People Who Fear Air Travel Can Be Helped
People who fear air travel do various remedies to avoid flying or to make themselves temporarily unaware that they are flying.
Either they endure long hours of road travel or long days of ocean travel or they take alcohol or drugs to make themselves sedated while on air.
According to Barbara Rothbaum, psychiatry professor and head of the Trauma and Anxiety Recovery Program of the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, approximately 25 million Americans suffer from flying fear, with 50 percent of these 25 million fearing plane crashes and the other half feeling claustrophobic in a plane cabin.
News of air crashes, such as the recent Air France Flight 447 crash, worsens people’s fear of air travel and those who have this fear reschedule their flights or have someone take their place.
Rothbaum reiterated that those who fear air travel can look at flying safety statistics to reassure themselves that airplane travel is safer than road travel.
According to Rothbaum, millions of people board a plane everyday and get safely to their destination. She said that aviation safety has been improving year after year.
She cited statistics which show that the odds of getting killed in a plane accident are one in 20,000 while the odds of getting killed in a road accident is one in 100, based on statistics for the year 2001. For dying due to heart disease, the odds are even much higher – one in five.
But Rothbaum has observed that statistics and odds are not able to calm the fears of those who fear air travel. She explains this inability to be calmed by statistics as irrational fears, which are present in other kinds of phobias like fear of heights, fear of enclosed spaces and weather phobia.
Rothbaum also explained that persons who fear flying believe in premonition. If they feel something bad is going to happen before a flight, they do not board the plane. Rothbaum explains premonition as anticipatory anxiety.
Rothbaum recommends the use of cognitive behavioral therapy to treat one’s fear of air travel if it is already interfering significantly with one’s life and work.
She explained that she and her colleagues at Emory University studied the use of virtual reality therapy to treat people who fear air travel. In an eight-week session, fearful flyers practice relaxation techniques in a virtual plane while flying in calm weather and while traveling in turbulent weather.
