Appendix A: Flight Checklist

An excellent strategy is to create various checklists for yourself, which help with reassurance and commitment.

Consideration Checklist

• • List your options: to fly, to drive, to take the train, or to stay home.
• • Organize each option as a set; list the desirable and the undesirable features of each option.
• • List the best and the worst result that could happen with each option.
• • List the best and the worst feelings that could happen with each option.
• • Make a tentative commitment to the option that is in your best interest.

Tentative Commitment Checklist

• • Are you willing to risk encountering every feeling?
• • Are you willing to risk encountering every result?
• • If so, consider yourself tentatively committed.

Absolute Commitment Checklist

• • List your secret “ways out”: What could occur that could melt your resolve? (Options might include not sleeping the night before, news of an accident, weather you may mistakenly think is risky, or worry about turbulence.)
• • Are you doing this no matter what—even if it kills you?
• • Is your commitment so absolute that being on that flight is as certain as if you were already on board with the door closed?
• • When you notice anxiety disappear, you have moved into the APNR (Abstract Point of No Return).
• • Expect to have to repeat this. Even seemingly absolute commitment may vanish and need to be reestablished.

Non-Absolute Commitment Checklist

• • Anticipatory anxiety comes from giving up control to a person with whom you have, as yet, no caring and responsive relationship.
• • Anticipatory anxiety vanishes upon meeting, and becoming confident in, your captain.
• • Your commitment to fly is tentative and is to be firmed up one way or the other only after boarding and meeting the captain.
• • Your commitment is to board and to meet the captain—not to fly.

Day of Flight Checklist

• • Wake up according to your plan. Tension? Do the 5-4-3-2-1 Exercise, if needed.
• • Monitor continuously for first indications of tension. Use the 5-4-3-2-1 Exercise.
• • Before leaving home, satisfy yourself that preparations are complete.
• • Leave early to allow a leisurely drive. Notice scenery during drive.

Take with You Checklist

• • Magazines, puzzles, computer game, copies of letter of introduction.
• • Stay occupied visually with the real (“what is”) rather than the imaginary (“what if”).
• • Paper and pen for writing down your feelings and listing everything that causes anxiety so you can add that thing (or things) to your next Strengthening Exercise practice session.
• • A sticky note saying, “If I can read this, it is not yet time to worry about turbulence” to stick on the seat in front of you.
• • Luggage, carry-on items, money, credit cards, identification, passport.
• • Ticket or e-ticket information, phone numbers of people who will offer emotional support.
• • A visual program or app to coach you through the flight. Available at www.fearofflying.com.

Airport Checklist

• • Check in early. Check baggage. Carry on only essential items.
• • Stop in one spot to experience the sounds, sights, and/or smells of the airport.
• • Focus just on what you see. Identify each thing you see. Then view these as shapes, forms, and colors in an abstract painting.
• • Focus just on what you hear. Identify each thing you hear. Then hear it as merely vibrations or music.
• • Note a possible lowering of your tension level.

Boarding Checklist

• • Ask gate agent if you can board early by presenting letter of introduction.
• • Observe from boarding lounge window. Memorize what you see.
• • Later, when in the passenger boarding bridge, which has no windows, use what you have memorized to picture what is outside.
• • Notice whether the passenger boarding bridge is uphill, downhill, or level, so you will know whether to expect things to feel “off” when inside it.
• • This is the worst part of the flight because everything is ahead of you and the Strengthening Exercise has not yet kicked in.
• • Strategy: Tell yourself that if you “bail out,” you will do it after meeting the captain if you don’t feel better by then.
• • Use the 5-4-3-2-1 Exercise.
• • If the gate agent will not board you first, stand at the Jetway entry. Go on immediately at the start of the first boarding announcement.
• • Touch the side of the plane. See how strong and firm it is.
• • Find a flight attendant not directing passengers to their seats. Ask that your letter be taken to the captain while you wait there.

Seated in Cabin Checklist

• • Monitor your experience. Scan your body for physical sensations and tension. If you notice any, use the 5-4-3-2-1 Exercise.
• • Avoid psychically distancing. Focus on what you see, hear, smell, and physically feel.
• • Feelings are not your enemy. Feelings result from your thoughts. Embrace your feelings. Check thoughts for accuracy. Demand evidence. No evidence? Drop the thought and notice what you see and hear.

Door Closure Checklist

• • Prepare yourself for the door closing: visualize you—yourself—closing the door. Describe the scene to yourself. Write down your feelings.

Takeoff Checklist

• • Accept that when the engine revs up, it will stir a response, just as a crescendo in music stirs a response.
• • Accept acceleration. Acceleration presses you back in your seat, just as it does in your car when going from zero to 60, but in a plane it lasts twice as long because you’re going from zero to 120, or so. The greater the acceleration, the more runway remains in reserve. Track the increase in speed by wiggling your toes more rapidly as speed increases. Watch outside and attempt to predict when the nose will rise. When the nose rises, you are past V-1. You have it made. Relax and listen for a thump followed by less wind noise as the gear doors close.
• • Notice power reduction and corresponding lightness at noise abatement.
• • Notice lightness when leveling off at an altitude.
• • Notice power increase and heaviness as climb is reestablished.
• • Accept that turns are required, and that dihedral keeps the plane from banking more than the pilots can cause through force on the controls.
• • Flip through magazine ads, if needed, to maintain non-threatening visual activity.

Turbulence Checklist

• • Turbulence is natural, routine, and not a problem for the plane.
• • Think about the gelatin-like air.
• • Post a note on the seat back in front of you: “If I can read this, it is not yet time to worry (about turbulence).”

Descent and Landing Checklist

• • Accept that there may be stair stepping during descent.
• • Accept that large power changes are required to change speed and accommodate gear and flap extension.
• • A noise similar to a blender is associated with flap extension.
• • An increase in wind noise—and possibly a thump—is associated with gear extension. You might hear a sound like water flowing through pipes, which is hydraulic fluid going through pipes to move the gear.
• • Feel a vibration? The speed brakes are being used, the flap setting is being changed, or the flaps are at the maximum extension for landing.
• • Landing guidance is electronic. The plane can be landed automatically.
• • For everything needed on the plane, there is a main system, a standby system, a backup system, and an emergency system.
• • Warning systems are active to warn the pilots of any possible mistake.
• • You are safer on a modern jetliner than sleeping in your own bed at night.
• • Enjoy your flight.