This fear of flying course costs just £89. Would it cure my phobia?

Times

27-05-2025

When I tell people what I do, and that I fly on average once a fortnight, they find it hard to believe that I'm a nervous flyer.
Since a severe bout of turbulence on an overnight flight home from Orlando, Florida, with my husband and son in 2022, where lightning hit the wings and the crew were strapped in silently for almost the entire eight hours, I've developed what could be called a mild aversion at best and a dark-of-the-night fear at worst. My life feels as if it's been divided into before and after BA2036: I was never the biggest fan of mid-air bumps, but now going through an air pocket sends me into a full-blown panic.
I'm not alone. Figures suggest that about one in four people have a fear of flying, centring on claustrophobia, technical issues such as the plane crashing, or turbulence. It doesn't help that turbulence is getting worse everywhere, particularly across the Atlantic, thanks to warming air, according to professor Paul Williams, an atmospheric scientist from the University of Reading.
It hasn't put me off, yet — although our family summer holiday to France is entirely by train; read into that what you will — but I know I need help. I want to actually enjoy flying and, crucially, be able to sleep on overnight journeys rather than sit petrified for the duration, constantly checking the altimeter or the turbulence forecast on the website Turbli. I turned to easyJet, which has been running courses since 2012, helping more than 1,400 people with their fear of flying — and booked its 200th Fearless Flyer course.
This being a budget airline, the course is mainly online modules (16 of them, between 4 and 20 minutes long), but the benefit is that you get access for life and can go back to them again and again. The cost of adding the experience flight is £294pp. In comparison, British Airways' all-day, in-person course is £399.
EasyJet's tuition is broken up into three parts. The first five modules are an introduction to the psychological roots of a fear of flying, explaining the different triggers — claustrophobia, having a panic attack and, in my case, turbulence — as well as some pop psychology from the course leader, Lawrence Leyton, an expert in the psychology of fear and the host of Channel 4's Fear of Flying special. 'Focus on what you want rather than what you don't want,' he says. 'Say, 'I feel calm.' Your focus controls how you feel.'
There are some visual effects and swirly pictures that demonstrate how our brains 'fill in the blanks' when we come across something unusual in the air and imagine the plane is crashing, as well as a comparison of a bottle of water sloshing round in a car doing 30mph and then in a plane during turbulence. There is also a reminder of how safe flying is: you're more likely to be killed by a donkey kick than in a plane crash.
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The next few are from Richard Jones, an easyJet captain who has more than 16,500 flying hours with the airline. He runs through the technical side of aviation: what the noises are (brake fans, the power unit, cabin crew chimes) and how a plane actually stays up in the air. Then the last section is teaching coping mechanisms, such as deep breathing, the 'scratch it' technique where a bad memory is replaced with a good one, and tapping your body in certain places to feel calm.
My issue is that I know all the technical stuff. I know what the plane noises mean, that security is tight and that turbulence is safe and normal (although I am oddly reassured by a graphic showing a plane travelling on a motorway in the sky, which makes me feel much better). For me it's purely psychological. Each jerk in the air takes me back to that pitch-black night over the Atlantic, hearing the screams and prayers of other passengers and when I truly thought my family were dead.
I find the coping mechanisms helpful too. Having watched the modules before my latest flight — a night service from Antalya, in Turkey, to Gatwick — I mawkishly tell myself before departure: I am calm. I will enjoy and relax on this flight. My usual routine would be to fret and imagine the plane nosediving into the ground during every bump. I remind myself of the words of the course director, Mark Wein, who had the idea for Fearless Flyer when he was terrified of turbulence: 'Trust the pilots. They know what they're doing — all you need to do is relax. You're not in control.' Unbelievably I even manage ten minutes' sleep. It's the calmest I've been in the air for a long time.
Then came the experience flight. At 10am one sunny Saturday in May, about 80 nervous passengers met at Gatwick airport's North Terminal to check in for flight EZY8899. The 50-minute flight, destination Gatwick, would take us from Surrey to the English Channel and back again via Kent.
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We'd all met briefly on a Zoom call a few days before, but hadn't heard each other's stories. I was surprised to meet many people like me — frequent flyers who work in the travel industry but hate take-offs, landings and turbulence. There was one just-married man who desperately wanted to go on his honeymoon. One woman hadn't flown for 20 years since she was pregnant with her daughter, but had booked a family holiday to Mallorca and wanted to prepare herself. Several had never flown before. A handful of passengers boarded the flight crying; two got off while the jet bridge was still attached.
Then we were ready to go. The Airbus A320 reversed out of Gate 50 and taxied on to the apron, piloted by the easyJet captain Maria Pernia-Digings. Every noise and movement was so calmly narrated by captain Chris Foster — the tug being removed, the thrust of the engines, the bumps in the tarmac — that I want him on all of my flights.
So far, so normal. Then we hammered down the runway, banked into the air . . . and immediately hit turbulence. There was a lot of deep breathing and crying — and not only from me. I looked back to see people tapping above their eyebrows and under their eyes, a coping mechanism we learnt on the course. Cabin crew — there were more on this flight than normal — immediately rushed to talk to passengers to reassure them. I practised some deep breathing, looked at the wing level against the horizon and muttered 'I am calm' a few times.
Over the plane intercom, Wein told us over and over again that what we were experiencing was completely normal and safe. The aircraft was made to move; he urged us to imagine the plane was suspended in jelly. Then he told us to place our water bottles on the table and see how much they were moving (not much), which helped a bit.
The plane levelled off and we flew out across the Channel and circled back via the White Cliffs of Dover. Once the seatbelt signs were turned off passengers were smiling and laughing, standing up in the aisles. It was almost a party atmosphere at9,000ft — much lower than the cruising altitude of a regular flight as we weren't going very far — and tragically, I felt a bit emotional watching it all.
We landed back into Gatwick not even an hour after we'd left, to claps, cheers and Heather Small's Proud, holding our certificates confirming we're fearless flyers. Wein congratulated everybody and reminded us that 'the safest part of your day is now over'. Indeed. The real test, though, will be my flight to Orlando in a few weeks' time.Cathy Adams was a guest of easyJet, which has online-only Fearless Flyer courses from £89 (easyjet.com)
Do you have a fear of flying — and has anything helped? Let us know in the comments