After a string of plane crashes that swept headlines over the past few months, passengers on social media have voiced their heightened concerns over flying.
TikTok videos and social media posts during the aftermath of the crashes and the loss of lives indicate that there has been amplified anxiety around flying.
The world’s attention was held by the fatal incident on Christmas day when 38 people died on an Azerbaijan Airlines flight, then four days later, a crash killed almost all of the people onboard a Jeju Air flight in South Korea.
A month later, a devastating incident shocked the US and the rest of the world when a mid-air collision between an American Airlines jet and an Army helicopter killed 67, the deadliest crash in the country in over two decades.
While extreme traumatic incidents draw attention, aviation experts reassure travellers that flying is still incredibly safe. According to data from the US National Transportation Safety Board, there have been fewer than average air accidents in the country for the first two months of the year.
Nevertheless, some flyers are expressing that their anxiety levels have increased due to the crashes – but will this translate into a lasting fear of flying among travellers?
Professor Robert Bor, a clinical aviation and aerospace psychologist at the Centre for Aviation Psychology, who has written papers and books on the treatment for fear of flying, explains that there is not necessarily a long-lasting link between plane crashes and people developing a phobia of flying.
He says: “There's no clear way to determine whether there's been an increase because it's not as though we have some kind of social barometer or thermometer that measures these things frequently.”
However, Bor adds that we do know a fear of flying is in the top 10 phobias that people find themselves with, particularly in countries with access to frequent air travel.
Yet, the interesting difference between a fear of flying and other phobias is that it does not necessarily lead to avoidance.
Air travel is often essential to reach other countries, whether that's for a holiday, to visit friends and family abroad, or for work that requires travel. So, many of those who have a fear or dislike of flying may still board a plane to get to their destination, whether they enjoy the experience or not.
This is different from other fears that can be more easily avoided, such as someone who has a fear of clowns – they will simply not go to the circus, watch scary clown films, and maybe stay indoors at Halloween.
While there are people who will vow to never get on a plane, Bor explains that having a fear of flying does not necessarily lead to long-term avoidance – instead, their fear will materialise as an “arousal”.
He explains: “By that, we mean people may feel stressed, they may get sweaty, they may do a lot of thinking.
“They may do some bargaining with people around them, with themselves, with god or whoever it may be. But it doesn't necessarily mean it's an avoidance.
“With flying, there will be people who don't want to be on the plane, but who are going to manage it.”
It is not always a plane crash reported on the news that can trigger an onset of fear; there are multiple reasons why people may have stress or anxieties around getting on a plane.
“Part of it may just be familiarity, ‘how does all of that metal stay in the air’?” Bor says.
“The other is just the physical experience. As a species, we've not evolved to fly, we're best suited to being on the ground.”
Fear may also be influenced by pre-existing stress, worry and anxiety in our day-to-day lives stemming from other events, as Bor explains: “Rarely do people get on board an airplane completely free of any feelings.
“You do sometimes get a slight surge increase [in fear] following an incident or accident, but we attribute that, obviously, to what's called the recency effect.” Examples of this may be experiencing severe turbulence or going through another traumatic incident outside of flying such as a car crash.
Mitigating factors can mean that our fears do get more “aroused”, but does this mean we will avoid getting on a plane? Bor says: “The true answer to that is rarely.
“Does it increase the number of people who are choosing not to fly? They may be more wary. They may check things out more. They may look up the weather. They may ponder, ‘Am I on a safe airline?’ and maybe switch to a different airline. They may go back to their reservation and change the seat that they were on, but it doesn't necessarily lead to avoidance.”
Long-term factors can also impact people’s levels of fear. For example, growing up travelling with a parent or family member who also had a fear of flying.
With so many contributing factors, it's hard to tell if there has been an increase in a fear of flying due to a recent awareness of fatal plane crashes, especially as people are continuing to travel by plane.
Bor says: “Where the statistics are at the moment, they probably are no different and haven't been different in the last 15 to 20 years.
“We have got used to hearing how unbelievably safe air travel is, and that actually hasn't changed, in spite of these headlines-grabbing incidents.
“So air safety hasn't been compromised. We're not into some new era of it sliding away.”
Bor adds that each aviation tragedy is unique, but “the more we can relate it to ourselves, the more worrisome it becomes”.
He explains: “If it's an air crash in a distant country on an airline we might not have ever flown on, or may not have heard about, it tends to be that we're a little bit more distant from the whole experience emotionally – which is the same actually with all news.”
However, if we see an incident that happened in a destination familiar to us, on a route that we travel or an airline on which we fly, the worry may well amplify.
Those who do opt to go on a plane may still worry about how their body will react, such as having a panic attack or becoming overwhelmed with stress.
“At one level, this is human nature. The body is seeking to protect us from something that we perceive to be aversive,” Bor explains.
If fearful flyers are looking to calm their anxieties about flying, Bor recommends trying therapy, whether that's reading books or talking to professionals such as counsellors, therapists or psychologists.
He says: “The treatment is about understanding what it is about that situation, particularly being on an airplane, that causes us that stress, learning about how the body is reacting, and then learning ways to override it.”
If you are flying with a fearful passenger, Bor says that the worst thing you can do is be dismissive. “When people say to someone who's got a fear of anything, ‘Oh, stop it. That could never happen’, all it does is make the person feel bad about the problem that they're having.
“What we need to do is figure out what reaction they're having and say ‘that's a normal reaction that your body's having. Yes, it's a bit excessive, and here are the ways that we calm it down,’ through deeper breathing, through meditation, through distraction, or through reappraising of the risk in front of you.”
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