Fear of Flying - Australia, Se 516, 155 King Street, Sydney (2026)

22/02/2025

When I see plane accidents on the news, why aren’t I more comforted by the fact that aviation’s safe?

We have to work at and build up the habit of getting our feelings and behaviours to respond to our knowledge of statistical facts. It doesn’t come naturally.

The human mind evolved well before we had means to investigate, verify, and widely share abstract data like these. Instead, the mind’s default, rough-and-ready way of judging probability relies on memory: Naturally, we feel that something’s more likely to happen if we can recall an example of it more easily and vividly. This is called the “Availability Heuristic”.

Before international news was everywhere almost immediately, when knowledge was mostly limited to first-hand experience of local occurrences, the Availability Heursitic didn’t lead us too far astray.

Now, however, it means that seeing some examples of plane accidents on the news can be enough to drastically warp our sense of how likely such accidents are.

It helps to know this and keep it in mind. It might be hard to “feel” the statistical facts, but we can get better at using them to align our behaviours with reality.

***

All our fear of flying courses, which are assessed to involve safety related concerns, have the option to include a session in a flight simulator, flown by an experienced commercial pilot and accompanied by the treating psychologist.

Get in touch at admin@sydneyphobiaclinic.com.au or call (02)85408739

17/02/2025

‪What if something happens to the pilot during my flight?‬

Commerical flights are required to have two pilots—Captain and First Officer—who are equally qualified, and each able to operate the aircraft unassisted. This means that a qualified second opinion is always available, as well as a replacement pilot in the rare event that the active pilot is somehow compromised or incapacitated.

***

All our fear of flying courses, which are assessed to involve safety related concerns, have the option to include a session in a flight simulator, flown by an experienced commercial pilot and accompanied by the treating psychologist.

Get in touch at admin@sydneyphobiaclinic.com.au or call (02)85408739

10/02/2025

ARE BUDGET AIRLINES LESS SAFE?

It is a misconception that low-cost airlines are less safe, or have pilots with less training. Individual airlines have little control over this; they must meet standards set by higher governing and safety bodies.

***

All our fear of flying courses, which are assessed to involve safety related concerns, have the option to include a session in a flight simulator, flown by an experienced commercial pilot and accompanied by the treating psychologist.

Get in touch at admin@sydneyphobiaclinic.com.au or call (02)85408739

31/01/2025

‪How can flying be safe when I keep seeing plane crashes on the news?‬

‪News media give a warped impression of flight safety. While aviation has been getting ever safer, the number of reported accidents have increased due to wider media coverage and an increasing number of flights. ‬

So the absolute number of accidents is enough to generate regular news, even though only 1 plane accident fatality occurs for every 12,867,647 passengers. This means that flying is much safer than many of the daily activities that we never worry about.

***

All our fear of flying courses, which are assessed to involve safety related concerns, have the option to include a session in a flight simulator, flown by an experienced commercial pilot and accompanied by the treating psychologist.

Get in touch at admin@sydneyphobiaclinic.com.au or call (02)85408739

27/01/2025

How would you feel if this was the weather during your flight? And how do planes and pilots deal with weather during flight?

First of all, aircraft are designed to withstand all weather that they encounter. Pilots plan the most appropriate, smooth and efficient way through the weather using the weather radar (pictured) which provides visual feedback of most weather.

The weather radar is a critical onboard tool for pilots which works by emitting radio waves that bounce off precipitation, such as rain, snow, or hail, and then measuring the returned signals, allowing pilots to see the intensity, location, and movement of storms or turbulence ahead of them, often before they are visible to the naked eye.

Because we know that aviation loves redundancy, the weather radar is not the only weather information the pilots have. They get updated weather every three hours for major airports that show weather trends and can also get instantaneous weather on demand from each airport.

Other aircraft in the vicinity send what are called SIGMeTs which share information about significant weather like storms or turbulence and ATC will tell pilots about these if they are on or near their flight path.

All our fear of flying courses which are assessed to involve safety related concerns have the option to include a session in a flight simulator, flown by an experienced commercial pilot, and accompanied by the treating psychologist.

Get in touch at admin@sydneyphobiaclinic.com.au or call (02)85408739

11/01/2025

Do you ever worry about turbulence?

Turbulence is one of the most common concerns for people with fears of flying. But did you know that turbulence doesn’t pose a danger to the plane itself? Planes are designed to fly through even very severe turbulence and, if it weren’t for passengers, they would! When planes are carrying passengers, pilots will often try to avoid anything stronger than moderate turbulence for the sake of passenger comfort.

In fact, turbulence is similar to driving on a bumpy road- the body of the plane surprisingly barely moves, though the wings are flexing like shock absorbers and the passengers will be feeling the turbulence.

We are Australia’s #1 Fear of Flying course. If you have a fear of flying and want to learn more aviation facts as well as the psychological skills to apply them when it counts, reach out to either www.fearofflying.com.au or www.sydneyphobiaclinic.com.au or on 02)85408739

09/01/2025

Recent news events might seem to cast a shadow on aviation, and could easily worsen anxieties about flying. It’s so easy to imagine disasters vividly, especially when they’re reported to us in the news.

Though we’re not in a position to comment on recent events specifically, it’s important, at times like this, to remind ourselves that plane crashes are incredibly rare and unlikely, regardless of how vividly we can imagine them.

06/12/2024

How can a simulated flight help your fear of flying?
1) Education- a lot of flying fears are related to safety and are underpinned by faulty assumptions, misinterpretations, and knowledge gaps. Knowledge is power and aviation education is a vital component for managing these fears. It is important to understand how your safety is assured during a flight and an explanation of the instrumentation as well as what happens during flight is easier to learn by experiencing a flight from within a cockpit with a pilot.
2) Exposure- Exposure therapy is an evidence based treatment for anxiety. Exposure is the intentional approach to situations previously avoided or mismanaged with the aim to gain more appropriate learning about the safety of a situation as well as your ability to cope in the situation. Ideally, exposure is structured, prolonged, and repeated- hard to achieve on any given real flight, but very achievable in simulated environments
3) Demonstration- The bonus of simulators is that they can be put into situations that you will not likely face in real life, that’s why they make perfect training tools! For our fear of flying clients it can be helpful to learn that even some of their ‘worst case scenarios’ can be handled by experienced pilots without leading to the catastrophes they imagine.

All our fear of flying courses which are assessed to involve safety related concerns have the option to include a session in a flight simulator, flown by an experienced commercial pilot, and accompanied by the treating psychologist.
Get in touch at admin@sydneyphobiaclinic.com.au or call 02)85408739

24/11/2024

Do you ever worry about engine failure?

It is rare for a plane engine to fail. The plane’s engines are subject to regular maintenance and checks. They are also monitored by pilots throughout the flight and remotely by the airline and manufacturer.

Even though experiencing an engine fail on take off is considered a trickier situation for pilots to manage, this is mainly due to it being a higher workload time, rather than it being considerably dangerous.
It is also worth keeping in mind that:
1) planes have more than one engine for redundancy should an engine fail; planes can fly safely and comfortably-including take off, landing, managing weather-with only one engine.
2) pilots train in simulators every 3-6 month to practice atypical events, and an engine fail during take-off is one of the most common scenarios practiced.

So, you can rest assured that in the rare event on an engine failure during take off, both the plane and the pilot/s are more than capable to manage this safely.

This was exemplified during the recent Qantas flight QF520 which had an engine failure during take off where the pilots brought the plane back around to land safely at Sydney airport.

We are Australia’s #1 Fear of Flying course. If you have a fear of flying and want to learn more aviation facts as well as the psychological skills to apply them when it counts, reach out to either www.fearofflying.com.au or www.sydneyphobiaclinic.com.au or on 02)85408739

Fear of Flying - Australia

22/02/2025

17/02/2025

10/02/2025

31/01/2025

27/01/2025

11/01/2025

09/01/2025

06/12/2024

24/11/2024

Address

Website

Alerts

Contact The Practice

Shortcuts

Share

Category