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Fear of Flying

3rd June 2009 by Helena 10 Comments  

Not the book by Erica Jong, but real fear. After the Air France crash I have it even worse. And it was pretty bad to begin with. It is just one of those things I have always hated and always dreaded. At one stage (when I was about 19) it got so bad that the thought of getting on a plane would ruin the prospect of anything I had to look forward to once I got to where I was going. In fact when we first thought about moving to Abu Dhabi, one of the things on my ‘disadvantages’ list was the fact that unless I was going to Oman, leaving the country would invariably involve a plane. Unlike France where you can get most places in Europe on a train.
Happily I have got over a lot of my fear. But since this latest crash it has come back, if to a lesser extent. Actually it came back when we flew from Ireland to London on my recent European shopping trip. There was horrendous turbulence. And then when we went to land the plane lurched horribly from side to side before we touched down. I thought I was a gonner. Everyone else in the group was so hungover they didn’t really care. For once I wished I had stayed up drinking all night.

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This latest episode has freaked me out. The thought of just dropping from the sky with more than 200 people to a murky death is just too awful. That feeling of total powerlessness and terror would just be my idea of total hell. I mean in a lot of situations there is something you can do, or at least try to do. If you are falling out of the sky your options are limited.
The bad news is we fly to London next week. I am already nervous about the flight, however much I am looking forward to getting there. Maybe I should invest in a copy of Erica Jong’s book (which I first read about a zillion years ago) for the flight and try to think about something else….

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2009


Filed Under: Pet hates, Travel, blog --> Tagged With: flying

10 thoughts on Fear of Flying

  • Jacques says:
    3rd June 2009 at 5:56 pm

    Is my memory playing tricks? Have I imagined that dinner a few years ago in the Languedoc when a party of well-travelled journalists-writers rolled out statistics and had fun at my expense when I said I had never taken a plane because of a fear of flying?
    Stop worrying. It won’t make any difference.
    Bon voyage quand même
    Jacques

  • helena says:
    3rd June 2009 at 6:14 pm

    I’m sure I would have stuck up for you. But as I said, it hasn’t actually stopped me from flying, I just hate it. As Rupert says “the trouble with flying is, you’re fine until you’re not.”
    I will keep you posted on progress next week.
    Hx

  • Arthur says:
    4th June 2009 at 8:31 am

    Think of Leonard Cheshire VC and all he did with his life – after Bomber Command.
    Fear of flying? What about hurtling along on a train at over a hundred miles an hour when your path ahead could be blocked by almost anything. Bon courage, Arthur.

  • Jim says:
    4th June 2009 at 5:39 pm

    1mg of xannex and a shot of vodka will make the flight easier!

  • Jennifer says:
    5th June 2009 at 1:32 am

    Oh, you poor lady.

    At least you’ve been on a plane! I’m thirty-one and have yet to fly. Maybe, if I ever do, I’ll find out that I’m just as afraid as you are.

  • jose says:
    5th June 2009 at 2:58 pm

    I, too am so border-line about flying – I was getting along fine
    for a long while until a couple of summers ago I was coming back from Greece with Olympic Airways with a load of turbulence over the Aegean and the pilot barking out things in
    Greek and the sea coming closer and closer and I looked around
    and saw nearly everyone terrified – with me the worst. Luckily
    it was O.K but I’ll never fly with them again that’s for sure. If I
    have to go down it will be with a suave ‘your captain speaking,
    nothing to worry about’! I did turn it to my advantage tho’ on a
    Virgin flight to New York and said I was a nervous flyer (true) and got put in Business class – not bad! I keep thinking about
    those last moments as well of those poor people before the crash.

  • Texafornian says:
    7th June 2009 at 10:35 pm

    Hypnosis has been very successful in helping reduce the fear of flying. I read about a writer that underwent hypnosis for her fear of flying. After she completed her treatment, she seriously considered taking flying lessons to get her pilot’s license as her fear of flying was gone.

  • Unexpected Traveller says:
    8th June 2009 at 6:12 pm

    I’ve been in situations with bad turbulence but the worst travel related story I have is taking a bat to Sicily from Malta in August. Our return trip was accompanied by one of the Med’s summer storms making everyone on board sick – crew included. To drown out the sound of projectile vomiting, someone increased the volume of the telly which was showing Italy’s FestivalBar song festival. All went well until one of the song’s lyrics serenaded us with: “Su, Su, Su! E poi andiamo giu, giu, giu!” repeatedly ….

    U T

  • Josephine says:
    19th June 2009 at 1:16 pm

    I feel your pain on this one. When I was younger I would hop on any plane and not care. I remember one flight with Air India with some gent sitting next to me groping my breast (without permission!) and the plane jumping like a kangaroo and I had no fear whatsoever! What is it with getting older that increases the fear volume? Now I just want to take cruise ships everywhere! I was very bad after 9/11. I still get emotional about the poor children on those flights. Horrible, horrible way to die!

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Helena Frith Powell was born in Sweden to a Swedish mother and Italian father, but grew up mainly in England. She is the author of eleven books, translated into several languages including Chinese and Russian. She wrote the French Mistress column The Sunday Times about life in France for several years. She is a regular contributor to the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, The Times, Daily Telegraph, Tatler Magazine and Harper’s Bazaar.

Helena has been the editor of four magazines, including M Magazine, a supplement for the Abu Dhabi-based National Newspaper and FIVE, a high-end fashion glossy, also published in Abu Dhabi. Helena was also editor-in-chief of 360 Life, a quarterly glossy magazine published with the Sports 360 Newspaper in Dubai, part of the Chalhoub Group.

Helena contributes regularly to UK-based newspapers and magazines and holds a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge. She is working on a thriller set in Sweden as well as a novel about the relationship between Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield called Sense of an Echo.

In 2022 her short story The Japanese Gardener came second in the Fish Publishing Short Story Prize. One of her stories was also shortlisted for the Bridport Short Story Prize. When she’s not writing, she works as a headhunter for the media and entertainment industry for the Sucherman Group. 

Helena, who was educated at Durham University, lives in the Languedoc region of France with her husband Rupert and their three children.

Bibliography

More France Please, we’re British; Gibson Square 2004

Two Lipsticks and a Lover 2005; Gibson Square (hardback)

All You Need to be Impossibly French; (US version of above) Penguin 2006

Two Lipsticks and a Lover; Arrow Books (paperback) 2007

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (hardback) 2006

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (paperback) 2007

So Chic! (French version of Two Lipsticks) Leduc Editions 2008 (also translated into Chinese, Russian and Thai)

More, More France; Gibson Square 2009

To Hell in High Heels; Arrow Books 2009 (also translated into Polish)

The Viva Mayr Diet; Harper Collins 2009

Love in a Warm Climate; Gibson Square 2011

The Ex-Factor; Gibson Square 2013

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles; Gibson Square 2016

The Arnolfini Marriage; Amazon Kindle December 2016

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles (paperback); Gibson Square spring 2018

The Longest Night; Gibson Square spring 2019

 

 

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