Fear of Flying: My job requires me to fly, but I am
always scared for weeks before my flights. Should I be?
Is it safe to fly? Are my fears justified? These
kinds of questions rank among the most often asked in the E-mail
we receive.
EDITOR’S REPLY:
No, you shouldn't be afraid, but such fear is a rather common
affliction. Some estimate that 30 million Americans describe
themselves as "anxious" flyers.
In view of the statistics, it is irrational to fear flying a
significant distance, if you are willing to drive that same
distance without such trepidations, because your risk of injury
or death is 10 to 40 times greater in an automobile than in an
airliner, in the safer areas of the world.
I guess the most important thing I can say is that news
headlines have nothing to do with actual risk. If
you judge your risk of injury or death by the latest headlines
in the news media, you will always have much more fear than is
justified by statistical reality.
The size and repetitions of such articles has no
correlation to the actual risk of being involved in such
accidents. The intense competition for market share in all
forms of the media, seems to dictate that certain types of
stories receive more frequent front-page exposure. The
general public, hearing such stories time and time again, begin
to believe -- apparently without thoughtful analysis -- that
media repetition correlates to actual risk. It doesn't.
MIT professor, Arnold Barnett, a statistical expert in
the field of aviation safety, researched the New York Times
front page stories, for the period of 1988 and 1989, and found:
"1.7 murder
stories for every 1,000 homicides, 2.3 AIDS stories for every
1,000 AIDS deaths, .02 cancer stories for every 1,000 cancer
deaths and 138.2 plane crash stories for every 1,000 airplane
deaths." (Catherine Trevison,
of The
Oregonian, Feb. 6, 2000, edition)
Barnett, judges the actual risk of one person being
involved in a fatal airline accident, to be once every 19,000
years, provided he flew on an airliner once
each day of those 19,000 years. He bases that
estimate on what actually happened in the domestic U.S., during
the 1990s.
Trevison (ctrevison@news.oregonian.com)
also notes that:
"Measured in
deaths per mile, American commercial airline flights are 22
times safer than car travel. More people die in three months of
traffic accidents than in 40 years on commercial jets. More
Americans die each year falling from ladders, drowning in
bathtubs and freezing to death than by flying."
Thus, fear of flying is based on emotions, not rationality.
=========================================
Some of the major airlines use to have fear-of-flying
seminars, that were helpful to many anxious flyers. I don't
know how many have continued their seminars, nor do I have
the time to find out which, if any, are still
operating. If any readers have that kind of information,
please send it to this site (using our Contact Us page) and
we will publish it on this page.
[See how one reader conquered his fear of flying in
the Letter
to ASC, Ed.]
ASC has its own Fear
of Flying Forum, where Fearful Flyers can discuss with
one another, their anxieties and experiences of airline flying.
Just click on the link in this paragraph.
Our forum contains a wealth of information,
which has
been accumulating for over 7 years. A wide variety of Fearful
Flyers have shared their anxieties, as well as their
solutions, on how to cope with the Fear of Flying.
There are also contributions from several of us how have
tried to answer the many technical questions, which have
been posed by those seeking our help.
[Note:
We recommend using the Mozilla Fire Fox browser.
It is a free download at: Mozilla
Fire Fox ]
August, 2000;
updated July, 2009.
Robert J. Boser
Editor-in-Chief
AirlineSafety.Com
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