Around 5 a.m. on a recent Saturday, I found myself at the whims of a drug-sniffing dog at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport. Uncaffeinated and foggy from a sleepless night, my mind suddenly ticker-taped through a list of newly acquired air travel anxieties.
My carry-on and I cleared the detection dog without issue: I wasn’t carrying contraband, and had absolutely no rational reason to fear TSA’s nosiest employees.
But somewhere between the recent news about an off-duty pilot who tried to shut off an Everett flight’s engines, and stories about widespread air traffic control lapses, fresh fears about air travel had invaded my psyche.
Getting to the gate on time came with its own stress. But why was I racing, anyway? Hurtling toward a gate just to hurtle at 35,000 feet toward home suddenly made me feel sick. My meticulous packing skills wouldn’t save me from a midflight emergency, I thought. Nor would a carefully curated set of mindfulness techniques. Onboard, my seat belt clicked and tightened, I fidgeted until we landed (safely) on Sea-Tac tarmac.
Then came the blowout. Last week, a gaping hole opened in a Boeing 737 MAX 9’s fuselage as it ascended above a neighborhood in Portland. What came next: an emergency landing, a nationwide grounding of more than 150 jets, and a personal, internal panic that’s become a lot louder than the logical part of my brain reminding me that air travel is safe.
Fear of flying is nothing new. But with another big airline safety failure — and an upcoming work trip to the East Coast — I wondered about the origins of stress, fear and air travel, and what, realistically, we can do about it.
I turned to University of Washington psychologist Jonathan Bricker, who more than 25 years ago became one of the earliest researchers to study air travel anxieties. Read on for a condensed and lightly edited version of our conversation.
- What’s the difference between air travel stress and fear of flying?
Stress is an umbrella of different emotions. There’s worry, there’s fear, there’s anger. Where that overlaps with fear of flying is that fear of flying is when your demands are so high that the fight or flight response kicks in. That’s leading our heart to race, you get sweaty, you might have dizziness, your vision might change.
The principal symptom across all the different fears people have when they’re flying is a panic reaction. So it’s a special case of stress. Generally people are afraid they may die or be seriously injured in a plane, or they’re afraid of having a panic attack on a plane.
- Who is prone to developing a fear of flying?
There is good empirical evidence that people who end up developing a fear of flying, most of them have had some type of stressful life experiences. That could mean that they had air travel stress. They may have experienced trauma in their lives. They may have a history of panic attacks.
What we’re understanding about fear of flying is that there’s a cumulative process. You may have learned this fear of flying vicariously by reading news reports about other plane crashes, and then over time, that can develop into a clinical fear of flying.
How might recent media attention, including passengers’ cellphone photos and videos, influence public fears about air travel?
Travel — because it’s so safe, and because we live in a time of social media — it’s gotten to a point where you can document almost immediately an incident that is survivable.
Now, we’re not dealing so much with the issues of people actually dying, but of people surviving. What that leaves us with is you get to see what it’s like in these tense situations. It can create a lot of very vivid, scary material for people to see. And they see it almost immediately after the incident. And you have survivor stories which are very dramatic.
That can have the potential of making some people really afraid. Even though they’re tremendously positive stories about people surviving, it can also be scary stories about what people had to go through.
The logical part of my brain tells me flying is safe. The news-consuming part of my brain tells me ‘not so fast.’ What kinds of cognitive distortions are at play here?
News is important because we need to know the stories about these (plane incidents). The downside, of course, is that for some vulnerable individuals, these stories can help build that (fear of flying).
People who have a fear of flying know on a logical level that it is safe. That isn’t the issue. What happens when you’re anxious is that you can find the exception. And that’s a distortion.
The nature of anxiety is to be vigilant. Vigilance can mean seeking out information that confirms your distortion, or confirms your view that flying is unsafe. If you’re watching videos or reading stories about airplane crashes, that begins to provide a biased view of how common plane crashes are or how dangerous planes are.
What happens with people who get anxious is that that ability to see danger is heightened. This ability that allows us to survive is also that ability that leads us to be afraid.
- You’ve researched flight-related stressors. In the decades since your initial study, what sort of practical changes have you noticed about the ways airlines and airports handle air travelers and their stress?
Almost never have airlines been interested in helping passengers cope with their anxiety. Instead, they have taken more of a structural approach by trying to change the environment, as opposed to trying to help the person. They’ve created greater efficiencies for boarding. They have certainly improved the training of in-flight personnel on how to de-escalate situations.
But I would say the conditions that can lead to stress haven’t changed. Planes are still crowded. There are just the minimum number of flights to serve various routes to maximize revenue. Most programs for treating fear of flying that were run by airlines don’t run anymore. There are offshoots run by psychologists or retired pilots, completely separate from the airlines.
Airlines want to portray the pleasure of flying, or the incentives for flying, like getting free flights if you use their credit cards or fly with them more.
The idea of offering messaging on the fear of flying runs counter to that branding. Taking you places, saving you money and rewarding your loyalty. Those sorts of threads don’t fit within the box of being afraid.
In a 2000 interview in The New York Times, you talked about air travel as an “authoritarian environment” where travelers have very little control. What is within a travelers’ control?
Perception of control directly influences your ability to cope with stress, and flying is no different. What I think is helpful for a traveler is to know what you can change and to accept what you cannot. The airlines and the airports, they’re going to throw all kinds of things (at you) that you have to do. They’re going to make you take your shoes off, or they’re going to make you raise your hands as you go through the security.
One thing that is always (within) travelers’ control is how they react. What they’re afraid of is not crashing. They’re afraid of the thought of crashing. This is an important distinction. Learning how you respond to the thought is in your control. I’ve used the metaphor of a carry-on bag. Imagine that your anxiety is a carry-on bag. What you can control is what you put in that mental carry-on bag.
- What kinds of behavior changes are proven to help ease air travel anxieties?
If you can change your situation, you should. One example is to not sit in the hold room where the plane is about to board. This is a fairly tense environment. You have a lot of people vying to get on first. What I suggest is travelers try to sit in the next hold room or across from the hold room. There’s a little more space around them and you can still hear the announcements and see if people are boarding.
When you’re actually on a plane, to be able to manage your own anxieties, bring a recording of a meditation. Once you’re seated, you can just tune out what’s going on around you and not get so caught up into the triggers for anxiety.
Takeoff and landing are the two phases of a flight that generally bring people the most anxiety. Those are good times to listen to something like that. It’s calming for the anxious flyer.
