OAG Travel News

Statistically they say we are more likely to be killed by a drunk driver than die in a plane crash. But with three air crashes and an emergency landing, during one harrowing week in  August, 2008, and a near-disastrous crash-landing last month, frequent fliers, like myself, my be wondering when the law of averages will finally catch up with them.

First the fatal Spanair accident in Madrid on August 20, 2008 in which 154 people died; then four days later, 65 passengers died when an Itek Air Boeing 737 crashed after taking off at Bishtek in Kyrgyzstan; on August 25, an Air Dolomiti plane caught fire at Munich Airport, causing several passengers to jump to safety; and that evening, a Ryanair flight from Bristol to Barcelona made an emergency landing at Limoges when it plunged 8,000 meters in five minutes after a sudden loss of cabin pressure and oxygen masks dropped down. Sixteen passengers were taken to hospital with earache.  And on January 16, 2009, the pilot of a US Airlines A320 avoided disaster and saved the lives of all 155 people when it crash-landed on the Hudson River in New York.

In December 2007, a United Airlines’ flight from Japan hit severe turbulence and fell 300 meters: one passenger died and 102 were injured. A month later, on January 18, 2008, everyone on board a British Airways’ Boeing 777 miraculously escaped a fiery crash-landing at Heathrow.

We are reminded that air accidents (although not in-flight incidents) always hit the headlines simply because they are such rare occurrences.

Which is not much comfort when you wake in the night to the pinging of the seat-belt sign and a terse voice from the flight deck as the plane lurches and yaws in heavy turbulence.
Ah, the promises I’ve made at such times! - reordering of life’s priorities - forgotten as soon as the wheels touch down in the morning.

We all have our white-knuckle anecdotes. There was the time when the Air France Concorde lost a hydraulics system in mid-Atlantic, lost height alarmingly, and limped back to Paris; landing, after two attempts, at Hong Kong airport in hurricane conditions; returning to Geneva, after a long day in Stockholm, with a Bise, the cold north-easterly wind, was blowing in from the mountains; flying in a Beechcraft over Lake Michigan in a snow storm…

While I do not normally suffer from fear of flying, I have followed over the years a sine curve ranging from acute anxiety to insouciance (how fateful is a last minute business trip or just missing or making the flight?) - a pattern, a psychologist friend explains, which is linked to general levels of stress and anxiety in my daily life.

According to Richard Conway, a founder and co-director of Virgin Atlantic’s ‘Flying Without Fear’ courses, there are 10 core reasons behind fear of flying. They are (not necessarily in any order): (1) Lack of Control; (2) Fear of Enclosed Spaces; (3) Turbulence; (4) Air pockets; (5) Crashing; (6) Strange Noises; (7) Engine Failure; (8) Terrorist Threat; (9) Falling Out of The Sky; (10) Panic Attacks.

Flying Without Fear courses (www.flyingwithoutfear.info) last one day, and run throughout the year at Gatwick, Heathrow, Manchester and Birmingham airports. Participants talk through their personal fears and hang-ups with a psychotherapist, airline captains, cabin crew, specialist staff, and among themselves. At the end they get a 45-minute flight, and a Virgin relaxation tape to take home.

‘It’s all very relaxed; we ask people what they want from the day, answer all their questions, such as “what if something happens?” show them breathing and relaxation techniques and explain the reasons for everything, and address their particular fears,’ Conway says. ‘For example, we explain that air pockets don’t exist, they are an illusion that our ears create because we can’t see movement of air outside; that lightning has no effect on aircraft, and that turbulence is not dangerous.’

I am glad to be disabused of several concerns: the wings cannot fall off because, ‘the aircraft is built on to the wing spa, not bolted on afterwards;’ planes cannot fall out of the sky ‘as they could glide quite comfortably about three miles for every 1,000 feet of altitude, and land without engines;’ planes are not soft targets for terrorists because, ‘bags are screened three times, some flights have sky marshals, flight decks are sealed with bullet-proof doors and a coded entry system; even if the cabin crew were held hostage and revealed the code, the flight crew would not open the doors.’ And no danger of bird strikes because ‘the engines are tested at manufacture by firing frozen chickens at them.’

All I have to worry about now is a panic attack.

www.rogerandrandy.com