We know air travel is safe, but our nervous systems don’t care about statistics

If you’re feeling fear and anxiety around the idea of boarding a plane following last month’s deadly crash and Tuesday’s near miss in New York, you’re not alone.

The fear of flying is common in general, and it’s completely normal for it to spike and linger for a while following such events, especially when they occur close to home, according to Montreal mental health professionals. That’s because “we can’t reason our way out of emotion,” even if we know commercial air travel is the safest mode of transportation on the planet.

Two pilots were killed and several people were injured last month when an Air Canada plane from Montreal collided with a fire truck crossing the runway at LaGuardia Airport in New York. On Tuesday, an Air Canada Express flight and a Republic Airways jet had to abort their landings at John F. Kennedy International Airport after coming within 350 feet of each other.

“When people hear about a plane crash or any other situation that involves a plane … it’s our body that often responds first,” said Jennifer Haydock, a Canadian-certified counsellor at the Montreal Therapy Centre. “That fear of flying doesn’t mean that something is wrong with you; it’s not irrational. It actually means that your nervous system is trying to protect you.”

The vast majority of news stories about flights are negative, which can affect our perception of the threat, said Vanessa Delisle, a crisis psychologist at St. Mary’s Hospital and founder of Bridge Mental Health and Therapy Services in Westmount.

“We’re not hearing story upon story every day about planes that are landing safely,” she said. “And if we did, our brain probably wouldn’t pay attention to that, because our brain is set up for survival. … It really scans for threats.”

Dr. Vanessa Delisle, crisis psychologist at St. Mary’s Hospital. Dave Sidaway / Montreal Gazette files

There are upward of 100,000 commercial flights landing safely across the globe daily — yet flying can cause fear and anxiety even among those familiar with the aviation industry.

“To be brutally honest, I sometimes get those fears,” said John Gradek, McGill University faculty lecturer in aviation and supply networks, noting that his work involves paying closer attention to incidents than the general public.

Asked why he thinks flying causes more fear and anxiety than other modes of transportation, Gradek said simply: “Man’s not made to fly.”

But “the actual occurrence rate of these incidents is infinitesimal,” he said, pointing out that there are better odds of winning the Lotto 6/49 jackpot than being injured or killed in a plane crash.

“That’s how I characterize it,” Gradek said. “I’m not a big lottery fan and I know that I’m not gonna win, so I don’t play. When people fly, they have to understand that there are tens of thousands of flights going on at that moment in time. … And of those 10,000 on any given day, all 10,000 will land safely. It’s only if you look at about a month, a month and a half, of all global flying — when you’re hitting a million flights — will you have the chance of one aircraft involved in an incident. The odds of an incident are very, very low.”

We don't fly as much as we drive, so we're not as used to it.

Vanessa Delisle Crisis psychologist

Kiwon Lee, faculty lecturer in the department of mathematics and statistics at McGill, pointed to statistics in the United States to compare flying with driving: According to USAFacts.org, there were just 675 serious injuries from air travel between 2003 to 2023, compared with more than 47 million injuries in vehicles on U.S. highways.

“I think this contrast of numbers already shows how rare flight accidents (are),” he said.

Lee said it’s possible people interpret air travel as riskier because there’s a perception of having less control. Haydock and Delisle both mentioned that the loss of control can indeed play a part.

“You’re trusting other people and other systems to keep you safe,” Haydock said.

Exposure is probably also a factor, Delisle added.

“We don’t fly as much as we drive, so we’re not as used to it.”

But Lee pointed out that vehicles are driven by the general public, whereas flights are managed by pilots and air traffic controllers “who have much more proficiency in their jobs.”

When accidents like the LaGuardia crash do occur, the airlines and aviation industry learn from them, making flying increasingly safe, Gradek said.

“They take it very seriously and they adjust their practices,” he said. “If there’s a need to change the regulation to reflect the prevention of another occurrence of that root cause, (regulators) will in fact act very quickly to change the regulation.”

Still, tragedies like the LaGuardia crash “really stick with us,” Delisle said.

“And so the statistics almost don’t matter anymore, because our emotional system … is activated,” she said. “Our brain is like: ‘Threat, threat, threat,’ and we can’t reason our way out of it.”

How does one address the fear?

Delisle said it can be tricky because some people would benefit most from exposure therapy, and taking a weekly flight isn’t possible. But flight simulators can be useful, she said. In Montreal, AviaSim in LaSalle offers flight simulations to help passengers overcome their fear of flying. It advertises a course tailored to the individual, combining theory and practice.

For practical tips outside that context, Delisle said it can be helpful to reframe the fear.

“Acknowledging what is happening in your body, what you’re feeling, what you’re thinking, but taking some perspective on that: ‘Just because I feel this, doesn’t make it true. Just because I feel unsafe, doesn’t mean I am unsafe,'” she said. “We do a lot of that — what we call cognitive reframing.”

Another quick tip would be to calm the nervous system by taking deep breaths, with longer exhales than inhales.

“And then you can do what we call progressive muscle relaxation — that also helps shift the nervous system into relaxation mode — which is basically clenching and unclenching muscle groups,” Delisle said.

Haydock had similar tips, adding that it can be beneficial to learn about turbulence and different sounds you might hear on a plane ahead of time, then create a game plan on how to respond to potential stressful situations.

“Maybe there’s a little bit of turbulence, maybe there’s a baby that’s crying, maybe there’s somebody who is having a difficult time and you’re noticing that because your nervous system’s already hypervigilant,” she said. “What are some actions that you can take to help bring yourself back into safety within your body?” 

The goal isn’t to eliminate the fear completely before boarding a plane, Haydock said.

“We’re going to be feeling fear in our lives,” she said. “That’s something that is inevitable. … The goal is really to support our body enough to feel and to create safety around that fear, so it doesn’t take over our entire life experience.”

While it might still feel risky to some to board a plane — particularly because it feels less inevitable than getting in a car — Gradek, who teaches a risk management course at McGill, pointed out that there’s risk involved in everything we do. When you step outside, you could get hit by lightning (“What are the odds of it happening? One in a billion, but you could,” he said), you could get hit by a car, you could trip going down the stairs.

“Life is full of risks, and what you have to be able to do is understand what are the odds of a risk event happening, and what can I do, psychologically, to prepare myself to feel less anxious about undertaking that event?” Gradek said.

“You have to leave it to the provider of that service to mitigate anything that’s happening that would increase the level of risk associated with that activity.”

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