My fear of flying is not just a mild case, but a real, oh-my-God-I'm-going-to-die-any-second kind of fear. Which is unfortunate, because as a foreign journalist I can't exactly stay at home. My job has taken me to dangerous places such as Afghanistan and Iraq, but I'm far more worried about flying planes than by flying bullets. After an awful flight earlier this year on a small plane, I decided I would either have to stop flying altogether or I could try to overcome my fears. Which is why, a few weeks later, I agreed to take the flight to end all fears.
The plane was going almost vertically upwards before moving sharply to the left. To make matters worse, my seat was shaking violently because of severe turbulence. My stomach was turning. The captain, sensing my fear, took his hands off the controls and turned to face me. 'You see how safe it is', he smiled. In fact Captain Keith Godfrey had designed the flight, or rather the terrifyingly realistic flight simulator, to my needs.
In the two years Virtual Aviation have been running the course at Heathrow, they had never put the plane through such extreme flying before. Apparently, they thought that was what would work best for me. And they were right. By showing me just how far you can push a plane, and still keep it safely within its limits, they allayed my fears . I had to experience things for myself before I was able to convince myself of the truth. That planes, generally speaking, do not fall out of the sky like rotten apples.
In their careful pre-flight questioning with a therapist called Susie, they focused on what lay beneath my fear. Like many fearful fliers, I often experienced a heightened sense of hearing, noticing small changes in noises and amplifying them dramatically in my mind. Something moving in an overhead locker could sound to me like an engine about to fall off. But Susie focused on my heightened sense of movement as my main problem, which is why during the flight the captain flipped the plane over like a pancake.
It was an experience I would rather go through again. But by facing my worst fear, I'd overcome it. And fellow sufferers will be glad to know that I got through my next real flight safe and sound.
