City officials and aviation authorities are still looking for answers after a medical jet crashed in Northeast Philadelphia a week ago, leaving seven people dead and killing 24 others. A black box with the cockpit recordings of the flight's last moments was located, and a preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board is expected within 30 days.
Combined with other recent flying disasters — including the midair collision between a passenger jet and an Army helicopter near Washington, D.C., that killed all 67 aboard on Jan. 29 and a missing plane in Alaska that was reported Friday — there could understandably be an uptick in flight anxiety. Still, experts say these events are few and far between — and they offered ways for travelers to cope with their fears.
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In extreme cases, doctors can diagnose travelers with aerophobia, which affects about 25 million adults in the United States, typically between ages 17 and 34, according to the Cleveland Clinic. Symptoms can include panic attacks, dizziness and nausea when flying.
Fearful travelers should watch or listen to something that can distract them from negative thoughts, and use meditation and deep breathing, Gail Saltz, an associate professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College, told CNN.
The key to managing or overcoming the fear is exposure, she said, and some therapists might even use virtual reality to get patients familiar with flying.
"You have to expose yourself in some way to that feared situation and prevent your usual responses, which only make the phobia worse," Saltz told CNN. "That’s (done) by having a therapist guide you through and teach you all these relaxation and therapeutic techniques to manage your anxiety as it comes. Over time, you essentially become desensitized to those triggers."
Learning basic aerodynamics and plane operations can help, too. Kimberly Fishbach, a clinical psychologist at NY Health Hypnosis & Integrative Therapy, told Women's Health that people who are afraid of turbulence can compare it to going over a big wave in a boat — while it might sway, it's made for those conditions. She also noted that it's OK to ask for help, or more knowledge, from the staff on board.
“Flight attendants know that people have anxieties,” Fishbach said. “I think a lot of people feel very alone in the experience, when in actuality, there's 20 million people who are also experiencing the same thing.”
She also recommended studying the data on how rare it is to die in a plane crash.
A study published in August in the Journal of Air Transport Management said that between 2018 and 2022, the odds of dying on a commercial flight were 1 in 13.7 million. It also said that passenger death risk dropped about 7% per year. Comparatively, the risk was 1 in 7.9 million from 2007 to 2017, and 1 in 350,000 from 1968 to 1977.
A Travelstart story published in June listed six "ridiculous things" that are more likely to kill you than a plane crash, including food poisoning, fireworks and lightning.
Still, according to a June 2024 study from analytics company Quantum Metric, 1 in 5 travelers were doing more research before a flight and 55% of travelers changed how they book flights following unpleasant news about planes and airlines, CNBC reported.
