Comments on: What we’re reading: 8 rude holiday travelers, can’t use our favorite names to fly, Virgin’s fear of flying app,

By: Bill

Bill — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 14:55:41 +0000

I don’t think Travelocity put a lot of thought into this. The comments allude to far more annoying behavior.

By: Capt Tom Bunn LCSW

Capt Tom Bunn LCSW — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 22:41:07 +0000

Unfortunately, this app is based on the level of treatment used back in 1975 in the original fear of flying course offered by Pan Am, education about how flying works and breathing exercises.

I worked on that program and was appalled at the distress experienced by far too many of the course participants. The methods used worked only for people with mild difficulty.

Recent research shows why the results were poor. Though they work on the ground, breathing exercises – the only psychological aid the course offered – are completely useless for fear of flying. See: http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/42/13/25

Though this app and the course offered by Virgin can, as the Pan Am course did over thirty years ago, help people with mild flying problems, more advanced methods are required for people with a moderate to severe problem with flying.

Advanced methods are based on brain scan research that has shown us much about how the brain regulates emotion, in particular the work of Allan N. Schore, Ph.D., author of Affect Regulation. It is now clear than early relationship with the primary caregiver is key in forming the emotional sequences that we depend on for stability. When good-enough sequences were not established, increased emotional strength is needed in order to fly without distress.

This means the fear of flying client has to be taught how to build inside new sequences of emotion, sequences that start with the initiation of stress but instead of leading to greater stress, lead instead to less stress, and then to calm.

This kind of advanced help is available, but certainly not by an app or a course based on breathing exercises.

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Sat, 28 Nov 2009 17:50:37 +0000

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By: Hapgood

Hapgood — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 17:15:08 +0000

I’m going to ask the question I always ask whenever the so-called “secure flight” program comes up: Have all the agencies that maintain the watch lists updated each of the million-odd entries to include the full legal name, gender, and date of birth for each terrorist? If not, how can “advanced watch list matching technology” provide any kind of enhanced security, even assuming that the watch lists are accurate? Especially when it all ultimately depends on how much latitude the uniformed “officer” entrusted with matching the boarding pass with the proffered document chooses to apply– and we all know how inconsistently those “officers” enforce the rules.

I’m sure there’s a good answer to the question. But of course it’s classified for National Security reasons. So the only answer we’ll get is to accept on faith and unquestioning trust that it all provides highly effective protection from the terrorist threat, no matter how absurd it appears. I can only hope that my public expression a lack of faith and trust doesn’t land me on someone’s list.