Ways to cope if you’re a newly fearful flier

Downing several drinks or popping a few pills before boarding a flight might help temporarily but it can become a crutch. (Image: Pexel)
Downing several drinks or popping a few pills before boarding a flight might help temporarily but it can become a crutch. (Image: Pexel)

Summary

Travelers are looking to counter rising anxiety after the worst U.S. aviation accident in a generation.

Kimberly Mack took a free fear-of-flying class at Sky Harbor International Airport more than a decade ago and has relied on the tools she learned on every flight since.

On Monday, the 54-year-old Arizona small-business owner called Ron Nielsen, the retired airline captain who runs the classes, for a one-on-one refresher. Mack has a flight to Napa, Calif., later this month and considered canceling after last week’s devastating midair collision in Washington, D.C., and medical-jet crash in Philadelphia.

The guy she calls “Captain Ron" reassured her in a call that stretched over an hour. “He’s not like: Your fears aren’t valid. You have to remember things happen. It reiterated everything."

You don’t have to be a nervous flier to be suddenly anxious about airline safety. The American Airlines-Black Hawk helicopter crash, which killed 67 people, was the worst aviation incident on U.S. soil in a generation. Frequent fliers as well as casual travelers are talking about it with their families and co-workers and airline crews are stunned.

Nielsen, who runs a Phoenix-based business called Fearless Flight and has a master’s degree in professional counseling, saw it at his latest free airport class on Saturday night. He says a third of the attendees signed up because of the accident.

“It doesn’t make people afraid but it elevates the fears that they’ve been repressing," he says. “It activates their fear-of-flying gene."

Dial a Pilot, an 18-month-old business run by a major airline pilot, has seen a “massive surge" in bookings for its $65, 30-minute sessions. “The calls were not necessarily centered on the accident, they were more centered on: I have this one fear. Is it valid?" says founder Kyle Koukol.

It is. But while I can help you navigate annoying airline seat fees, airport lounge restrictions and pesky carry-on bag rules, I’m not the right person to soothe your frayed flying nerves. That’s for the professionals.

So I turned to Nielsen, Koukol and licensed therapists for their coping strategies, though each said they don’t love dashing off tips because there is no one-size-fits-all strategy.

“It’s such a complex problem," Nielsen says, but there are ways to manage your anxiety.

Retired airline captain Ron Nielsen holds part of his free fear-of-flying class at the Phoenix airport on Saturday in a parked Southwest Airlines plane.

Stop doom scrolling and do a reality check

Nathan Feiles, a licensed therapist and fear-of-flying specialist in New York City, says major airline accidents tend to put a spotlight on all types of airline incidents that follow—no matter how routine, like a flight returning to an airport.

“It creates a sense of reverse normalization," he says. “It starts to make people think that there’s a lot more danger happening."

Yes, this crash was awful. But flying is still the safest form of transportation.

To help put things in perspective, Brenda Wiederhold, a licensed clinical psychologist in San Diego, recommends patients scroll the departure boards for an airport (online is fine) to see the flurry of flights that take off and land day in, day out.

She asks frequent fliers, “Have you ever not landed safely?"

Then she asks them how many times they’ve had a fender bender. If they say two or three she responds, “You still get in your car and drive."

Don’t self-medicate just to board a plane

Downing several drinks or popping a few pills before boarding a flight might help temporarily but it can become a crutch.

Travelers need to address the underlying fear rather than put it off, Wiederhold says.

“You’re telling yourself, ‘I can’t do this,’" she says. “I’m saying you will make it worse by avoiding it. The monster gets bigger, the fear gets bigger."

Use anxiety-management tools

Deep breathing is a big one, of course.

Nielsen is a big fan of distanced self-talk, a technique promoted by Ethan Kross, an experimental psychologist and neuroscientist and director of the Emotional and Self Control Lab at the University of Michigan. He wrote the book “Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It."

The bottom line: You distance yourself emotionally from a situation. Nielsen says travelers can reframe a flight situation that scares them, like turbulence, by writing, “I hate this but I’ve been here before and I lived" over and over.

“You’re changing from negative cognitions to positive cognitions," he says.

Find your community and feed off each other

I found this to be the most practical and widely applicable advice for those without severe phobias.

You’ll get no shortage of online recommendations, but the key is to find the right fit. Scrolling through Reddit travel threads, including its Fear of Flying subreddit, I found recommendations as basic as watching videos on airplanes or perversely bingeing episodes of National Geographic’s “Air Crash Investigation.’

Oregon bookstore owner Katherine Morgan flew to San Diego last weekend and was anxious about the flight.

Dial a Pilot clients who join its No Fear Flight Club get access to an online forum where members share coping mechanisms. Koukol finds it fascinating that a lot of the tips revolved around time. One client counts to 30 over and over again until the turbulence stops.

“That’s kind of her way of just taking the power away from the turbulence," he says.

A couple of months ago, Taylor Swift entered the fearful flying lexicon when a client who overcame her fear of flying and is now training to be a pilot mentioned she listens to the 10-minute version of “All Too Well" on repeat.

Katherine Morgan, a 31-year-old bookstore owner in Portland, Ore., has her own routine to fight off flight jitters and paid extra attention to it on a Saturday flight to San Diego. She kisses the plane when boarding, reads a romance novel because she knows the ending will be happy and orders a ginger ale.

“It gives me some kind of feeling of control."

Write to Dawn Gilbertson at dawn.gilbertson@wsj.com

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