Stressed/nervous flyer

Iona_Penny

I was and am an anxious who had not flown for 12 years and dreamed sometimes o flights. Well four years ago went on holiday with friends and my kids who had never flown and were so excited. It was to south of France and driving was not an opton with terribly car sick daughter who is anxious at the thought of strange long journeys by car!!!

Anyway saw the guy on GMTV who sometimes helps people withtheir phobias - cant remember exactly what he said but he helped a guy go to Florida who was phobic BUT one of the things I did remember was to keep your panic low in your stomach and not to let it rise up and out as scream or panic breathing. So I hid my fear from my kids and kept my fear low and visualised it with a lid on ok a lid that bubbled up and down but stayed on. It really helped.

Have flown twice more since ok only east midlands to Glasgow-about 40 mins but you're stillup there) and will be off to SofF again this year. Cant say I'm cured or up to the Atlantic yet but figure people like Trolley Dolley do not have death wishso it must be OK GOOD LUCK!

nelly_2

Although I do fly (4/6) times a year. I absolutely hate it.

And its not an irational fear of flying too, all my fears are quite rational and based on sound logic, physics and laws of nature.

Metal fatigue rarely shows its self, up to failure point.

Pilots can and do make errors.

Weather conditions can come out of the blue, clear air turbulence and micro bursts.

I simply cannot start to enjoy the build up to a holiday untill the plane is off the destination runway. The crash with the highest fatalities happened when one plane hit another on the runway ( Ibiza 1978 I think).

Confronting your fears is one thing but confronting them and still not being able to get over them is quite another.

Having said all that it is statistically the safest for of transport.

There is a great website run by a pilot, where he answers every bodies fear questions, like what heppens if the electrics fail (that was mine), i lost the link in a format but I'll try to find it it did actually help me quite a lot.

He he found it, he actually only flies the Boeing 777 which is the safest plane ever built, it has five back ups for the electrics

Anyway he answers any questions you ask but being a full time pilot it can take a few days but he even apologises for that too, TOP LAD

http://www.askcaptainlim.com/overview.htm

pingu

thank you

my wife needs to read this as she is terrified of flying.

stressedoutmum

Hi Al Mac
I totally sympathise with you as I am the same but I also suffer from acute vertigo and chlostrophobia. Cannot travel into town on local bus (about 10 minutes) without puking. This starts from about 5 minutes after take off. I am a nightmare to travel with but do it for my kids and husband. We are off to Florida in Sep and I am absolutely dreading the journey. I know this doesn't help you but there are people who feel exactly the same as you and even worse they just don't show it and when you touch down you will be really pleased you have done it - despite your fear and the great holiday you will have will makes up for it! By the way if anyone has advice for travel sickness would be great as I take anti-sickness tablets regularly for the vertigo but they don't seem to help much on a plane. I suppose combined with nerves and chlostrophobia they don't get a chance to work really!

Trollydolly_2

That website is brilliant!

I will recommend it to all my nervous passengers!

Thank You xx

Js_Other_Half

Stressedoutmum - I use the acupressure straps (for your wrists) for travel sickness. I am fine on planes and trains, but don't travel well by coach or in the back of a car. I find the straps help me avoid being ill, and even let me read on long coach journeys.

hth

WiseInvestor_2

Trollydolly wrote:

I can tell you all about the way the plane works and how they are checked by engineers before every flight (trains, cars, coaches, boats are not)

TD,
Whilst I recognise you're trying to be helpful, very few (if any) airlines will conduct routine engineering checks before every flight - they're expensive and uneccessary. For UK airlines, certain checks by qualified engineers are mandatory every 24 hours with suplementary checks conducted by the pilots before every flight (it's their lives too!). I would agree with your relative-safety comment - how many car drivers check their tyres, bumpers, mirrors, windscreens, brakes etc before every journey?

Trollydolly wrote:

I would recommend that you DONT DRINK ALCOHOL before the flight

VERY sound advice!

Trollydolly wrote:

it may be possible for you to board the aircraft early and meet the pilot and the crew before the flight

You may've noticed my use of bold above? ALL commercial aircraft require a minimum of 2 pilots - some carry 3 or 4 depending on the length of the flight. Two heads are better than one and they are constantly cross-checking eachother's actions and decisions.

nelly wrote:

all my fears are quite rational and based on sound logic, physics and laws of nature

Nelly,
Perhaps I may be able to offer some helpful realism to your logic?

nelly wrote:

Metal fatigue rarely shows its self, up to failure point

Whilst you're correct that metal fatigue is hard to spot, strict engineering checks made to a rigid timetable are legally required and focus on the critical areas. This even involves stripping the aircraft into nuts and bolts! If a potential risk is found, the manufacturer is legally obliged to instruct all airlines using that particular aircraft to check their fleets - grounding them if necessary. With all the airlines in the world conducting these checks, someone somewhere should find the problem before mother nature does.

nelly wrote:

Pilots can and do make errors

That's why there's more than one of them (see above).

nelly wrote:

Weather conditions can come out of the blue, clear air turbulence and micro bursts

Modern aircraft have a Weather RADAR (usually) built into the nose. This RADAR scans the air ahead for risks of showers/storms/turbulence and helps the pilots find the safest and smoothest route through bad weather. The RADAR offers huge benefits at night when it may be difficult/impossible to see storms out of the window.

Clear Air Turbulence (CAT) is currently impossible to detect and can be serious. However nowadays, the tens of thousands of aircraft airborne at any one time are constantly collecting weather data from which forecasters can predict when and where CAT is most likely to occur. Pilots always plot their course through these forecasts and take steps to avoid or minimise the risks. Incidentally, the risks aren't to the aircraft itself as they're far too well built - the risks are actually to the people inside which is why passengers should always keep their seatbelts fastened whilst sat down! You'd do it in a car, so do it on a plane.

Microbursts are a natural phenomenon occuring at or near the ground, so only pose a danger during take-off or landing. There are many causal factors involved but they're usually confined to very strict localities. There aren't many airports in the world prone to microbursts, but of those that are, the major ones have special detectors dotted for miles around to give pilots and Air Traffic Controllers advanced warning - if in doubt, aircraft will not attempt to land!

nelly wrote:

I simply cannot start to enjoy the build up to a holiday untill the plane is off the destination runway. The crash with the highest fatalities happened when one plane hit another on the runway ( Ibiza 1978 I think)

I suspect the accident you refer to was on Teneriffe when two 747s collided in thick fog. The aviation industry would like to think that lessons have been learned from this - not least that's it's better to arrive late than to never arrive at all! RIP

nelly wrote:

Having said all that it is statistically the safest for of transport

Actually that's a myth - nobody has ever died in a Hovercraft

nelly wrote:

he actually only flies the Boeing 777 which is the safest plane ever built, it has five back ups for the electrics

A bold statement - is that from Boeing? Is that because the 777 is their second-newest type so the timescales and numbers in service show them more favourably to, say, the 737 or 747?

Personally, I'd rather lose all of my fuel and/or my electrics than all of my hydraulics

Hope that helps

nelly_2

Wiseinvestor

Thing is i just cant find any firm that will hovercraft me to America

I got that stement anout the 777 off captain Lim and since checked it out.

It is the first plane ever to be designed entirely by computers and has every safty system known to man kind.

He answered my electric failure question about it. It aparently has 2 sets of back up generators for the power and little doors open in the wings exposing 2 little propellers which drive dynamos so the planes own air speed can generate enough electricity to fly it to a landing. It has a wind shear radar on board which no other plane has and various other stuff. They strapped one to the floor and bent its wings up with jacks and they went up a full 24 feet befpre they snapped.

I apreciate you trying to rationalise my fears but its not gonna happen

WiseInvestor_2

Nelly,

To be fair, most modern commercial jets have the same or similar back-up systems. The two main manufacturers (Boeing and Airbus) employ similar design philosophies and are legally required to build-in multiple redundancy.

Even the smallest passenger jets (eg Airbus 318) have a 'little propellor' called a RAT (Rapid Air Turbine) which automatically drops out underneath the aircraft in case of a total electrical failure. Captain Lim is quite right that this can generate sufficient power to keep some (but not all) of the lights and screens in the cockpit working until landing - no tea or coffee though! The reason the B777 has two is probably due to the shear size of the body - the RAT requires an undisturbed airflow to function correctly and Boeing may've had difficulty finding a single guaranteed location to fit just one - only guessing here though.

The Windshear detector is also available to airlines who choose to pay for it, from both Boeing and Airbus. Incidentally, I've never flown a commercial jet without it and I've never flown a B777


Happy Landings!

nelly_2

Ah ha your a pilot no wonder you dont mind flying.

One of the last times I flew was out of O Hare and we bumped into the pilot at check in. I asked him if he'd reaaaly try hard not to crash the plane, he said he'd do his best as he was going to be on it too! and he managed.