Verified by 
Don't get concerned when flight attendants are told to be seated. It's a routine announcement. Most airlines require it whenever the seat belt sign is turned on.
A passenger might think, "If the flight attendants need to be seated, it's really going to get bad." Not necessarily. Pilots try to make the announcement early, even if the turbulence is expected to be light. This is because, after hearing the announcement, the flight attendants must stow loose items in the galley and secure the serving carts before being seated.
Securing the serving carts is difficult in turbulence. Think of a three hundred pound shopping cart on casters. Its storage slot becomes a moving target in rough air. Turbulence can cause the slot to move one way and the cart another. The rougher the air, the harder it is to align the cart with the slot. The flight attendant needs two hands to guide the cart and another hand to hold on to one of the galley's grab handles. One hand short of what is needed, an average of seventeen flight attendants get injured a year, mostly while putting things away or stowing carts.
Paradoxicallly, turning the seat belt on early may lead to passenger injuries. The seat belt is often on when passengers see no need for it. Annoyed, some passengers rebelliously ignore the seat belt sign as well as the advice to use the seat belt whenever seated.
Passengers usually get away with non-compliance. In the rare circumstances when they are injured, it makes news. The media, so far as I have seen, never makes it clear that the injuries were due to non-compliance. Instead, reporters write about how extreme the turbulence was. Typically, they search out a passenger who was terrified and report that he or she believed death was imminent. This sensationalized reporting reinforces the belief that turbulence is inherently dangerous. Anxious fliers email me saying injuries are proof that turbulence is dangerous.
Turbulence is no danger to the plane. Turbulence is no danger to anyone wearing a seat belt. In spite of seat belt non-compliance, the number of passengers injured each year can usually be counted on one hand.
Hopefully, this blog makes it clear that no one gets hurt in turbulence when a seat belt is being used. Need proof of that? Have you ever heard of a pilot getting hurt in turbulence? No, because pilots always wear their seat belt.
Does this put the matter to rest? Unfortunately, it doesn't, because of the way the brain is wired up. Joseph LeDoux is the leading authority on the amygdala, the part of the brain responsible for releasing stress hormones, and its role in producing fear. His research shows that when arousal-releated events take place in quick succession, memory cells associate the events. In LeDoux's research with rats, a tone is followed by an electrical shock.
During this conditioning, the rat's quick-learning (transiently plastic) memory cells immediately associate the tone with the shock. When the tone sounds a second time, the rat's amygdala reacts to the tone as though it were the shock.
An extinction phase follows in which the tone is sounded, but no shock follows. The quick-learning (transiently plastic) cells quickly learn not to react to the tone.
The situation is remarkably different with the slow-learning cells. It takes a series of sequences for these cells to associate the tone with the shock.
But, once the slow-learning (long-term plastic) cells associate the tone with the shock, learning is permanent. During the extinction phase, the amygdala reacts only slightly less.
This has profound implications for fearful fliers. A period of turbulence on a single flight can, by exposure to repeated drops, condition the person's slow-learning cells to permanently link turbulence to dropping, dropping to arousal, arousal to fear, and fear to danger, life-threat, panic, and terror.
Reason exerts no influence on the amygdala's slow-learning cells. Even after an anxious flier learns - and is intellectually convinced - that turbulence is no threat to the plane, the amygdala's response remains unchanged. Though physically safe, turbulence continues to be emotionally threatening.
Anticipatory Anxiety
Once these associations are embedded in the amygdala's slow-learning memory cells, anticipatory anxiety is a problem. When thinking of taking a flight, memory of turbulence triggers the amygdala. Arousal automatically causes feelings of fear. And, fear, because it is associated with danger, causes the feeling that if they fly, they will die.
Though the feeling may not go away, the anxious flier may be able to loosen the grip emotion has on them. The amygdala arouses us dozens of times a day. Ordinarily, we determine what caused arousal. If it is irrelevant, we drop the issue. In some situations, arousal alerts of us some risk. If we have enough control to deal with it, stress hormone release ends. If we don't have enough control, we either escape the situation or avoid getting into it.
I ask clients to begin noticing moments of arousal. At first sign of arousal, is there a tiny moment before they feel fear? And, is there a moment between fear and danger? On the ground, in our day-to-day living, these gaps exist. If the client becomes able to notice these gaps, they may be able tease apart their automatic thinking. If so, arousal no longer is experienced as fear. Fear no longer automatically means danger. They may be able to extend what they learn on the ground to flight.
If the anxious flier can intellectually separate arousal from fear, and fear from danger, they can better tolerate the feelings caused as the amygdala continues to produce stress hormones due to links that cannot be erased. In addition, anticipatory anxiety can be lessened with the 5-4-3-2-1 exercise at this link, and by what I call "The Abstract Point of No Return" at this link.
What About Desensitization?
Desensitization produces limited and fragile improvement. According to further research by LeDoux, if extinction is continued, the amygdala's response to the tone may be reduced no more than fifty percent. But, after that reduction, if the rat is exposed one additional time to the tone-shock sequence, the benefit of desensitization is wiped out. The amygdala responds as though no extinction had taken place.
This suggests that if a turbulent flight is followed by a long series of completely smooth flights, some desensitization may accrue. But thereafter, a single turbulent flight would be expected cancel the desensitization.
Shutting Down The Fear System
What, then, can be done? If a smoke alarm is making noise due to a toaster burning toast, the alarm can be stopped by taking the battery out. No matter how the smoke alarm is programmed, if it is shut down, it cannot react. No matter how trauma has programmed the amygdala, if it is shut down, it cannot release the stress hormones that lead to fear.
How is this done? When a person enters a hospital for a procedure, they are routinely connected to an IV. The IV has a timer and a pump. Every few minutes, the timer signals the pump to deliver saline and valium into the person’s blood stream. Saline hydrates the person. Valium calms the person.
When flying, a sequence of events takes place. The passenger boards, sits, fastens the seat belt. The door of the plane is closed. The engines start up. The plane is pushed back from the terminal. It taxis to the runway, takes off, climbs, cruises, descends, lands, and taxis to the terminal.
Pavlov And The Wright Brothers
At same time the Wright Brothers were first taking to the air, Pavlov was developing classical conditioning that is now being applied to flight phobia. Just as Pavlov taught his dogs to salivate when hearing a bell, in the SOAR Program, we teach the anxious flier how to train the mind to release amygdala-inhibiting oxytocin when boarding, when siting down in the seat, when fastening the seat belt. An oxytocin-producing memory can be linked to the plane’s door being closed, to the engines starting, and so on throughout the flight. By associating each event to an oxytocin-producing memory, an anxious flier can produce sufficient oxytocin to keep the amygdala inhibited throughout the flight, even during turbulence.
If interested in LeDoux’s research, see the video at this link where his comments on the quick-learning and slow-learning memory cells begin at 27 minutes into the lecture.
A PDF of LeDoux's research is available at this link.
