Airline Pilot Shares His Top Tips to Ease Anxiety of Nervous Travellers

TOP TIPS

More and more people are choosing air travel over other modes of transport. Whether they are looking for bucket list travel destinations, seeking out available international employment opportunities, or simply wanting to spend more time with family overseas, flying has become the obvious travel choice with over 100,000 flights taking off per day around the world. With the increase of low cost carriers over the past two decades making for stiff competition, there are more travellers in the air, hence an obvious rise in nervous travellers too. For some, it may be their very first time flying, even in their retirement age, for others it may be as simple as fear of heights or fear of the unnatural.

Working at HK Express, a Cathay Pacific owned airline that offers flight service to 27 countries in Asia, Captain Amit sat down to speak with CSP Times to offer his top tips for air travel fears that may help ease nervous flyers.

Top tips:

1. Sit towards the front of the aircraft as that is where the least turbulence will be.

2. Advise the cabin crew in your zone about your anxiety and ask them to keep checking in on you.

3. Practice deep breathing as per your daily practices, or with some videos on the in-flight entertainment system.

4. Doctor prescribed medication such as anti-anxiety or motion sickness medication will definitely help in certain situations.

5. Have your movies and music ready to go for the flight in order to distract you.

6. Any time there's any turbulence, simply think of it as a bump in the road.

7. Strike up a conversation with the person next to you, although be prepared in the instance that they are not interested in speaking with you.

8. Carry your stuffed animal with you for comfort.

...But before all this, one can simply do some basic internet search before the day to find chat groups, forums, articles, blogs, and see what remedy works best for them.