Good afternoon and may I thank the organisers for this opportunity to speak at the conference. Because I’m a pilot I’m naturally enthusiastic about all pilots being involved in helping passengers who are anxious about flying. I am sure that their modern training skills can be applied very effectively for this reason.
There is I believe a direct comparison between Cognitive behavioural therapy and modern airline pilot training methods and, though I have no clinical training, from the reading that I have done, in particular from the Psychological Perspectives on Fear of Flying the two processes seem, and I stress the word seem, to have considerable common ground. My expertise is as a pilot I have 43 years of flying training from beginners to the training pilots to become trainers and examiners, applying the skills that I am about to describe.
This presentation will try to show that modern airline training methods provide many pilots with the skills needed to deal effectively with passengers who are anxious about flying. Few airlines that I know of prepare their pilots in this important area of customer care. Training seems to be limited to their cabin crew who have just a passing knowledge of to how to deal with the symptoms of fear exhibited by passengers during boarding or in flight.
I am certain that an airline known to have an interest in the welfare of these particular passengers will enjoy a commercial advantage over their competitors, but, for some reason, perhaps denial or ignorance of how to deal with the problem no airline to my knowledge, positively advertises this aspect of its customer experience. The most they seem to offer is a company associated course. Perhaps this is changing but if there is evidence of it, it is hardly overwhelming. And how extraordinary this is when every airline has staff well trained to deal with the problems that arise with anxious passengers. The staff I’m referring to are of course the pilots.
Let me turn now to the training I refer to and try to show you why I believe can be adapted to the needs of fearful passengers. But first, a short review of the history of pilot training to contrast it with the methods now used.
Methods that can be applied to help passengers who have a fear of flying.
The start of the jet age brought new levels of technical reliability into aviation. And it was inevitable that safety levels improved in line with that new technology. Safety standards improved and there were fewer and fewer hull losses, fewer and fewer serious incidents
Flight training for pilots in the airline industry was limited to a ‘tell and do’ process. A method that had been unchanged through the history of flying. Strict and comprehensive flight procedures were laid down by law and complete adherence to them was expected and generally it was rigorously enforced. Flying by the book was acknowledged to be the safest way to operate a multi crew, high energy, and complex aircraft and, though that is still true today … it is only part of the story.
Twenty or so years ago alarm bells began to ring when it was realised that incidents and accidents caused by what was then called pilot error remained at about 75% of the total.
It was discovered that incidents and accidents were not, in fact, caused by a lack of technical knowledge but by the miss-use of that knowledge. They were caused or aggravated by ineffective communication, unilateral decision making, poor leadership and the consequences of a complex and hierarchical authority gradient across the cockpit.
Aviation training needed a more effective training method, a training method that could change attitudes and behaviours
… and found it in CRM “Cockpit Resource Management”, the understanding and development and application of human behaviours combined with technical skills. But as you know behaviours can not be taught or learned by ‘tell and do’ methods. Rather it needs self analysis by the crew along with guided de briefing by trained facilitators who are competent both technically and in the non technical skills as we know call CRM.
These are the similarities that I mentioned at the start, a similarity I believe between CBT and modern aviation training methods. Methods that both use a vocabulary to define and identify behaviours and responses. Indeed so accurate is the use of vocabulary in aviation training that it borders on the processes used in NLP. How we describe, feel, think and behave on the flight deck is now an integral part of pilot training and in Europe is now a legal requirement.
Clearly though you can not tell pilots to simply behave in a way that is safe anymore than you can tell someone not be scared of flying… as you well know there have,
to be valid reasons for change, reasons that have to be found and accepted by the individual in CBT or the crew in CRM … a process of analysis, discovery and belief.
Now with very strong minded high achieving people like pilots, whose behaviour was steeped in ‘tell and do’, you might wonder how the aviation community succeeded in bringing about a change of attitudes and behaviours and self analysis.
And the answer as I have already alluded to is in a method very similar to CBT.
I won’t call it a poor man’s CBT because it is highly skilled area. Often conducted under circumstances where they may be great stress, high workload and where the safety of the aircraft and its occupants is paramount.
Here is that facilitative training process in a nut shell.
Instead of ‘telling’ the pilots of their weaknesses as perceived by the trainer we now discuss the circumstances of the training experience. We discuss things like the decisions made, the relationships between the crew members, the consequences of the behaviours used and so on. Trainer and trainee agree on how those behaviours should be implemented and practised when effective, or how they can be modified or discarded if ineffective.
Thus, instead of resentment and rejection of solutions hitherto given by the trainer, we now seek agreement of behaviours; we emphasise and reinforce those that will lead to flights with greater margins of safety. Therefore a pilot after a training exercise will now “buy in” to the suggested changes and not reject them merely as someone else’s opinion, as often used to be the case under the old ‘tell and do’ regime.
As you all know behavioural changes occur only as a result of knowing what has to be changed and providing an alternative behaviour.
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And this is what is happening in aviation training now. It is a fact that pilots understand and are familiar with cognitive and behavioural processes through their training, which can be applied to the fear of flying. Processes that therapists and clinicians use.
But, this is not to claim that they know how to use these processes on other people, what I’m saying is that they are familiar with them…and perhaps this an area where conference, therapists , clinicians and medics can devise guide lines and advice to help pilots use this resource correctly and effectively.
Undoubtedly pilots are an enormous resource that can to be used in the treatment of the fear of flying, perhaps most easily and immediately with their use of the cabin address facility. Airline representatives here may like to consider the value of this resource and persuade pilots to accept their part in helping passengers. Travel trade representatives might be able add value to their products knowing that airlines are making efforts to meet the needs of anxious passengers. There are few represented here at this conference who would not benefit from developing and using this wide spread resource.
But the big question is this. Could the adaptation of training theory actually work? Can a non therapist use these skills to help people overcome their fear or anxiety about flying?
The answer in my experience is a resounding yes. Though I recognise and acknowledge there are some deep rooted fears that can not be resolved by what are in effect, thought restructuring and graded exposure therapies. This is not an area where pilots should be involved.
But there are two areas where I personally have experience of using these training skills. Firstly in group seminars and secondly in a full flight simulator working with individuals or very small groups.
Firstly let me describe the seminar.
A year ago I was running a flying without Fear seminar in the UK. It consisted of a day’s ground course with a flight in a large executive jet sometime later.
The reason that I didn’t want to have the flight immediately following the course was that I wanted to avoid mass group behaviour. I wanted people to take the flight because they fell confident to do so for no other reason.
By chance just before the seminar, I was approached by a film company who wanted make a DVD, about the fear of flying. They already had a script and they wanted to make a film that was for all intents and purposes already plotted. The reaction of the customers, that is to say how they felt or reacted was incidental. They could after all cut and edit and re film it to make it work.
That was not a basis on which I could allow filming, my requirement was that they filmed it as it unfolded and if it didn’t work they didn’t have a film.
And to their credit they went long with my suggestions to film without interruption, because I am aware that under these circumstances, interference with the subject, can change the subject and so I explained to the film makers that because customers were only going to enjoy a ‘eureka’ moment once… we couldn’t ask the participants to fake it again for the camera. I wanted the experience for the participants to be pure unique and uninterrupted.
The seminar was almost entirely question and answer but to give it some structure was it was arranged chronologically from leaving home to getting off at the destination. However the participants were encouraged to follow their own agenda rather than mine. This was after all their day, not mine. What I wanted to talk about was immaterial, what they wanted to talk about I considered vital.
So what we filmed was unprompted and unscripted, just as it happened. There was no faking, no editing reaction. It is therefore an authentic view into their day as it was…not as I might have wanted it. And this is an important fact that makes this DVD such an important insight into the processes of this type of help. It is as close to a field study on film as it is possible to get.
I emphasise this point because the DVD is a genuine account of how anxious people reacted to the reality of facing their fear of flying. I am pleased to say that I have persuaded the film company to make all 35 hours of filming available for research.
I have copies of the DVD for you to take away and watch to draw your own conclusions and I hope that it can be a useful resource for you. I am pleased to say that since January it has already been translated into four European languages, with more to come, so I guess it’s working for people.
The question is did the seminar help them to go flying?
I notified everyone of the day of the flight in an email, I neither encouraged or persuaded. It was a statement of fact along with another statement that I hoped they could join me. On the day they all arrived and were ready to fly.
As far as I was concerned those people had made a clear personal decision to take the flight without any influence other than the knowledge they obtained during the seminar and their own confidence.
They all got on the flight and they have all flown on their own since.
Why did I regard this as a success? Not because they flew, but because they made a decision to fly based on their perceived abilities to deal with their anxieties on their own …they did it using their methods which means they can do it again using strategies that work for them.
They succeeded without any form of cajoling from me, which is what they will have to do when they go flying ordinarily…the therapist won’t be there to hold their hands. I had told them that it was their individual responsibility, not mine and that’s why I believe it worked so well. They accepted that responsibility and now they own the benefits of their knowledge, their courage and their success. I think ownership is the popular expression.
Briefly and finally the six axis full flight simulator experience which has helped so many people to overcome their fears. Remember this and the seminar are founded on the knowledge that I have as a training pilot…not as a therapist
I have developed a help program broadly based on the training and flight check exercises that pilots undergo periodically. Prior to flying the simulator I explain to the customer what the simulator is capable of replicating, but more importantly to discover what they would like to experience during the flight.
This preparation lasts about an hour and a half. Incidentally most customers believe that the simulator would not be sufficiently real to have any benefit, but were trying it as a last resort because nothing else had worked.
I explain how we can fly the simulator to meet the needs and worries that they have. If they want turbulence they could have it…from mild to severe. If they want to see lots of take offs we do that…what ever they want to see we provide it. We do not have a typical flight profile; the customers decide the content and the conditions.
However, before flight I always made a point of promoting them to Captain and gave them absolute authority during the flight. They are in complete control of what we do and the flying conditions in which we do them.
It is remarkable and noteworthy how positively they reacted to being in control.
My undisclosed intention on every flight is to give them control from the captain’s seat. That is to say it is always my intention to get them to fly the plane. I introduce them to the captain’s seat after about 40 minutes of confidence building.
I get them to turn the plane as steeply as they dare… to see that it doesn’t slip or slide into the ground. Then I let them see an automatic landing before finally allowing them to do a take off… to see how simple and straight forward it is and that the plane can’t ‘flip over’ as they so often believe
Why does this ‘therapy’ work? I think because so many anxious flyers overstate the difficulty of flying a plane, and therefore have an exaggerated perception of risk…when they find out how easy it really is after just a few minutes at the controls they seem able to relinquish control, more easily to those who are more skilful and experienced than they are. And they do so confidently.
Through out the ‘flight’ I ask them to take a video of what’s going on so that when they fly they can replay it to themselves for reassurance. To remind themselves that they know what’s going on and how straight forward everything really is.
After the flight we de brief to reinforce the positive messages they have found. This lasts about an hour and a half. It’s important to remember that it is a very demanding few hours for them and we take great care not to overload them.
It has been a very successful therapy for many people and I hope that my experiences encourage you to use flight simulators as a possible treatment.
Remember that successes in the simulator and at the seminars were achieved by using training methods and skills that are normal part of a pilot’s life.
So may I encourage you please to use pilots as a resource that can support the work that has been done in consulting rooms, in seminars, under hypnosis, or by sheer personal bravery, to help people to overcome their fear of flying? I hope that someone here can provide the pilots with guidance that will make our help even more effective. |
