ingredient for overcoming anxiety is exposure." Seif takes patients inside a flight trainer, used to train private pilots, at Westchester County Airport in White Plains, N.Y. In general, he advises fearful flyers to learn about their personal triggers and about flying itself. As he says, "Anxiety loves ignorance."

Before Frankel flies, he'll prepare himself by watching YouTube videos of takeoffs and landings. Plus, he'll speak with "Captain Tom," who will provide a sense of what to expect on his route and other helpful hints – a down bump, for example, is always leveled by an upward one, Frankel says...

 

How Flight-Phobic Executives Face Their Plane Fear Head-On

When the Wall Street Journal assigned staff writer Cassell Bryan-Low an article on business travel and fear of flying, she contacted SOAR.

Lisa Hauptner contacted the business people who had recently completed the SOAR Program.

Cindy Dooley and Fred Melamed bravely volunteered to be interviewed.

Ms. Dooley is the senior account executive of Chicago advertising agency Draft Worldwide.

Mr. Melamed anchored the CBS Sports coverage of the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan.

The part of the article which relates to Ms. Dooley and Mr. Melamed is included below.

By Cassell Bryan-Lo

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL INTERACTIVE EDITION, February 1, 1999

While advertising executive Cindy Dooley sat on the plane, waiting for takeoff on twice-monthly flights to visit clients, she would break into a nervous sweat, her heart pounding and her stomach plagued by jitters.

She recalls how she would interpret each thumping noise as an engine malfunction, signaling the imminent crash of the plane. So, for three years, the senior account executive of Chicago advertising agency Draft Worldwide popped tranquilizers or swilled drinks to get through flights.

"I hated flying, and the more I did it, the worse it became," she says. Eventually, the anxiety was so intense it became a factor in her leaving her job.

Ms. Dooley can take some comfort in the fact that she is not alone. A study done by Boeing Co. estimates that 25 million people in the U.S. -- are fearful or anxious fliers. . . .

Statistically, people are much more likely to die from falling in their own homes than during air travel. Indeed preliminary data from the National Transportation Safety Board lists zero fatalities in 1998 involving a scheduled U.S. commercial flight. But the numbers do little to assuage passengers' fears. . . .

Ms. Dooley says she would spend an entire trip worrying about the return flight. "I had to exert a lot more energy to do normal tasks because I was preoccupied with the flight," she says.

Shaking The Fear . . . .

Counseling is used to determine the root of the anxiety, and relaxation exercises are taught to help deal with the physical symptoms of anxiety.

Tom Bunn, a retired flight captain, explains this is important, as many people will take a cue from their own reactions, assuming that because their heartbeat is racing, there must be danger.

Confronting the Abyss

For some people, the greatest motivation to overcome the fear of flying is a great career opportunity. Fred Melamed's phobia prevented him from setting foot in an aircraft for 25 years. As a voice-over artist for CBS Sports, his work required little travel out of his hometown of New York. When required to travel, Ms. Malamed would spend 2 1/2 days on a train rather than take a five-hour flight.

But earlier this year, he was offered the chance to work at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan. For him, it was an opportunity too good to miss. "I had to do it, " he says. "It was like a million dollars in a bag -- I just had to pick it up."

Prompted to seek counseling, he successfully managed to take the 13-hour flight to Tokyo with only a brief spell of anxiety. Since then, Mr. Melamed has flown to London and Paris and has plans to go back. In terms of his career, he says "I can now consider things that I wouldn't otherwise have."

 

 

 

 

Flight Made Right

Condensed version of an article that appeared in the Hartford Courant.
by Paul Marks, The Hartford Courant, October 29, 2000

Tom Bunn has done the math: Statistically speaking, flying on a jetliner is safer than sleeping in your own bed.

It's at least 100 times safer than driving.

Every year, he helps hundreds of people by simply convincing them that it's so. His clients are fearful fliers from all walks of life - among an estimated 25 million nationwide - who are held prisoner by their anxious imaginations.

Where most of us fly to Disney World or Las Vegas or London, they stay home. Where most see air travel as a door to exotic adventure and career opportunity, they see looming calamity. They do more than see it. They feel it in their guts. They sweat and squirm and suffer at the very thought of stepping into a crowded jet cabin.

"These are often very intelligent people," said Bunn, a retired United Airlines pilot who is also a licensed counselor. "Their imaginations start, and their body reacts to it. What they don't realize is that the body's reaction comes directly from the picture in their minds." Bunn, who has run Seminars on Aeroanxiety Relief - SOAR - from his home in Trumbull since 1982, is on a rescue mission of sorts.

He presents technical facts about aviation to combat scary myths - pointing out, for example, that the plane's wing is meant to flex and won't break off in turbulence. He trains anxious fliers to expunge those calamitous images by visualizing comforting ones: holding a beloved child, for instance, or making a hole-in-one in golf. He sees more than 400 clients a year.

A Common Phobia

An often-cited survey by the Boeing Co. shows that one in three Americans admit to some anxiety over air travel. Roughly half of those won't fly. An ABC News poll last fall found 14 percent were afraid of flying. The response was stronger among women, with 21 percent identifying themselves as aerophobes, compared with 6 percent of men. A common - and ultimately futile - response is to turn to a pre-flight cocktail as an antidote to anxiety. Others reshape their careers to avoid long-distance travel. Many lie to avoid visiting friends and relatives, or joining their spouses on business trips abroad.

Carol Lang, a 53-year-old teacher and reading specialist from Queens, N.Y., passed up job offers in the publishing industry because they involved air travel. Later she got cold feet about a flight to visit relatives in Georgia. She put her 9-year-old son on the plane and stayed home, making excuses about being too busy. For a long time, her fear was kept secret. "I never talked to anybody about it, except in the past 10 years or so," she said. "I've turned down London. I've turned down Belgium. I've turned down Amsterdam. I also drove to Iowa instead of taking a plane."

Jeanne DePalma, a New Canaan mother of two, stayed home while her husband traveled the world as a high-ranking business executive. She recalls the irony of teaching her kids to take on the world while she hid behind her motherly duties to avoid long-distance travel. "I used the kids as an excuse, and I was glad to do so," she said. "As I have aged, my fear of flying has gotten worse." But now her daughter is in law school and her son is a sophomore at Connecticut College.

Tired of getting postcards from their tours of the Swiss Alps and other places she's never been, DePalma decided to face her fear. Last spring, she enrolled in SOAR, just as Lang did a few years back. Bunn's course costs $390. Along with two hours of individual counseling, it uses a dozen three-hour audiotapes. Accompanying work sheets are sent in to Bunn for review and comment.

Among other things, the course explains the mechanics of fear and the way aerophobes create terrifying "movies" in their minds, images that convince the body that doom is just around the corner. With that comes the nausea, the shaking, the ominous sinking feeling. It is the elemental fight-or-flight response, Bunn said. But locked in an airliner, strapped into the seat, there is no outlet available. "If they can't control their situation, they can't control their feelings," he said. In therapy, the goal is to convince nervous fliers that they can draw on their talent for imagining to summon up comforting thoughts.

Finally ... Free To Fly Lang completed the SOAR course in May. Last July, she went to visit friends in Atlanta - on the first airline flight she had taken in 30 years. Getting to that point was not easy, she said. "By the time I finished listening to the second tape, I was afraid I might fly. Just the thought of it made my hands shake," she said. "I have a big issue with control. Two days before I went I was like a maniac." Then she got on board, met the pilot, and sat down feeling reassured. She deliberately relaxed and - much to her surprise - actually enjoyed the ride. Two weeks later, she was flying to Maine to visit her son.

DePalma's moment of truth came on Oct. 10. After a final therapy session with Bunn, she and her husband were booked on a morning flight from New York to Florida, where they had bought a retirement home.

 

Aero anxiety, SOAR soothes their fear of flying

by Mark Muro, The Boston Globe

Of course they are the reasonable folk, these executives, wives and grandmothers who can't quite deny gravity and trust the arcane laws of aerodynamics.

They fear air travel and, in this they make sense, not the rest of us. Unable to make the leap of faith that is jet propulsion, they stick to the ground, 2 1/2 hours to Chicano only a dream.

If his silky half-drawl reminds one first of how perfectly he fits the part of a pilot, it suggests other impressions as well, those of the TV evangelist and the encounter group leader. Indeed, Tom Bunn acts many parts as he operates SOAR, which is based in Westport, Conn. Though he's logged 10,000 hours pilot Air Force F-105 jet fighters and commercial airlines and races Formula C cars, he talks eagerly of psychology. Sometimes dewy-eyed with psychobabble, other times full of test pilot facts or the bubbly enthusiasm of a cheerleader on game day, Bunn comes on as an evangelist of the stratosphere. "

You know this thing called the flight or fight response?," he began as he explained how SOAR works. "That's sustained man for a long time, I mean, if you saw a tiger, you ran the hell away or else you got real mad and put up a fight. But here's the 20th century. Flying provokes that fight or flight response because it's scary, but when they close that door it interferes with the most fundamental instincts. You can't run, and who are you going to fight? Flying goes against all the most basic instincts."

"See, I don't think people who can't fly are nutty or screwy or anything like that. I think it's very natural. In fact, my students are about the brightest, most sensitive people around. They're in touch with their fears, but they're so imaginative they create vivid movies they begin to think are real. I just try to get people to realize their movies of planes crashing aren't real."

 

Business Travel
from the American Express business publication "Ventures"

If flying gives you the jitters, you're probably used to hearing that your fears are irrational. After all, aircraft design, weather-forecasting technology, and pilot training have advanced to the point that the change of any single plane's crashing is statistically insignificant.

While flying remains extremely safe, the September 11 attacks and their aftermath have added a layer of legitimacy to what has long been seen as simply a phobia. "Now we can look at that fear as pretty reasonable. Out security is not a sure thing," says Tom Bunn, a former airline pilot who counsels nervous travelers through his Connecticut-based company, SOAR, Inc.

When fear of flying is strictly irrational, Bunn, a licensed therapist, uses psychological techniques such as training clients to associate states in the flight with happy memories in their lives. But if your fear is based on the real (if remote) possibility of an attack, Bunn uses a more direct and rational approach.

Bunn says such improvements as secure cockpit doors, better inspection of carry-on bags, and matching of bags to boarded passengers have improved security. He advises viewing business travel as an acceptable risk of doing business. "Try to look at it like any business decision," he says. Your chance of a safe trip "is so close to 100 percent that if it's an important trip, don't let it stop you." While there's no such thing as absolute peace of mind in a dangerous works, this approach may help you put the risk in perspective.

Bunn adds that you are still statistically much safer in the air than taking to the interstate in a car. Implementation of new security measures such as screening every checked bag, inspecting foot carts, and further sealing access to airports, will reduce the risk even more, he notes. Perhaps, then, fear of flying will go back to being just another phobia."

SOAR, Inc., (www.fearofflying.co) hosts a free online chat Wednesday nights at 9 p.m. EST for nervous fliers.

 

Conquer Your Fear of Flying
Extracts of an article on AOL Travel, by Barbara Benham, a former SOAR client

No one knows how many people are afraid to fly. One study, published in 1982 and perhaps the most comprehensive look at aero-anxiety, puts the number at one out of three. Of this cohort, a small percentage does not fly at all. Most fearful flyers end up flying, but it can be an arduous affair. For me, the tortured experience starts with nightmares several days before a flight, borderline hyperventilation during takeoff, near paralysis during descent and landing. Everyone's fear profile is different. Some people hate turbulence. It only fazes me when it's extreme.

In 1999, I sought treatment. I worked with Captain Tom Bunn, a retired 747 pilot turned therapist who runs SOAR, a clinic for fearful flyers. He uses visualization exercises that promote self-soothing. You chose an image, for instance, your wedding day, the birth of a child, that makes you feel comforted and loved. Several days before you're scheduled to fly, you start running through your expected flight from start to finish, conjuring your personal image whenever you tense up. It might sound hokey, but these visualization exercises helped me immensely, even when I cheated and didn't do them until the night before my flight.

SOAR

One reason many people don’t enjoy flying is they feel out of control, particularly when they can’t see the ground or the pilot, notes Captain Tom Bunn, SOAR’s founder and director (and the therapist I worked with in 1999). They’re not just afraid of flying itself, they’re nervous about being in an enclosed environment, about possibly feeling claustrophobic or having an anxiety attack. SOAR aims, in Bunn’s words, to “strengthen” fearful flyers, with services and products ranging from phone therapy sessions to DVD or CD sets. Clients work exclusively with Captain Bunn or Lisa Hauptner, a trained therapist who serves at SOAR’s director.

The substance of SOAR’s programs is educational and therapeutic. They go through a flight from start to finish, and include such details as the pilot’s checklist. As for the self-soothing strategies, they include visualization exercises like those I did when I worked with Captain Bunn in 1999. This winter, SOAR introduced a “fast track” program, aimed at people feeling nervous about an impending flight. Instead of waiting for a DVD set to be delivered, or for a phone appointment with either Bunn or Hauptner, clients can get an instant program by logging onto their computers.

SOAR also offers a number of free services, like a weekly chat and conference call on Wednesday evenings, starting at 9 E.S.T., as well as a free email newsletters.

SOAR has worked with over 5,000 nervous flyers. You can find testimonials on the SOAR web site.

 

Unfriendly Skies

by Eloise Salholz, Tessa Namuth, Marsha Zabarsky, Darby Junkin, and Tenley-Ann Jackson, Newsweek

As a little boy, Paul delighted in fashioning model airplanes out of the buoyant, honey-colored wood of the balsa tree. He carried his passion into adulthood, building ever more sophisticated planes that he flew by remote control in a meadow near his San Francisco home. His gracefully executed circles and loops won prizes in several local aviation-club competitions. Happily, since the hospital-equipment technician had to crisscross the country to make repairs, he also enjoyed being a passenger. But shortly after logging his 150,000th air mile, the airplane aficionado went into a tailspin: as his 747 en route from Los Angeles went through a thunderhead, Paul went into a cold-sweat panic. When the plane touched down in San Francisco, he brushed the scare off with a "Glad that's over with" and determined not to let it ground him. But the anxiety recurred and, after a terror-filled flight from Atlanta 18 months ago, Paul vowed to bail out for good. "I felt flying wasn't good for me or my body," says Paul, who to protect his job credibility, does not want his surname used. "I was quitting."

Journey: Paul, 37, is one of the estimated 25 million Americans, according to a 1977 Boeing survey, with a fear of flying. His fellow suffers have included some first-class travelers: Ronald Reagan's political ambitions had to overcome his aerophobia before he could run for governor of sprawling California, and soul singer Aretha Franklin recently canceled several concert dates to avoid leaving terra firma. The aerophobe wears many faces: some run down the aisle screaming, "Stop the plane," as it taxis toward the runway; others endure the trip only through an alcohol- or sedative-induced haze. Many fearful fliers are in fact terrified of being shut up in a confined space thousands of feet above the ground; ex-Oakland Raiders head coach and claustrophobe John Madden, for example, takes Amtrack coast to coast to do his TV broadcasts rather than watch the stewardess close those doors. Aeroanxiety can also encompass fear of the unknown and of losing control. "When people go on an airplane journey, it's very similar to the journey of life," says Pan American pilot Tom Bunn, who has run SOAR (Seminars on Aeroanxiety Relief) workshops . . . .

Aerophobes are now finding it somewhat easier to confront their fears, thanks to the approximately two dozen courses that, like SOAR, have sprung up in recent years . . . . The privately run programs offer instruction in everything from relaxation techniques and emergency procedures to airplane maintenance and aerodynamics, "By the end, participants know why flights are bumpy and why the wings won't fall off," says psychologist Neil Johnson . . . .

Last week, Pan Am pilot Bunn steered 12 white-knuckled SOAR enrollees through a terrifying rite of passage: a one-hour graduation flight from Boston to New York that capped off the five session course. . . . . Business Bob DeBrave, on his first flight ever, was accompanied by his fiancee who promised to give up smoking if he took to the air. . . . .

Paul turned to Dr. Habib Nathan's Phobia Clinic in San Antonio. Over the next six weeks, he talked out his fears in individual and group-therapy sessions, rode up and down escalators and took an exploratory trip out to the airport in preparation for a short hot to Houston. Now, with several local flights under his belt, he's gearing up for a long ride east. "My hands may get a little sweaty," he say. "But that's fine with me. The panic is gone."

 

Fright or Flight

A nervous traveler learns to calm her airplane anxiety and rediscovers her inner bird.
By Barbara Benham

Nothing in my childhood suggested I'd hate to fly. My first word was "bird." As a young girl, I was often lost in flights of fantasy, imagining myself a sparrow, a seagull, an owl. Then I got on an airplane. So long, friendly skies. Where, pray tell, was that chirpy music they played in the 1960s movies when airplanes took off and landed? All I heard were roaring engines and mysterious thuds.

I closed my eyes. I knew, just knew, we were going to crash. We never did, but no matter. Twenty-five years and countless round trips later, I was still a wreck during takeoffs and landings, still paying obsessive attention to front-page stories about the latest aviation disaster. I decided to get help. Just then John F. Kennedy, Jr.'s plane went missing. Over the water. In the haze. In the dark. I knew I had made the right decision.

Roaming the Internet, I found Captain Tom Bunn, a retired United Airlines pilot turned social worker who founded SOAR Seminars on Aeroanxiety Relief. Over the phone, Bunn explained the desensitization exercises he uses to help anxious fliers master their fear. His sessions also familiarize folks with aviation training and procedure. This helps, he pointed out, because fearful fliers are highly intelligent, with extremely vivid imaginations. What gets them into trouble often gets them out. Flattered and hopeful, I signed up for a private, two-hour session (at $95 an hour) at his home office in Trumbull, Connecticut.

I planned it to coincide with a business trip to the New York area. I'd be flying up from Washington, D.C. on the shuttle. Because the one-hour flight consists almost entirely of takeoff and landing - my two biggest flight phobias - Bunn encouraged me to begin my training beforehand by listening to a set of five audiotapes totaling three hours, the first section of his Home Study Course, for all additional $95.

Unfortunately, I never found time. So when I boarded the plane for the 59-minute flight, my heart was pounding as I braced myself for the agony of takeoff. Mid-flight, I relaxed for all of two minutes. Then, before I knew it, we were descending. Mv breathing quickened, my stomach tightened. As we approached LaGuardia Airport, I looked down and saw a cemetery. Yikes! I visualized the plane cartwheeling down the runway.

During the week I spent in New York before my SOAR session, I belatedly queued up the tapes. Bunn starts by explaining that fear of flying is pretty commmon, even through air travel has never been safer. About one-third of people report experiencing some anxiety when they fly. The trick is not suppressing it; Stifling your fear only makes it scarier. . . . .

The pilot-trim, sixtysomething therapist met me in the doorway of his split level house with a firm handshake. Gray-haired and hazel-eyed, he was casually dressed in khakis, Dock siders, and a plaid shirt. I settled into a sofa in his office, a library filled with psychology and aviation books; in the corners were plastic toys he uses in his other guise, that of family counselor. As he spoke, Bunn sketched some of the basics of flying on a piece of paper: the straight lines of a runway; the location of transmitters that show the pilot where to land. One key to flying comfortably, he explained, is understanding the pilot's role. Another is learning how to comfort yourself, a skill many people lose in childhood. To rebuild my self-soothing skills, he asked me to find an "anchor" I could use whenever I flew, such as the memory of a positive, heartwarming experience (he suggested my wedding day or the birth of my child). In practice sessions and before a flight, I was to think of it while holding my hand to my heart. I placed my hand on my chest and thought of the wondrous sensation of my three-year-old son running into my arms after a long day.

Next he instructed me to use my anchor in an exercise that he claimed would help me master my fear. The trick is to remember a traumatic flight, but in reverse. Bunn suggested I run the images on a small, black-and-white TV in my head, beginning with landing and ending with takeoff. Every time I felt a surge of anxiety, I was to think of my anchor.

We ran through it once, slowly. I visualized a plane approaching a runway. I choked up. My breathing quickened, my hands went clammy, my ears grew hot, blood pounded in my temples. I though hard of my son, and sure enough the sensations faded and a feeling of calm replaced them. The rest of the televised flight went fine, until takeoff, when the anxiety returned. Again, I used the self- soothing technique, which let me imagine a flawless takeoff into a clear sky.

After we practiced the exercise, Bunn took a brief case history. Had I had any bad flight experiences? . . . . As in any good talk-therapy session, I got everything off my chest. The superstitions about not crashing if a priest or celebrity is on board. . . . The bad dreams. "Don't think of them as an omen," Bunn advised. Landing in bad weather, a fear that has surely become more widespread since the deaths of John Kennedy Jr., his wife, and sister-in-law. "It's not irrational to hate landing in the clouds," Bunn said. He then gave a short lesson on pilot training for flying on instruments when visibility is poor.

The next day, I walked through the canyons of Manhattan playing the black-and-white TV exercise in my head. Small screen, scenes from a flight, anxiety, self-soothing with my anchor, thoughts of my little guy. Sometimes I added my own soundtrack, that chirpy plane music. I didn't care if anyone wondered why on earth I was saying the Pledge of Allegiance, holding my hand to my heart.

The following morning, I caught the shuttle back to D.C. Was it only my vivid imagination, or was I calmer than usual? I loaded up on free magazines and boarded. No pounding heart. No tightening chest. I felt as though I'd just had a massage. Was I cured? Should I trust me feelings? I decided not to analyze it. I sat back in my seat. The captain greeted us. "It's a beautiful day for flying," he said. And it was.

Barbara Benham has written for the Washington Post Magazine and Travel & Leisure.

 

Fear of Flying

Condensed version of an article by Mary Ann Treger for Style Magazine
By Mary Ann Treger

When Thanksgiving rolls around, most people think turkey. I think terror. The kind I feel every time I board a plane heading to my family gathering. It may be un-chic to admit, but I have a fear of flying. No, not the Erica Jong version; mind, unfortunately, isn't any fun. While my jitters haven't prevented me from jetting to places as far away as Mauritius and Moscow, I can't board a bird without downing enough vodka to cause a shortage in Russia or popping a Xanax or two (Whee! Talk about flying.)

Pre-flight, I turn into a meteorologist. I'm glue to The Weather Channel at least a week prior to my perceived fatal event. Bad weather could mean the most horrible, most terrifying of life's experiences: air turbulence.

Traveling over the holidays causes extra weather worries -- the possibility of ice and snow. But then, summer means thunderstorms, spring, heavy rains and fall, oh those winds!There is no season of relief.

In the interest of preserving my liver -- not to mention any sanity -- I decided to search for a cure. I found lots of information, plus a few treatment options.

The first thing I learned is that I am not alone. . . . On a typical flight, some one in five passengers is a nail-biter, and the numbers are increasing. According to a recent Gallup Poll, 49 percent of adults have less confidence in flying today than they did a few years ago.

According to Dr. Arnold Barnett, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who compiles statistics for the FAA, "A traveler in the First World who took one flight a day could, on average, go 31,000 years until succumbing to a fatal crash." I like his odds.

My first SOS goes out to SOAR, Seminars On Aeroanxiety Relief, based in Connecticut. Created in 1982 by Tom Bunn, a retired captain for United Airlines who also happens to be a licensed therapist, this at-home course includes 13 two-sided tapes, a workbook and two hours of individual counseling by Bunn, over the phone, for $390. They guarantee it'll work or you get your money back. How can I lose?

The course is divided into three parts; Psychology, which focuses on fear and fear management; Aviation, how planes fly -- the incredible safety standards and statistics; and Practice, putting together everything you have learned. It takes about four to six weeks of daily 15-minute sessions to complete. In between, you fill out questionnaires and return them to SOAR; and they, in turn, send back comments, and Bunn ends the course with a two-hour one-on-one phone conference.

 

Fear of flying? You can get over it.

By Paul Abercrombie

I love to travel. But I hate to fly.

My overactive imagination doesn’t help with my fear of flying. All I have to do is shut my eyes, and the Parade of Horror commences: wings snapping off like brittle twigs, engines exploding or dropping off, freak high-altitude tornadoes swirling — you name it, I’ve dreamed it up.

And I’m not alone. More than 26 million Americans suffer from some form of flight anxiety, says Lucas van Gerwen, aviation psychologist and director of the VALK Foundation, which studies how to treat flying fears.

Aids for fearful fliers

I’ve tried getting sloshed to blunt my anxiety. But this has just left me dehydrated and more panicky than ever about my ability to operate the emergency door “in the unlikely event of a water landing.”

I’ve tried pills. A Xanax I popped right before a trip to Los Angeles once led to a full-blown panic attack in mid-flight. I ended up watching a Jim Carrey flick with an oxygen mask strapped to my face, a nearby fellow passenger stage-whispering to a flight attendant, “Excuse me, ma’am, is that man going to die?”

Rare embarrassment aside, I typically plaster on a fake smile and endure. Yet a recent bumpier-than-usual flight left me sweat-soaked and wondering whether I should finally seek to cure — or at least curb — my fear of flying.

A survey of friends reveals various methods of coping. The most popular involve boozing. One, a kind of inoculation-by-flight.

Two decades ago, after a bad snowstorm forced the pilot of his flight to Salt Lake City to abort a landing at the last second, my high school friend Conte Cicala and “grim-faced” fellow passengers spent 45 very bumpy minutes on a circling plane until it was safe enough to land. On every flight over the next decade or so, “every bump stressed me out,” he says.

Yet Cicala, an attorney in San Francisco who flies upwards of 50,000 miles per year, says that he slowly got used to turbulence. “I guess my brain eventually learned that these bumps may be unpleasant but don’t mean that we’ll crash,” he says.

Considering the persistence of my flight fears — and my track record with self-treatment — I decide to search for outside help.

An Internet search reveals a cottage industry dedicated to combating everything from flight jitters to full-blown aviophobia. Books, videos, online courses, smartphone apps, even clinics that use virtual reality and flight simulators as treatment. Since travel to a clinic would probably involve, um, air travel, I decide to explore the other options.

Suppress that amygdala

Like most of the online courses that I check out, SOAR involves a combination of practical education and behavioral therapy. Over a few hours — and a dozen or so video lessons — program founder Tom Bunn, a retired pilot and licensed therapist, demonstrates how and why planes do the things they do and helps equip me with a mental tool kit for challenging fearful thoughts and replacing them with happier ones.

No quick fix, this is a process in which you work to replace every specific fear of flying by conjuring memories of “emphatic connectedness” — basically, moments when you were most happy with another person or persons. After a few days of working at this, I’m unsure whether it’s working. Bunn assures me later by phone that this is normal.

“Most people are so busy trying to consciously control their fears that they don’t even know they’ve already started to set up unconscious controls” with SOAR, Bunn says. “Sometimes it takes them two or three fear-free flights to believe that it’s working.”

The trick to this whole approach of fighting flight anxieties, he says, is finding ways to shut down the amygdala, the part of the brain that stores fear memories and responses. The best way, he says, is to encourage your body to produce the hormone oxytocin, which banishes fearful thoughts. Women produce this chemical particularly well by thinking of nursing a child, men by contemplating sex. Not that I should act on such thoughts aboard a plane, he adds.

“This isn’t about you telling someone, ‘I’m having a panic attack. Let’s sneak into the bathroom together,’ ” Bunn says with a laugh.

If this scenario seems likely to be more frustrating than it’s worth, imagining your beloved pet dog gazing into your eyes works about as well. “Your dog looking at you like you’re the only person in the world also produces oxytocin” in you, he says. “And, unlike with people, you can always depend on your dog to look at you like this.”.....

 

High Anxiety

by Steve Strunsky, The Messenger Gazette

Bridgewater - Mill LaMarca's honeymoon in Bermuda was ruined 11 years ago because of her fear of flying.

"I cried and screamed the whole way," she said, slightly embarrassed at the memory of that fateful trip, which left her worried throughout her honeymoon about the return flight home.

But when she and her husband, Robert, planned a second honeymoon this month, Mrs. LaMarca vowed this time not to let the idea of cruising at an altitude of 30,000 feet get her down.

The LaMarcas left May 14 on a two-week trip to Paradise Island, the Bahamas, to celebrate their 11th wedding anniversary, and although they have taken driving vacations to Florida and elsewhere, until now, Mrs. LaMarca's phobia had grounded hopes of dream vacations overseas.

"Basically, I can't feel comfortable at 30,000 feet in the air," she said in an interview before leaving. "To me it's not natural. I know my fear is irrational, but I can't help that. I know its safe to fly, you can tell me the statistics, but it doesn't matter."

When her husband took a job with London-based Barclay's Bank, requiring him to make occasional trans-Atlantic flights, she decided it was time to overcome her fear.

To do that, she contacted Captain Thomas Bunn, something of a pioneer in the field of "aeroanxiety," as he calls it.

Capt. Bunn is a former Air Force fighter pilot who now flies for United Airlines. He has combined his 23 years experience as a commercial pilot with a batchelor's degree in psychology and a master''s in clinical social work to develop a program known as SOAR, or Seminars on Aeroanxiety Relief.

The program combines therapy sessions and a thorough tour of a cockpit, visits to local airports to watch take-offs and landings, and listening to cassettes at home.

 

Public Radio International's "The Savvy Traveler."

Public Radio International's "The Savvy Traveler" featured SOAR on its October 24, and October 31, 1997 broadcasts hosted by Rudy Maxa, a Washington-based colunist for msnbc.com, and contributing writer for Worth and Forbes magazines.

The broadcast was produced by Michelle Kholos, winner of a Massachusetts Broadcasters Honorable Mention for her documentary "Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., His Legacy Today."

Rudy: Last week during the question and answer segent of our program I had an unexpected question about flying from our Associate Producer Michelle Kholos. As it turns out Michelle is afraid of flying . . . now we have a Savvy Traveler staff member afraid of flying. So I've got Michelle here with me and on the phone we have Captain Tom Bunn a former airline captain and the creator fifteen years ago of a fear of flying cassette course called SOAR which stands for Seminars On Aeroanxiety Relief. Now Captain Bunn we've got your course for Michelle but she has to get on a plane this weekend so we though we could have a little chat here to help her speed the process along. First of all, Michelle, tell us exactly what it is you're afraid of, about flying.

Michelle: I am afraid of turbulence. I don't mind takeoff and I don't mind landing - I don't love 'em, but I don't mind them. But it's bouncing around in the air unexpectedly that terrifies me.

Tom: Well first Michelle, let me tell you that the airplanes are built to take not only the amount of turbulence that you get in ordinary flight but about five times that much, so structurally . . . strengthwise . . . the airplane can handle it. What we are really talking about is psychologically even if you know the airplane can handle it, is it still a problem for you?

Michelle: Yes.

Tom: O.K.

Michelle: I don't like the way it feels.

Tom: I would imagine it has something to do with the fact that you are up high and you think if something goes wrong, you are going to have a long way to fall.

Rudy: That brings us to the question of what us fear is flying usually about . . . is it someone who is afraid of dying, or it someone who is afraid of losing control, or both?

Tom: The problem with flying is it puts you in a situation where you have no control.

Rudy: So people are afraid . . . they are afraid of losing control and afraid of dying as a result.

Tom: Exactly.

Rudy: All right. If you took an average commercial plane . . . let's say there are 250 seats on a plane, Captain Bunn, how many . . . what percentage of the people in that plane do you think suffer from some degree of fear of flying?

Tom: Well, on the plane itself, I'm not sure, but Boeing did a survey and they said that about one person out of three has a problem with flying and of those people half won't fly at all, and the other half fly with great difficulty.

Rudy: All right. So what can a fearful person do in advance of a flight to be less fearful?

Tom: Well, the first thing I would suggest they do is they take their time about getting on the plane. A lot of people will rush to the airport to try to block the feelings from their awareness and then suddenly they realize, "Oh my God, What have I gotten myself into!" It's much better to make sure that you take your time and do things very deliberately and try to keep your stress under control throughout the whole day. And then secondly, my suggestion is, get on the airplane early and go straight up to the cockpit . . . introduce yourself to the captain . . . let the captain know . . . don't be cutesy . . . just tell the captain, "Look, I know that flying is OK because you guys do it, but I don't feel good about it." And then just see what happens. You're going to find that you've got someone who really does understand how you feel.

Rudy: One of the clichés of flying is it's the safest mode of transportation. More people get killed by lightening every year than die in plane accidents. Is this a true cliché?

Tom: It is true. You're actually safer if you are on an airplane than staying home at night and sleeping in your own bed, but it doesn't feel that way. Rudy: OK. So, Mich . . .

Michelle: Wait a minute.

Rudy: Go ahead.

Michelle: I'm sorry. I just want to understand this. It's safer for me to be on a plane than to be sleeping in my own home?

Tom: Sure it is! That's actually the statistics.

Michelle: I can't believe that.

Tom: I know. All right, maybe let's try instead of pushing it that far . . . just think about the risks you take every day. You see, we tend to think that the things that we every day are totally safe. Everything you do has a certain amount of risk. Flying is just another risk but it happens to be a smaller risk than almost anything you do during the day.

Rudy: Are you feeling better Michelle?

Michelle: I'm feeling a little better . . . I'm just wondering if there's anything I can do on the plane. I know that you've got some meditations in your tape course and I haven't had a chance to run through them just yet, but . . . you know . . . any little bits of advice while I'm actually sitting there on the plane and we're bumping along.

Tom: Sure. Most people are very visual. They make pictures in their mind and the pictures are so vivid it gets them in trouble. Get yourself a dozen magazines with big splashy ads. They are intended to impact you. You might even want to bring a Walkman with some tapes, but visually . . . if you can block the visual imagination you can stay out of trouble, and you can do that by giving yourself some real to look at.

Rudy: Captain, I thank you for joining us. The good news is of course Michelle will be not so afraid of flying. The bad news is she's going to be afraid to sleep in her own bed at night.

Michelle: (laughs)

Tom: Oh, my goodness. Sorry I did that . . . we'll have a new course for that.

Rudy: Thanks Captain, and Michelle, have a lovely flight this weekend. The following fear of flying segment was aired on "The Savvy Traveler " on October 31,1997.

Rudy: . . . fear of flying is high on the list of travel worries. As a matter of fact, according to a Boeing study one out of three Americans is afraid to fly. Not the least of whom is Savvy Traveler's Michelle Kholos. Well, we couldn't have that. So we enrolled Michelle in a course designed to help her get over her fear, and now we're putting her on a plane to see if it worked. We join Michelle in a boarding area at Los Angeles International Airport.

Michelle: Well, I followed the course instruction and arrived early so I wouldn't be stressed out before getting on the plane. Naturally, my flight's delayed which is giving me lots of extra time to panic, so I'm just sitting here trying not to imagine all the terrifying reasons the plane is delayed. Oh, good. It looks like we're just about ready to board. Now, once I get on the plane, the first thing I'm supposed to do is meet the flight crew.

Captain: My name's Mike. I'm the captain of this flight.

Michelle: And you're feeling good today . . . you're feeling cofortable . . . ready to fly ... .

Captain: I feel good every day. Sure.

Michelle: My biggest problem is turbulence. So, where do you recommend is the best place to sit when it's turbulent?

Captain: Generally, it's smoother towards the front.

Michelle: So when we're hitting that turbulence, do you know that it's coming?

Captain: Most of the time, yeah, it is predictable and you can avoid a lot of it. In the winter time sometimes there's just not much you can do . . . it's bumpy at all the altitudes.

Michelle: But there's nothing for me to worry about when we're bouncing around?

Captain: No, no. There really isn't. The planes are safe.

Michelle: Well, what's your advice for someone like me who can get spooked up in the air?

Captain: What I usually say is we all have families, too. Our lives are in this airplane, too, so we're not in any hurry to do anything scary or dangerous.

Michelle: I actually find a lot of comfort in that. When I fly my life is a multitude of unsavory scenarios each ending with my plane crashing into an uncharted mountain somewhere. Knowing that the captain isn't a kamikaze pilot with a death wish eliminates at least one plot line.

P.A. announcement: "The flight attendants are coming around to see make sure that your seat belts are fastened, tray tables in their full upright position, all carry on luggage completely stowed . . . ."

Michelle: OK. Seat belt . . . check. Gum . . . check. Magazine . . . check. This looks like a nice group of people, not the kind of group that should die tragically in an airplane crash. OK. The plane is vibrating. We're starting to go . . . . Uhhhh. Up we go. OK. We're going up. We're definitely going up. OK. We're up! We're off the ground. (Sigh) Oh my God, we're bumping so much. All right. OK. I think we're leveling out a little bit. I'm trying to keep my mind occupied with my list of statistics. The stairs in my home, if I had stairs, are ten times more dangerous than flying. Being in my car is two-hundred and sixty-six times more dangerous than flying. I'm starting to feel better until Robert my seat-mate puts in his two cents.

Robert: I almost died in a plane crash, so

Michelle: You did?

Robert: We didn't crash, but the plane went out of control for about forty seconds.

Michelle: And you still get back in planes?

Robert: Well, it was a prop plane like a little Cessna 182. This is like different. This is very, very different.

Michelle: Robert's experience is not typical, I keep telling myself . . . I need some reassurance. Betty Tomavich is our head flight attendant. So much for reassurance. Surprising, Betty tells me she also gets afraid sometimes.

Betty: I do. During turbulence.

Michelle: Turbulence bothers you, too?

Betty: Uh huh. Yeah. Michelle How do you keep yourself going?

Betty: Well, I know that I'm safer up here than I am in my car. I know that. That's an intellectual thing. It's like going over a bumpy road. And the airplane is quite capable of going over a bumpy road, just like a car. Boeing does a very good job with these airplanes. They're pretty smart people, you know.

Michelle: OK. That makes me feel better. And I've been doing the recommended relaxation exercises, rotating my neck, letting my arms and legs hang without any tension. I remember what Tom Bunn, a fear of flying expert, told me last week.

Tom: Most people are very visual. They make pictures in their mind and the pictures are so vivid it gets them in trouble. Get yourself a dozen magazines with big splashy ads. They are intended to impact you. You might even want to bring a Walkman with some tapes, but visually . . . if you can block the visual imagination you can stay out of trouble, and you can do that by giving yourself some real to look at.

Michelle: Check. Since my goal is distraction I've indulged in the guilty pleasure of People Magazine. It probably wasn't too smart getting the John Denver edition, but this one does have funny pictures of JFK junior. That should keep me occupied for a while. Well, I can't believe this. We're actually coming in for a landing. I think I'm going to survive. Oh, God. It just occurred to me . . . I'm going to have do this again on Sunday. Here we go. We're down. Thank you. The ground. How I love the ground.

Robert: That was the most turbulent flight to San Francisco I've ever been on by far. That was more turbulence and it was bumpier on takeoff and landing than I've ever seen.

Michelle: There Robert again. I don't know what he's talking about. It wasn't so bad. Really.

Music: I just want to fly. Put your arms around me baby . . .

Michelle: Hugging the ground in Oakland, I'm Michelle Kholos for the Savvy Traveler.

Rudy: Michelle is safely back home now and already planning her next trip so it seems to have worked.

The Savvy Traveler is produced by the University of Southern California.

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