Different flying histories in flying phobics: association with psychopathology and treatment outcome

Passengers experiencing fear of flying can threaten the safety of a flight, its passengers, and crew. In the present study we investigated the effect of different flying histories on the nature and treatment of fear of flying and attempted to determine the following: 1) the prevalence of different flying histories in a sample of self-referred flying phobics; 2) the demographic and psychopathologic characteristics of flying phobics differing with respect to flying history; and 3) the predictive value of different flying histories for treatment outcome.

Of 2001 self-referred adults who applied for a flying treatment program, 85.6% reported that they had flown before and that their flights had been uneventful; 8.7% had no previous experience with flying; 5.7% had flown before and had experienced an eventful (5.4%) or even a traumatic flight (0.3%).

Participants who had never flown before reported higher levels of fear of flying (FAS, FAM, VAFAS), agoraphobia (FSS-III), and general anxiety (SCL-90). Moreover, these subjects showed significantly more anxiety reduction following a 1- or 2-d group treatment than the other participants (statistically corrected for any pretreatment differences).

For participants who had never flown before, anxiety probably primarily reflects more generalized avoidance tendencies and a proneness to over-predict the magnitude and intensity of their fear.