The Times
YOU’RE CLEARED FOR TAKE-OFF by Steve Bird
How to tackle a fear of flying on a virtual plane.
At airport departure lounges around Europe, my ritual has always been the same. As friends draw straws to decide who has to sit next to me, I knock back another gin and tonic while repeating the mantra: “Flying is the safest form of transport.”
For me, flying is the ultimate white-knuckle ride. My crippling fear is fuelled by my ignorance of what stops several hundred tonnes of metal crashing to the ground, and an overactive imagination; each bump is a screw loosening or a wing cracking.
Nothing reassures me. I always glimpse the aircraft before boarding, thinking: “Is that rust? Those bolts look loose.” Even the smiling faces of the air hostesses fail to quell my anxiety as I clumsily make my way to the aisle seat (a window seat would mean spotting a hairline crack and watching the wings wobble).
I have always tried to believe that the rewards of visiting exotic far-flung places outweigh the hours of terror curled up in the foetal position in row 14.
And I have not allowed my fear to stop me flying. So there is always an exhausting battle to board the plane and in my moments of greatest terror not to shout: “We are all going to die.” Consequently, I have limited flights to just a few hours at the most.
I have always refused to do any fear-of-flying course that ends with an actual flight — a sort of once round the airport, with no sun, no sea and no exotic cuisine on arrival. But recently I discovered that I could do a course run by Virtual Aviation, which doesn’t expect me to fly. It uses a £10 million flight simulator, normally used to train pilots, to re-create the sounds and sensations of real flying.
I discussed my flying fears with Captain Keith Godfrey, a retired British Airways pilot, and Susie Stevenson, the course director, and discovered that at the heart of them was the sensation of being out of control.
Then we ran through the science of flying and the array of safety checks and procedures in place to prevent a crash.
Then they led me to the flight simulator. What I thought would be a mere fairground ride turned out to be alarmingly realistic. Within seconds of the engines roaring into life I had to apologise to Susie, who sat opposite me in the cockpit, after my leg shot out and kicked her as we banked.
Each bump and strange noise was explained and, in an attempt to learn how to control my nervous leg movements, we performed a series of increasingly sharp turns before making the plane take off and fly through increasing turbulence.
As a sense of excitement began to overcome the fear, Captain Godfrey invited me to fly the simulator. It was a thrilling experience as I threw it around somewhere over Heathrow making it bump, bank and dip.
While my fear has not vanished, I am now far more relaxed. I have since flown to India and America. This summer I will fly to Verona to go climbing in the Alps. One of my friends on the trip has revealed that he is afraid of flying so this time I will sit with him, telling him that flying is 25 times safer than driving and 1,000 times safer than crossing the road. I hope that I won’t kick him too much.
Reproduced from The Times, 30 July 2005.
