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Ask HN: How to overcome fear of flying?

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Re: Ask HN: How to overcome fear of flying?

#221

Post by stavros »

GraffitiTim wrote: post #77
relix wrote: post #12

I had a fear of flying, which I overcame completely by accident: I started playing a realistic flight sim for a while. Because it was realistic, I had to learn the basics of how to actually fly a plane. It taught me two things: what some of the noises, the vibrations, and the movements were; and how hard it is to actually crash a plane. Once you made it in the air, you'll want to try crashing your plane in the game (…

We're building a VR simulation of flying specifically for the purpose of overcoming fear of flying. It uses some of the same principles you mention: -Repeated exposure to a realistic flying experience (in our case, it goes gradually since it's designed for people with a fear) -Specifically learning about some of the different noises planes make -Getting exposure to the vibrations, noises, turbulence, etc that you'll…

I like the GP's point that you should also show how hard it is to crash the plane. Otherwise, people won't really have an idea of the margin of "weird noise" they have before getting to an actually threatening situation.

Re: Ask HN: How to overcome fear of flying?

#222

Post by rezashirazian »

cassowary37 wrote: post #185

Psychiatrist here, and long-time fearful flyer who benefited tremendously from CBT. Really impressed by the range of strategies expressed in this thread; I wanted to mention a few things: 1. No one solution will work for everyone, but it's always possible to find something that will help. CBT and its cousins work very well but aren't accessible to everyone (still waiting for a /good/ solution to that, HN) - in those…

I randomly jumped into this post and do not have the context or the experience to know what CBT stands for. What is it?

Re: Ask HN: How to overcome fear of flying?

#223

Post by mirceal »

rezashirazian wrote: post #222
cassowary37 wrote: post #185

Psychiatrist here, and long-time fearful flyer who benefited tremendously from CBT. Really impressed by the range of strategies expressed in this thread; I wanted to mention a few things: 1. No one solution will work for everyone, but it's always possible to find something that will help. CBT and its cousins work very well but aren't accessible to everyone (still waiting for a /good/ solution to that, HN) - in those…

I randomly jumped into this post and do not have the context or the experience to know what CBT stands for. What is it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_behavioral_therapy

Re: Ask HN: How to overcome fear of flying?

#224

Post by k_sh »

rezashirazian wrote: post #222
cassowary37 wrote: post #185

Psychiatrist here, and long-time fearful flyer who benefited tremendously from CBT. Really impressed by the range of strategies expressed in this thread; I wanted to mention a few things: 1. No one solution will work for everyone, but it's always possible to find something that will help. CBT and its cousins work very well but aren't accessible to everyone (still waiting for a /good/ solution to that, HN) - in those…

I randomly jumped into this post and do not have the context or the experience to know what CBT stands for. What is it?

Cognitive behavioral therapy!

Re: Ask HN: How to overcome fear of flying?

#225

Post by byoung2 »

staunch wrote: post #176
byoung2 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you provide a citation for the per hour stat? I didn't do the math before, but let's try some back of envelope math. You can estimate it based on mileage. Assuming that a car averages 50mph and a jet averages 500mph, then you spend 10x as long in a car as you do in a jet per mile flown. So if you are 750x more likely to die per mile in a car than in a plane, then you are 75x more likely to die per hour in a car t…

That all seems reasonable. I do think my contention that a cautious driver could probably beat the safety of an airplane is plausible but it could also be untrue. A quick look at the stats show that most fatalities involve distracted driving, speeding, drunk driving, bad weather, not using seatbelts, etc. And there's even more variables like vehicle type, speed, urban vs rural, etc. Another major factor is averaging…

That's interesting...I was actually trying to find stats broken down by the type of driving. 10 seconds of illegal street driving or drunk driving must be many times more dangerous than dropping kids off at school or picking up grocery driving. It would be interesting to get the stats broken out by type of driving.

I remember finding a government site with these kinds of stats decades ago when fighting a red light camera ticket and finding that something like 95% of red light accidents came more than 10 seconds after a light turned red, but that 95% of red light camera tickets were issued during the first 1 second after a light turned red. I ended up getting the ticket dismissed because I convinced the judge that my red light running was harmless because it was half a second after the light changed.

Re: Ask HN: How to overcome fear of flying?

#226

Post by stevenleeg »

schoen wrote: post #98

United used to have a feature called "From the Flight Deck" where you could listen to live radio communications between your pilots and air traffic control. Unfortunately, it's now only available on a few routes and planes: https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/united-airlines-mileageplus/... I found it very comforting to listen to it during an entire flight, because you could find out what the pilots of your flight were a…

It'd be interesting to see a service that automated this process for you. Ie if you select your flight it displays a list of ATC streams for each airspace you pass through and allows you to easily switch between said streams.

Re: Ask HN: How to overcome fear of flying?

#229

Post by mrburton »

Remember - an airplane has never crashed from turbulence. When I was around 8 years old, I was on a flight whose engine blew up. We had to land using one engine.

If that doesn’t stop me, then turbulence shouldn’t stop or scare you. Treat it like a roller coaster ride and enjoy the fake rush of nervious energy and live your life!

Re: Ask HN: How to overcome fear of flying?

#230

Post by kbaker »

wbrinkley wrote: post #82

There's better advice here than thinking about the odds of a crash, but if that helps, you could also factor in the odds of actually dying in a crash - not just being in one - because that's even rarer. I was on a plane that experienced an "uncontained, catastrophic turbine engine failure" (Delta 1288) that killed two people a few rows behind me. It was traumatic, and I rented a car and drove home instead of flying,…

Interestingly, that same aircraft you were on 22 years ago is still in service today...

That plane probably has had tens of thousands of flights since then without any incidents.

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