Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 3, 1994 TAG: 9407050113
SECTION: TRAVEL PAGE: F-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By RICHARD M. WEINTRAUB THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long
Once again, the fears were building, so much so that even though her body seemed relaxed, her hands were tingling and her mind was racing with doubts.
What's so special about a plane taking off? On average, 19,800 passenger planes do it every day in the United States, carrying more than 1.3 million passengers on hundreds of routes criss-crossing the country. The jet airplane has become the inter-city bus of modern America, ferrying some 500 million Americans each year to business appointments, vacations, weddings, funerals, family gatherings and all the other events of contemporary life.
For an estimated 31 million Americans, however, the very thought of boarding one of those aircraft strikes emotions somewhere between dread and sheer terror, and Dorrie Laufman was one of them.
``Without realizing it, a little anxiety began to build. I didn't even think about it, but I got a bit more anxious each time,'' Laufman said. Soon she began to take a drink before and during flights. And when that didn't help any more, she tried prescription drugs. And when that didn't work, she realized she needed help.
For John Byrd, Flight 5001 was the first time the 67-year-old retired lithographer for the Bureau of Engraving and Printing had been aloft in 47 years.
Flight 5001 was no ordinary flight. For 27 of the passengers aboard, it was a trial, a challenge, a personal mountain to be climbed against the most daunting of odds.
Each of those 27 - for enormously varying reasons - was afraid to fly, and USAir, through its Fearful Flyers Seminar, was trying to help them overcome their anxieties.
For some, the fears began on a turbulent flight with lightning streaking through the sky, or when a companion's fears suddenly became their own, or with the arrival of children, or for no understandable reason at all.
But whatever the reason, a profound fear of flying came to dominate their lives, and each found his or her way to Carol Stauffer's and Gary Arlington's Fearful Flyers Seminar to try to shake whatever had been making air travel traumatic, or even impossible.
Stauffer, a psychologist, has been leading the USAir seminars for 19 years, helping more than 5,000 people through a combination of relaxation therapies, thought-control techniques, education about airplanes and the people who fly them and some old-fashioned hand-holding.
She is joined in this effort by a USAir pilot, currently Arlington, who flies DC-9s out of Pittsburgh for the airline.
For five weeks (and $325), Stauffer and Arlington teach, reassure, answer questions and slowly guide their charges into the world of flight without fear.
Their classes are always in an airport - if possible in a room with windows that actually look out onto the runways. For many, just getting to an airport is an ordeal, and the goal is to desensitize.
Twice before the final ``graduation'' flight the group will go aboard an aircraft, sitting and chatting, visiting the cockpit or walking around outside looking at the engines and flaps, kicking the tires.
For the first of these sessions, the door of the plane remains open, reassuring the person who is claustrophobic or, more commonly, the person who can't stand to lose control. These are the two most common problems Stauffer and Atkinson encounter, followed by fear of heights or of crashing and dying.
Generally, there are more women than men in the seminars, a phenomenon that Stauffer says is changing as society changes and men seem more willing to acknowledge that they have a problem getting on an airplane.
Stauffer believes the key to the 97 percent success rate for the seminar (as measured by the number of participants who take the graduation flight) is regular use of the relaxation tape each participant receives at the first class.
It is a standard behavior-modification technique used to help relieve anxiety. Stauffer combines it with another technique - ``thought-stopping'' - that gives course participants tools for replacing anxiety-inducing thoughts with more reassuring ones.
As Stauffer deals directly with emotions, Arlington deals with airplanes, the people who fly and maintain them and the principles of flight. Why do engines make a lot of noise sometimes, and not much noise at others? How much training do pilots have? What is ``turbulence''? How do jet engines work? What are all those buttons and dials in cockpits? Just how dangerous is air travel?
``Fearful fliers don't dwell on statistics a lot,'' Arlington told the class on its second meeting, but ``USAir operates 5,000 flights a day, 1 million a year. Industrywide, there were more than 7 million flights a year.''
Last year there were no fatal accidents, and since 1980, there have been only 110 airline fatalities yearly. On the other hand, there are about 47,000 automobile fatalities yearly.
``If you wantedto be in an airplane accident, playing the odds, you would have to fly every day for 29,000 years,'' he told the class.
Statistics, though, don't necessarily reassure someone whose palms sweat at the very thought of air travel, whose heart starts beating faster, whose stomach turns over. Nor do they help the person who cries before every flight, who has insomnia or hyperventilates or gets on a plane only with the ``help'' of alcohol or drugs, or both.
``When you are frightened, three things happen,'' Stauffer told the class. The neuro-muscular system tenses, the respiratory system starts to hyperventilate and the cardiovascular system can jump to 200-300 beats per minute.
A few minutes before Flight 5001 was scheduled to depart, Arlington was briefing the USAir flight crew, which had volunteered its time for the class.
He urged the pilots to keep talking as much as possible about the plane's maneuvers on the public-address system and once in the air, ``as quick as you can, we've got to get the seat-belt sign off and get them up and around. Moving around the plane helps a lot.''
A while later, after a final round of relaxation exercises with Stauffer, Flight 5001 was off the ground, and the lights of the Baltimore-Washington region spread out below.
A short while later, as the plane approached the Richmond, Va., area, the pilot came on the intercom and urged passengers to look out the windows to their left to watch the moonrise.
Soon there were oohs and ahs everywhere. The noise level inside the plane began to rise as laughter mixed with expressions of relief. There was a steady stream of visitors to the cockpit, something that is permitted on these charter flights that wouldn't be allowed on regular flights.
An hour later, 5001 swung into the approach to BWI and the lights of the runway beckoned.
John Byrd was smiling, his Baltimore Orioles cap turned around backward. Others strained to look through the open cockpit door to catch a glimpse of the fast-approaching runway lights.
Minutes later, as the class participants and their guests trooped off the plane, Vicky Olson smiled and said, ``It worked! It worked!''
For Dorrie Laufman, two fists pumping high in the air said it all.
by CNB