How to deal with a fear of flying.

[Walter Powers]

I know lots of people have expressed a fear of flying, especially since the crash in San Francisco on Sunday, and I came across this news segment with a phycologists who explains how you can deal with it. I just wanted to share it:

http://video.foxnews.com/v/2531934097001/why-you-shouldnt-be-afraid-to-fly/?playlist_id=2114913880001

[Brighter.Tomorrow]

Easy.
Don't fly.

[Dark Blue]

You really just have to educate yourself, know your facts.

[Jhonnyp777]

Think about this for a second. On average home many deadly car crashes occurs world wide. It's a scary big number. Flying is the safest way of travel. In the USA the last MAJOR plane crash involving a MAJOR airline was back in 2001 when AA587 lost its tail shortly after takeoff and crashed in queens. 12 years passed before Asiana's crash in US Soil so that makes it the most current crash in the US. And even then should the plane crash you still have a chance for survival only 3 died ( RIP btw) while approx 70 others had mild to serious injuries out of 303 or so people. So again aviation isn't without its flaws but its definitely safer than me taking my car and going to work.

[hyperkid99]

Don't sleep for a week before the flight, then just pass out right before the plane takes off hahahh

[LouBerry]

Take meds, knock yourself out.

[RebelHeart]

Think about this for a second. On average home many deadly car crashes occurs world wide. It's a scary big number. Flying is the safest way of travel.

Now take a look at those numbers, but also take a look at the amound of cars driving every second and planes flying every second.

I don't know all the numbers of this year, so I'll just see what I can find
136 plane crashes world wide in 2011
6,1 million police-reported motor vehicle accidents in 2006
There are around 10.000 still working passenger planes in the world
in 2010 there were more than a billion cars

lets just go with these number, might not be very accurate since all are different years and indirect sources ('motor vehicles' is more than just cars, but I can imagine that the accidents for just the cars would be around 6 million too now), but who cares?
Cars: 1 accident per around 160 vehicles
Planes: 1 accident per around 75 planes

Like I said, it is not accurate, just an example. Saying that driving a car is safer based on the numbers I said is also bullshit. All those numbers show is completely nothing, because it's not accurate... If you'd do it accurate, it would only show the percentage of that kind of vehicles that crash.
I wrote it just so you know that simply looking at one side of the story is not enough, when looking at the amound of accidents with vehicles, also look at the amound of vehicles that are able to cause that accident.
if I build a new kind of transport, and I build 2 of those. as long as none crashes, 0% of the vehicles crashed, is it the safest kind of transport? no
now one crashes because the human behind the steering wheel fell asleep (Human Error!). is the vehicle now the most dangerous kind of transport with 50% crashed? nope

Like I said, it isn't that black and white

I once read somewhere that around 90% of all air plane crashes are because of human error. In car crashes, around 60% is human error, 90% is human-contributed. 2,4% was mechanical and 4,7 were because of the environment.

So to simply put everything together:
looking at one pair numbers won't provide you with the chance of you crashing. If you'd want to do it correctly, take in the exact chance of human errors, amound of those kind of vehicles, potential kind of crashes (planes rarely hit another plane, cars rarely fall out of the sky because of a failing engine...), etc etc.

all I wanted to say:
you can't calculate chances by looking at the amound of crashes only ^^



to answer the question: fear of flying mostly gets "cured" with conditioning. Connecting flying to something positive, instead of something negative. same thing as the dog that started to salvate when he heared a bell ring (he always got food right after the bell, so in his head: bell = getting food) and the little boy who was made scared of fluffy things (stuffed animals, real animals, you name it).