Fear of Flying and How it can be Treated

 by Dinura Ranmandala

(source: Wiki Commons)

Fear of flying(aerophobia) is the phobia of flying in an aeroplane. This phobia is estimated to affect around 6.5 percent of the world population and even though this seems like a low number, it really isn't. Issues like these can heavily diminish the aviation industry as the more people who gain this phobia, the lower the potential of people flying becomes and hence a reduction in potential income for airlines and since the aviation industry is one of the largest industries in the world this can heavily affect the economy both locally and globally. On top of this, people who suffer from aviophobia will be confined to the same place over long periods of time and won't feel the comfort of travelling abroad and trying something new, living a boring life. In order to deal with the fear, many people resort to drugs such as sedatives but now to combat this issue, various airlines have developed courses specifically to combat this issue. One specific airline that offers this course is British airways and they offer this to a multitude of different groups of people (children, teenagers, adults, adults with more money etc.) so they can reach a larger variety of people so age isn't an issue to overcome this fear. The general course starts off with a presentation that outlines how the day would go and allows people with the phobia to talk to each other and see the different reasons as to why they are afraid of flying, the next stage is psychologist evaluation where trained psychologists will talk the people in the course about their specific fears and help paint a positive picture of flying to assure to them that there is nothing to worry about. The final stage is an actual 45 minute flight where trained staff and psychologists board the flight with the people suffering from aviophobia where hopefully most people will lose their fear and recognise the joy of being airborne.

In order to combat the phobias, the psychologists would have to deploy psychological tactics that would hopefully remove the fears from the patient’s conscious mind. British Airways uses a form treatment so that the participants of the course are directly exposed to flying(their fear) but they are also taught relaxation techniques so that during treatment they can try to relax whenever they feel fear crawling up their spine and hopefully the patients would be so relaxed during the exposure that they would naturally lose whatever fear they had. A benefit of using this form of treatment is that it is quite cost effective and allows quick treatment. Furthermore through the direct exposure, this ensures that when they do actually get on a plane, they’re much more relaxed as they’ve already experienced this in real life through the course. However direct exposure to a phobia can cause traumatic experiences to the patient and this may cause a more serious effect than before as well as high levels of stress. This can lead to some patients pulling themselves out of the therapy hence leaving their phobia untreated and a waste of resources and time.

These methods are quite effective in making sure those who suffer from this disorder will hopefully recover. But personally I still believe we have only just broken the surface and there must be more work conducted to make sure there is a form of treatment so efficient that no one will need to suffer from this fear anymore.