Fighting the Fear of Flying

While the wreckage was still smoldering at Tenerife, another Pan Am jet last week prepared for takeoff at Washington's Dulles International Airport. The 67 passengers aboard were among the millions of Americans who--strictly out of fear--either have never flown or have taken planes only in dire emergencies. Now, as the culmination of a $100 course given by Pan Am to combat their anxiety, they were about to take an hour-long "graduation" flight on a 707 jet. Aboard was TIME'S Chris English, an intrepid air traveler. His report:

After seven nights of classroom instruction, a tour of the Leesburg Air Traffic Control Center and a behind-the-scenes look at Dulles Airport, the class was ready for the flight. At checkin, a few were in tears. One woman had brought her psychiatrist with her. Several others clutched their Bibles. The worries they had confessed to various Pan Am classroom lecturers--Government safety experts, former fearful flyers and psychiatrists--bubbled up again: Could I fall out of the plane? Might I not get stuck in the toilet? What about all that air turbulence?

As takeoff approached, Group Leader Truman ("Slim") Cummings, a Pan Am pilot who had originated the course, could see that some firmness was in order. When the woman accompanied by the "shrink" asked to be let off before the flight, Cummings refused. Her fear, he decided, was not genuine enough. She finally agreed to join the rest of the class in deep-breathing relaxation exercises as the 707 taxied down the runway, turned, took off and headed up the Potomac River Valley.

With a cloudless sky, the view of the Blue Ridge Mountains and Harpers Ferry was magnificent--for those brave enough to look down. Several passengers who had expressed a fear of flying over mountains decided that the peaks did not seem quite so formidable from an altitude of 20,000 ft. For those who had voiced concern over all the thumps and other sounds made by planes during flight, the pilot lowered and then raised the flaps and landing gear.

By the time the jet turned around and headed back over the Chesapeake Bay, most of those aboard were having a grand time. Their mood was lifted by flight attendants, who moved up and down the aisle with champagne--and by the spectacular sight of a British Airways Concorde approaching Dulles several thousand feet below us. A few passengers remained miserably huddled in their seats, praying for the flight to end, but the new converts talked of one day trying supersonic flight. At touchdown, as at takeoff, the cabin erupted in a round of applause.

Later at the graduation ceremony, diplomas were handed out, and the most nervous students got framed copies of John Gillespie Magee Jr.'s poem High Flight ("Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth .. ."). Most of the passengers were jubilant over their conquest of fear. To prove their new-found confidence, two classmates left Dulles that afternoon not by car, as they had arrived, but by jet.

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