‘Since childhood Jane Hardy has been terrified of stepping onto a plane. Could a new course help her to feel the fear…and do it anyway?\r\n\r\nIt may have begun days even weeks before. But the feeling accelerates when those doors are closed with a final clunk – ”ready for take-off” – and you listen to the strange sounds.\r\n\r\nThere”s the ”ping ping” like the prelude to all those airport announcements you”ve just ignored through a fog of anxiety and the other one the sickening brake-screech. The last bit of safety announcement fades. And as you taxi down the runway and head from terra firma to the unfamiliar element of the air it”s clear you”re not alone in your fear of flying.\r\n\r\nSome people are over-intent on their books and magazines some close their eyes a few chat for Britain. As a journalist put it in each cosy aeroplane row of three one person would rather be somewhere else. Anywhere else.\r\n\r\nAs a fearful flyer albeit a frequent short-haul flyer with family in London and a seasonal desire to escape to places like Paris and ItalyI”ve wanted to conquer this phobia for a long time. Since I was 10 in fact and took my first flight to Africa with my also nervous mother. We were heading to a tricky domestic situation and I picked up her ambivalence.\r\n\r\nWith gaps in my flying careerI”ve attempted to tame the thing by desensitisation and latterly avoidance – for around 20 years first time round then eight. But nothing worked.\r\n\r\nSo the news that coaching psychologist Alison Clarke had started a fearless flyers” course (note the clever rebranding) out of Belfast City Airport with the help of one of Aer Lingus” top pilots Capt Harry Brady made me think again.\r\n\r\nCould I make my white-knuckle rides something more pleasant and maybe one day resume long haul to revisit Africa and head for New York somewhere the other half and I would love to go?\r\n\r\nInitially and ironically the very fact I”d signed up for the day”s session made me more rather than less anxious in the run-up to the big day which involved flights to and from London.\r\n\r\nIt was the same when I”d gone on a Press trip to Thailand in the late Eighties.\r\n\r\nI was fine(ish) until we took the internal flight to Phuket and lovely Judith Chalmers from Wish You Were Here? approached me to say how sorry she was I”d got a problem and could she help. At that point I knew I couldn”t get on the plane. My cover had been blown and I made it down to our beachside destination by train then home with the help of tranquillisers and Gordon”s gin.\r\n\r\nBut on arrival on a recent damp Saturday at the airport I was prepared to try different techniques and give it a go. Alison a reassuring very professional presence introduced the small group to the idea that we might re-train our imaginations which hitherto had been working unpaid overtimemaking us see the ascent to 35000 feet as suicide.\r\n\r\nShe would be helping us re-edit things change the habitual groove of thought as well as letting Capt Brady provide the impressive facts and figures demonstrating that stepping onto a modern plane operated by a large carrier is actually safer than getting behind the wheel of the family car and heading down the motorway.\r\n\r\nOf course to a true phobic statistics tend to produce a harrumph or the ”What if?” line of questioning used to prove that we are right and this activity really is jolly dangerous.\r\n\r\nSensibly just before the session on facts figures and engineering we learnt some relaxation techniques based on the concept of mindfulness borrowed from Buddhism. Then it was into the detailprovided by a charming man who notches up 250000 air miles a year.\r\n\r\nHe gave us chapter and verse on aeroplane banking – something one of our group found frightening. Apparentlyit”s a wing shift from the horizontal of only around 25% and without it the plane couldn”t turn right towards the Isle of Man and home. He also sorted out the noises with the ”pings” which we helpfully chorused something to do with the old ”no smoking” announcement. The other sound is apparently related to gears.\r\n\r\nAnd no the engine diminuendo that you hear as the plane levels out isn”t risky fuel-saving. Well it is fuel economy but not risky.\r\n\r\nDuring a break I asked Harry whether he”d ever been frightened on a plane. He hesitated briefly didn”t use the f-word but said yes he”d been concerned when one engine had gone on him with a bang climbing to a couple of thousand feet out of Gatwick. “I had to work out what to do quickly but we circled and landed again ok.”\r\n\r\nThe point ishe and his nearly 200 passengers comfortably survived. Procedures were followed. It wasn”t a headline. Reassuringly pilots have to do six monthly sessions at a realistic simulator working out how they”d cope with real problems like the New York near-disaster when the gutsy pilot landed on the Hudson River.\r\n\r\nI was at this point feeling the way I often do at an airport quite worried but also slightly excited. One of the group went for a fag break and said he was planning his tactics.\r\n\r\nDuring the course participants reacted in different ways.\r\n\r\nWhen we ran through Capt Brady”s fact session I was aware that my anxiety went up a bit maybe not to cruising altitude but higher than normal I became aware that one guy who really grilled our pilot was looking slightly green. But he said he was determined to conquer his fears which were impeding his successful business career – he needs to travel across the Irish Sea once a week.\r\n\r\nWhy did he have problems? Like me he hadn”t had a really bad flight like me he”d decided at one point that he just didn”t want to enter the flying sardine can again. Unlike me this decision had stuck. You could see his thinking shifting under Alison”s tutelagebut maybe he simply needed an extra session or to experience the normality of 21st century air travel. He said his brother also fearful had been cured by working within sight of the Aldergrove runways. Seeing the normality of endless take-offs and landings helped him resume flying.\r\n\r\nBut after queuing to get on the plane after sitting down in the lovely leather seats he had second thoughts. He made for the exit and missed our uneventful flight to Heathrow.\r\n\r\nWhat happened next surprised me and began a shift of the tectonic plates of my psyche.\r\n\r\nAs we discussed what had led to our fear I remembered my grandfather Dr Herbert Moss an aeronautical engineer and therefore obviously an expert telling me when I was six that he”d never trust a modern jet engine.\r\n\r\nPing! I realised that his remark and that initial flight to Entebbe had given me priority boarding into the fearful flyers” club.\r\n\r\nBut here was a chance to start the journey towards the fearless flyers” club that Alison runs.\r\n\r\nWould it work? As the afternoon wore on I felt more confident.\r\n\r\nWe were told to use the three-D technique – Dispute the old thinking De-stress (by using the wonderful relaxation technique we”d learnt) and gain Distraction.\r\n\r\nMine is usually burying my nose in a newspaper or magazine or gulping down a short story (currently the Russians). I have also been known to down a G&T or at least have one on standby.\r\n\r\nOthers had equivalent light bulb moments – one guy whose whole family mistrusted flying was visibly relieved as he sensed he didn”t have to follow that old thinking.\r\n\r\nWith a dash of CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) some sophisticated positive or realistic thinking you can start to unpick even decades of negative thinking. And bypass the bit of lizard brain that teaches you to regard every new experience as a ”fight or flight” situation. Alison”s techniques are already ratcheting up successes and she had the idea for the course after helping a colleague who was plane phobic. Since then he”s happily flown on skiing holidays and attended a family wedding in America recently.\r\n\r\nAs the taxi driver I consulted on the way to the George Best Airport said laconically: “I”ve no problem with flying and nor did my father. He said it was like getting on a bus and the turbulence was just bumps in the road.”\r\n\r\nFunnily enough as Harry told us pilots do regard their routes as motorways and side roads through the ether. To my immense surprise and delight I had a pleasant flight over with Alison. And as we chatted she reinforced the new way of thinking. I also had a taped positive visualisation exercise in my bag.\r\n\r\nThe flight back solo on Monday morning was the real test. Did the phobia begin again? Well I listened to the ”pings” and the odd (but routine) sounds. There was a delay before take-off from Heathrow on a wet day.\r\n\r\nBut … it was all right.\r\n\r\nWhile not a totally fearless flyer yet – and Alison Clarke doesn”t promise instant nirvana – I think I”m en route. I looked out of the window quite a bit admired the cloudscape went to the loo (walking down the aisle had seemed too precarious before) and felt pretty much at ease.\r\n\r\nMy helpful distraction was two girls and their parents just behind: “No I won”t paint your nails on the plane Phoebe.”\r\n\r\nAer Lingus” slogan is ”Great faregreat care” and it”s good they care enough to have thought of the 30% of their passengers who are anxious as previously the only courses ran out of London were with BA and Virgin.\r\n\r\nCome fly with me? Yeah I just might.\r\n\r\nSo how does it work …?\r\n\r\nPsychologist Alison Clarke writes:\r\n\r\nMany competent and intelligent people suffer from fear of flying in varying degrees. Some fly in a state of great anxiety while others suffer long and arduous rail or car journeys. Others still miss important family events and opportunities to explore the world.\r\n\r\nOften referred to as an irrational fear there is nothing that feels more rational in the mind of the troubled person especially when they start to think about travelling by air.\r\n\r\nYet statistically air travel remains one of the safest forms of transport. According to the American Aviation Safety Networklast year was the safest since 1945.\r\n\r\nComparisons between driving and flying point to how much safer it is to fly than to drive which explains why a pilot will tell you that the most risky part of their job is driving to the airport.\r\n\r\nSo if flying isn”t the source of the problem it must be something going on within the passenger. That”s good news because it means the passenger has the power to alter his or her experience. Fear of flying has its origins in the exaggerated function of the human imagination and the human capacity to defend itself from real or imagined threats. Taken to extremes these normal thinking processes become unhelpful.\r\n\r\nThe more these painful thoughts are rehearsed in the person”s thinking the more they wear a groove and become a habit of thought that is eventually an impediment to making free informed choices. The more often the thought is repeated the more it appears real.\r\n\r\nOvercoming fear of flying requires learning new information and unlearning old habits of thought. During the coursepeople learn the facts about flying and how to retrain their thinking to enable them to take to the skies with increased confidence.\r\n\r\nFamous fearful flyers\r\n\r\n• Agnetha of Abba – after flying through an electric storm on a short haul flight in the US in 1979 she refused to fly. Recentlythe singer said she”s overcome her nerves with the help of a therapist.\r\n\r\n• Dennis Bergkamp was dubbed the “non-flying Dutchman” after he decided to stop flying following an engine cut out in the plane carrying him and teammates to the 1994 football World Cup in USA.\r\n\r\n• Megan Foxwho resolves her aerophobia by always listening to Britney Spears music in the air. She explains: “I know it isn”t my destiny to die listening to Britney Spears …”\r\n\r\n… and famous fearless flyers\r\n\r\n• David Frost famously commuted to America in the 1970s when he was on the box on both sides of the pond often taking the redeye to film his show Frost on America.\r\n\r\n• Fergie the Duchess of Yorklearnt to fly in the early 1990s so she”d understand what her then husband Prince Andrew a helicopter pilotwas doing when he was at work.\r\n\r\n<a href=”http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/travel/fear-of-flying-can-new-belfast-course-cure-phobia-29162503.html” title=”Read the full article online here” target=”_blank”></a>’