About Turbulence
Last week I asked readers for comments about turbulence. Some of those comments, and my views on them, follow.
" . . . it is scary to experience . . . ."
As you say about turbulence, " . . .
It feels so alarming physically . . . ." But that is not true for every
person. I have never known a pilot who felt that turbulence is
alarming, and though that may be a special case (but one anxious
passengers should pay attention to and learn from) there are many
passengers who do not feel alarmed at all about turbulence.
Many passengers fall asleep during turbulence, or continue what they
were doing before it started. They remind me of passengers commuting on
the train into New York City. The ride on the train is worse than any
turbulence, and yet, train passengers do not feel alarmed.
Is this because they know they are on
the ground? My view of it is that, if we do not have enough built-in to control anxiety, we need certain "security blankets" in order to maintain our
emotional equilibrium. One of our security blankets is the earth. And
why not? All our memories of connection with people who are calming to
us took place on the ground. Once we leave the ground, it is as if
those connections are lost, and we can lose our emotional equilibrium.
But more than that. When a toddler learns to walk, it makes so many things possible. If if a toddler starts doing something forbidden, lifting the toddler up -- even a foot or two -- makes doing it impossible. Think of the many times you have seen a toddler protest, "Put me down. Put me down," and kick to get control given back by returning to the ground.
Whether it be a toddler lifted by a parent, or an adult lifted by an airplane, being lifted off the ground takes away control. To be dropped by a parent might not hurt, but to be dropped by an airplane would be disaster. Then, imagination of being dropped some great distance -- though incredibly improbable -- becomes near-certainty if psychic equivalence takes over.
The answer is the Strengthening Exercise and the Jello Exercise in Control of Anxiety.
" . . . you are always "waiting for it to happen".
Attempting to block out reality causes difficulty. If a person
gets on a plane with the strategy to try to forget they are on a plane and to blot out all awareness of
the plane, what -- then -- is the person going to be aware of?
Imagination? If so, that immediately opens the door to trouble. The
person has made the decision to intentionally disconnect from reality.
The person attempts to fill himself or herself with pleasant thoughts.
That may sound like a good idea, but it can't be maintained when
something as physical intrusive as turbulence begins. And, since the
person has already decided to replace reality with imagination,
imagination of the plane plunging a thousand feet can easily become the
person's reality, even though the plane is still at its proper altitude.
What IS the truth about "air pockets" and such?
Air pockets? No such thing. That is
just a term that was used in the "barnstorming" era, back in the 1920s
when pilots used farm fields as airports and charged people a dollar for an airplane ride. It
was a quick way to explain -- incorrectly -- the up and down movements the plane makes as it flies at high speed into air that is moving (slightly) up
and down. The slight up and down movement is made intense by the
speed of the plane.
I wish pilots would get on the intercom . . . . THAT would be reassuring. The silence isn't, because I (used to) imagine them deeply engrossed in controlling the plane!
Deeply engrossed in controlling
the plane? No. The plane is on autopilot. Pilots -- because they know
turbulence is no threat -- simply cannot even conceive of the idea that
anyone would be frightened by turbulence.
Why DOESN'T the plane break apart in such buffeting about?
It isn't any more intense than hitting a pothole with your car, which doesn't break apart. It isn't more intense than the movement of a train going along the tracks. Planes are built even stronger than cars or trains. For example, with its landing gear down, you can lift an airliner up fifteen feet, and drop it onto the runway and no damage is done. In fact, you can do this for hundreds, even thousands of times, and nothing happens. That is how solidly planes are built.
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The Turbulence Question I Was Most Interested In
I had come to suspect that the problem with turbulence is that anxious fliers who, in the past, tried to block out what was going on when flying, were still up to that. Instead of experiencing flying just as it is, adding nothing and subtracting nothing, I believe many still try to pretend they are elsewhere. And, though they might do it when things are completely smooth, it becomes impossible to maintain that fantasy in turbulence.
One of the responses I received bears this out.
I've paid a LOT of attention to turbulence and to my reaction to it. I too, prior to this course tried to not feel the movement of the plane or anything related to the flying. I truly thought at some point I could convince myself that I was sitting on my couch if I could just get that much control of my thoughts. But, when your body is moved around and you can't control it, it's hard to imagine your sofa is suddenly bouncing up and down. So reality strikes hard.
My first thought is that the plane is "struggling." For some reason turbulence makes me think that the plane is working much harder and may not be able to handle the struggle to stay up and move forward. I know now that this is not true, but its one of my first thoughts. I tend to watch the faces of my flight attendants who generally show no emotion whatsoever during take off. Since I sit in bulkhead seats (I like leg room) I can sometimes hear their conversations during take-offs and turbulence and it has NOTHING to do with the chop. They're talking about what they're going to do upon landing and other normal non-flying related chatter.
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We Lose Psychological Equilibrium In Flight
Once we lose psychological equilibrium, we are unable to think clearly and we go into what psychologists call "psychic equivalence". In psychic equivalence, what is imagined is taken to be reality.
How well-established is our ability to recognize imagination is imagination. If it well established, we can almost always distinguish imagination from reality. But if this ability has not been solidly established, anxiety can easily cause us to believe what we imagine is real.
A few weeks ago, I wrote in the newsletter that most kids learn to pretend by the age of three. When kids pretend, they are "of two minds": one part of the child's mind imagines while the other part maintains an awareness that the other part is engaged in imagination -- not reality. Awareness that imagination -- not reality -- is going on, preempts emotional overwhelm.
But a two year-old can't do this. If a two year-old and a three year-old start to play pretend, such as being in a jungle where there are animals who might eat them, the three year-old will be able to maintain pretend, be excited by it, and not at all overwhelmed by it. But the two year-old will not be able to maintain an awareness that pretending is going on. The imagination becomes experienced as reality, and the two year-old is overwhelmed, and panics.
I believe this development between age two and three is not always firmly established. When the three year-olds ability to know he or she is imagining when he or she is imagining is solidly established, imagination simply will not cause overwhelm or panic.
But if this development is not solidly established, when the person begins to imagine the plane falling, if there is sufficient anxiety, the person can not think the matter through. The person cannot take the time to consider all the evidence, or to examine the situation fully and thoughtfully, and jumps to conclusions. Imagination becomes the person's reality, and what is imagined feels so alarming.
The answer, as I see it, is to use the Strengthening Exercise to maintain emotional equilibrium, to avoid getting into psychic equivalence. It may help, logically, to understand that the convincing reality experienced when in psychic equivalency is erroneous.
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Don't Lose Equilibrium
What we offer works, as this email shows.
I did want to tell you that your tapes came in handy yesterday, I was on a flight (for business ) from Atlanta to Seattle and we hit a bad storm over Iowa.
The plane felt like it was going to snap in half, people were screaming and the air attendants had to somehow scramble and find a place to sit because they couldn't make it back to their places!
This went on for about 10 minutes, but it felt longer. The positive aspect of all this was that in spite of the obvious craziness around I was very calm. I
remembered your "If you can still read this, its not yet time to worry" statement about turbulence. It worked. I could read something on a magazine in front of me and I knew I was OK! In fact, I was comforting a passenger next to me telling him its fine and the plane can handle it :))
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Live Chat On The Web Site
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chat online with Lisa or Captain Tom whenever one of us is online. You can try it out at www.fearofflying.com or by clicking on the graphic below.
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Passing On Anxiety Problems To Children
So many parents believe their child will fear flying if their fear is revealed when flying. They believe them must hide their fear from the child. They believe hiding their fear protects the child from becoming fearful.
This is not the case. In fact, it is the lack of an open relationship between the parent and the child that leads the child to have anxiety problems as an adult.
Anxiety problems caused by ones own parent do not necessarily need to be passed on to ones children. Anxiety problems do not develop in a child when the parent makes it clear that the child has a separate mind, and yet demonstrates to the child that separate minds can be bridged by atunement, empathy, and open communication about ones inner emotional experience.
Not every parent who believes he or she is doing this is, in fact, doing so. I believe any parent who has anxiety issues would be well-advised to have a session with a therapist in which the communication between the parent and the child can be assessed.
Here is an email from a parent who took special steps to make sure her child grew up emotionally secure.
I had many issues with attachment with my mother. She had a serious drinking problem and I served as her parent a lot of the time. I clung to her and was fearful she'd die if I wasn't near her. Fast forward 28 years. I became a social worker and learned plenty about bonding with your child. I have one son, now age 23. Not only does he ADORE flying, he was going to be a naval aviator had his color vision problem not stopped him from pursuing his goal through the Naval Academy. He subsequently attended college on the West Coast (we live on the east coast) and now, an Army Officer travels frequently all over the world. He's traveled to Europe and South America many times and not only has never had a fear of flying, but has always been anxious to try new things from food to other experiences. So, it is possible to raise a child who does not have the same irrational fears. The way I raised him was so incredibly different from the way I was raised. He's confident that the world is generally a safe place. He's NOT a high risk taker and has never been careless, but he has also not had phobias or fears that I was troubled with until SOAR.
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Capt. Tom's Letter To The Editor Published In The New York Times
Click on this link.
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JetBlue
On the message board, someone wrote they were comfortable with JetBlue but wondered if they should fly at all on Delta. Amazing that attitudes can reflect the reverse of reality. If the person knew more, they would be uncomfortable -- not with Delta -- but with JetBlue.
Why? JetBlue pilots do not have a union. If maintenance on a plane is not what it should be, and the captain wants maintenance done before flying the plane, the captain is not in a strong position if this leads to a disagreement with management.
At Delta, if the captain feels the plane needs maintenance before it is flown, even if management disagrees, the captain can stand his or her ground because of the backing of the pilots' union.
If there is such a disagreement at an airline without a pilots' union, the captain cannot afford to take a stand without fear of being fired.
In addition, I find the attitude of JetBlue management highly offensive. A few months ago, JetBlue conducted experiments -- on regular passenger flights with passengers aboard -- which doubled the hours pilots flew that day.
This was in violation of the FAA regulations. But JetBlue didn't see that as problem because the pilots used in the experiment "volunteered". The "volunteer" pilots flew from coast-to-coast TWICE in one day, rather than just once. When the FAA found out that JetBlue was conducting these experiments -- to see if the pilots would get too tired -- the FAA was outraged.
It is not uncommon these days to find corporate leaders whose "entitlement disorder" causes them to see greed as virtue. It would appear that management at JetBlue has this problem. Consider David Neeleman's response to the question, "What worries you about the airline business?"
Neeleman replied, "Unfair competition. We have a competitor that canceled contracts with its employees, went into bankruptcy, and wiped out $16 billion worth of debit. In most industries, if you beat someone, they go away. In ours, if you beat them, they go away and return stronger."
Contrary to what Neeleman says, JetBlue didn't "beat" the other
airline; things went bad for other airlines in the wake of 9/11.
The airline Neeleman was complaining about operated for many years, paying its pilots well and including a retirement plan. Neeleman came along and established JetBlue at a time when breaking the social contract between labor and management was no longer considered immoral, but entrepreneurial. Neeleman hires pilots who -- for whatever reason -- could not get a job at an established airline. They work at low pay rates, with no protection against fatiguing duty days other than outmoded federal regulations. But, unable to get hired at an established airline, they are loyal to Neeleman, and are sometimes critical of pilots unions and established airlines.
When things went bad for the airlines that had operated according to the old social contract (professional career pilots deserve good pay and a retirement plan), in order to compete with JetBlue, bankruptcy was used to level the playing field with JetBlue by paying its pilots the same as JetBlue and wiping out the retirement plan.
When another airline uses legal means to level the playing field, Neeleman turns from entrepreneur to crybaby; he gamed the system to tilt things his way. When someone else uses the system to simply level it, to him, that isn't fair.
I don't trust people who think the rules only apply to others, and I can't recommend anyone put themselves on an airline operated by people who think like that.
That statement by Neeleman is published on page 36 of the October 2007 issue or National Geographic Traveler. Another thing in the interview of Neeleman that needles me is what he calls too much government influence in how airlines are run. He complained that the government does not allow planes to take off in ice pellet conditions. He sees no reason for having this regulation because planes are allowed to land in freezing rain. The problem he has with this regulation is that it causes delays, which -- of course -- translates into money.
I assume Neeleman is referring to the December 21, 2005 action by the FAA which said, "It has come to the attention of the Air Transportation Division (AFS-200) that a number of air carrier operators are continuing to dispatch in ice pellet conditions. Operating in ice pellet conditions with anti-icing fluids on the critical surfaces of an aircraft is contrary to FAA guidance and policy expressed in N8000.309, Dispatching During Precipitation Conditions of Ice Pellets, Snow Pellets, or Other Icing Events for which No Holdover Times Exist . . . ."
The reason it is OK to land in ice pellet conditions -- but not take off in ice pellet conditions, is that when taxiing out, the ice pellets can freeze on the wings. Landing is different because the plane is flying forward at high speed,
and the only icing possible is on the leading edge of the plane, and
there heat is applied to prevent icing.
That is why you need a pilot -- not just any pilot -- but a pilot who cannot be fired by management types whose primary concern is profit. Neeleman sees no reason for this FAA regulation, which he sees as government interference. In Neeleman's view, since no accidents took place, he sees no reason for the rule.
So, if you want to fly with an airline whose director sees FAA rules as government interference, and regulations should not interfere with in his way of doing things -- unless there is a crash -- then be my guest: enjoy the leather seats and TVs.
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