Winging It

Between deadly crashes, a string of near misses, and a staffing crisis in air traffic control, it’s quite a time to be afraid of flying. But, as any good therapist would tell you, it’s important to look beyond the literal experience of flying to understand the phenomenon of aerophobia. Noelle Mateer situates the fear—which Mateer shares, as do I—in the wider sociopolitical moment. (For even more on the topic, check out this piece in which a New York writer takes a Flying With Confidence course offered by British Airways.):

I lost myself in visions of me on a plane, not aroused but flipping the coin to the other side of anxiety: excitement. Fear of flying therapy is about reframing the flight experience; if my mind’s eye squints, I can almost interpret my sweating palms and pounding heartbeat as a kind of buzz. But this requires repeated, strenuous effort, and the result is a mental exhaustion that makes the worst-case scenario appealing: succumbing to my fears and never flying again.

I imagine this as analogous to what many Americans, aerophobic or not, are feeling. It’s simply easier to buy into the assumptions underlying our fears—to let our discomfort with needles curdle into “Make America Healthy Again,” to let our fear of change become racist xenophobia. There’s even a payoff, now that conspiratorial politics rule Washington under Trump 2.0: people have succeeded in the reframing I’ve been working so hard to achieve. His followers have converted their anxiety into excitement. The rest of us, meanwhile, watch in terror as Trump shutters government watchdogs, unwinds regulation, and cuts spending to essential services.

If there’s relief in giving in to our fears, there’s also pleasure in looking for false evidence. Conspiracy theories reward believers’ ability to suss out clues that, when pieced together, create a counternarrative to predominant thinking. I’ve been thinking about this as my brain collects clues for its own narrative about the dangerousness of air travel while struggling to discern which evidence is false, and which is real. My comrades online have the same struggle. Last month, I tuned into Captain Ron’s weekly YouTube livestream, and a commenter asked if the military had done anything to “stop the close calls.” Questions like this are all over the fearful flyer internet lately—recently, a Redditor confessed to having rebooked all their itineraries to avoid Boeing planes.