A pilot who is afraid of flying sounds like a contradiction in terms. Aren't we all swashbuckling, silk-scarfed adventurers motivated to fly out of a thirst for difficult challenges spiced with a dash of thrill seeking? That may be the rose-colored hue we'd like others to see us through, but the fact is that some pilots feel at least as anxious as they do energized about the prospect of going flying.
Experiencing anxiety before and during a flight is different than being nervous. Some amount of nervousness is completely normal, especially among student and low-time pilots. General anxiety and a feeling of dread about being up in the air go beyond nervousness. Yet, many pilots experience it.
I learned to fly in rural western New York state, and even though it was years ago I can vividly recall the churning stomach I often felt. It usually occurred whenever I planned a cross-country flight over true country - miles and miles of wooded hills interrupted by the occasional small town and the odd country airport - in less than perfect weather. VORs were few and far apart, and at the altitudes I flew reception was spotty. If a novice pilot didn't maintain positional awareness using pilotage, it was pretty easy to get lost over the territory.
Even worse than the fear of getting lost was the feeling that I got after hanging up from a flight service station briefing that did not lead to an unequivocal go/no-go decision. Weather was often a factor in that hilly country, and there were relatively few weather-reporting stations in the region. Consequently, it was difficult for a pilot of tender confidence to put together a comprehensive assessment of current and forecast conditions. Thus, I often experienced an incongruous mix of excitement and anxiety over the prospect of going flying.
Recently I received a letter from Bob Strathy, who had much the same experience. As a young pilot he, too, was filled with anxiety before flying. Even though he learned to fly nearly 56 years ago, his experience still resonates today.
"Since my earliest memory I have loved airplanes and the thought of flying," Strathy writes. "While in high school I was allowed to use money I had earned to take flying lessons (first lesson: September 1946). Money was limited, and Minnesota winters make it tough on students flying [Piper] J-3 Cubs. I finally soloed in March 1947 after seven hours of instruction.
"While at the University of Minnesota I earned my private pilot certificate and was in seventh heaven, except that before every flight I had a fatalistic sense of doom - a feeling of apprehension and anxiety. It seems that all my reading had imbued me with a sense that disaster was just around the corner.
"I knew all the things - and then some - that could go wrong, mechanically and otherwise. Once in the air, however, I felt most confident (perhaps overly so) and capable of handling anything that came along."
After many years of being grounded by a bout with polio, Strathy regained his medical certificate, began flying again, and bought an airplane. Some things hadn't changed, however. "The flying hours increased, but the preflight anxiety and apprehension remained," he says.
At the time he felt that the source of his anxiety was the many articles in aviation publications that dwelled on problems, real and imagined, that could befall a pilot. Reading about anxious moments in someone else's cockpit caused him to become anxious before climbing into his own.
Despite the fears, he continued to advance his knowledge and skills, earning commercial land, sea, glider, and flight instructor certificates. Strathy even taught himself to fly low-level aerobatics in a Champion Citabria 7ECA, and he performed in local airshows. "Still, that preflight sense of doom persisted," he writes.
"This concern frequently kept me from flying when it was perfectly OK to do so," he continues. "It made me overly cautious. I never thought of myself as scared, however, because once in the air I felt fully in command."
As it was with me, any anxiety that Strathy felt before climbing in an airplane disappeared with time and experience. He's thought a lot about it, and he has finally arrived at an interesting but troubling answer to the question of why he was anxious about flying in the first place.
Fortunately, he has decided to let magazine articles off the hook. "It really isn't the fault, after all, of you writers telling me all the things that can go wrong," he says. "It has to do with training, pure and simple.
"My formal training with certificated instructors has been hit or miss at the very best - absolutely no consistency, quality, or continuity. This 'training' has essentially amounted to signing me off for flight checks, etc.
"In reality, I taught myself how to fly in all its aspects. It seems as though I had to figure it all out for myself. I was my own long-term instructor. The only problem is that I have, after all these years, concluded that perhaps my instructor � me - was rather mediocre! What a revolting realization. Could it be that I was the cause of those feelings of anxiety and apprehension? Could I really have done it differently?"
The real question Strathy is asking goes to the heart of the flight instructor's role and responsibility. Can and should flight instructors recognize and address anxiety in their students? He says:
"To be sure, all pilots teach themselves in the sense that flying requires the development of motor skills. An instructor cannot infuse a student with these motor skills. The instructor essentially is a guide to aid the student in developing that skill. But flight instruction should go far beyond that, and this is what I found so lacking - with my resultant preflight apprehension."
To be fair, treating anxiety is a very difficult task for any teaching professional, if only because it can be tough to identify the true source of the problem. Flight instructors are adept at teaching the mechanics of piloting an airplane, not analyzing latent fears and anxieties that may or may not be related to flying.
Just as instructors should be sensitive to their students' anxieties, so should students be willing to speak openly about them. When I was a new pilot I don't recall telling anyone about the anxiety I felt because, well, real pilots just don't admit to that sort of thing. That attitude doesn't cut it any more. Instructors can't ignore the full range of their teaching responsibilities, but neither can pilots hide problems that fundamentally interfere with their ability to fly. The stakes are too high, the potential for dropping out too real, to ignore the issue.
"I wonder how many others have gone my route either out of necessity, laziness, or other reason," Strathy writes. "How many pilots out there are not enjoying aviation to the fullest because they have some gnawing fear that things might not go right and, therefore, don't go flying?"
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