26. Overcoming a Fear of Flying with an Aerospace Engineer and Pilot

Welcome to my podcast. I'm Dr. Nicole Cain, a naturopathic doctor with a master's in clinical psychology and a former anxiety sufferer turned anxiety freedom rebel. I am so happy to be here, you guys. Today I'm talking with an amazing, brilliant human about fear, fear of flying. And so if you have a fear of flying, or if you get anxious or overwhelmed or stressed flying, this is the interview for you. And I am delighted to introduce AJ this beautiful, brilliant woman has a Bachelor's of science in aerospace engineering from usc. She's done flight training and hours towards private flight licensure, and she works as a mechanical engineer for design and technology company doing pre proof of concepts and prototyping. All really smart. And so I'm so excited to have her here. And so if you are ready to learn about how to overcome your fear of flying, then listen to this podcast. It's going to be amazing. Welcome, A.J. thank you for being here, honey.

Thank you for having me. I'm excited.

So we were talking like a month ago about how I had to get on a flight, and I just incidentally mentioned to you that I wasn't looking forward to it because flying is not my jam. And you started rattling off all of this genius stuff about why flying is so great and so fun. And I was like, oh, my God, like, can I record you? I need this for my community of people who are also afraid of flying.

Yeah, I mentioned that I'm a great person to be sitting next to on a flight because, I mean, for one, I love flying, but my aerospace engineering degree means that I know a lot about it, and I can sit there telling people the entire time that, oh, no, this is totally safe, and this is why you're so much safer here. And, oh, that noise was this and this happening, and you want that to happen because that's good. So I'm just like the perfect little pocket companion for people that are afraid of flying.

So we're going to have this podcast be a pocket companion. So somebody, like, as a listener, if you guys are going on a flight or if you're on a flight right now, then pull up this podcast and AJ and I are just gonna hang with you and we're gonna talk about all of the things. And so, AJ, I was actually hoping that you could tell us a little bit more about you and, like, what got you into flying to begin with? Like, why is flying appealing to you?

That's an interesting story. So I. I really liked math when I was in high school, and I knew that I Wanted to do something with math in college, but I didn't know what. And I knew I didn't want to be a math teacher, and I didn't want to be a mathematician. So somebody said I should fly planes, because flying planes has a lot to do with math. And I was like, what? Like, fly planes? Why don't I build them or something? And basically that sarcastic comment led to me getting a degree in aerospace engineering because I applied to a variety of different schools. But when I applied to usc, I knew they had a really good engineering school, so I applied to their engineering school as aerospace engineering. And then when I got in and chose to go there, I kind of forgot that I had agreed to that. I straight up googled my degree before I started there, because I didn't realize what I was getting into. But I got there, I started taking classes, and I completely fell in love with the beauty and math and logic behind aircraft and seeing formulas on paper actually come to life in a real aircraft. We started doing, you know, model testing and stuff and seeing how everything. It's not this big black box of magic that happens in the sky as much as people believe. It's actually very thought out and very logical, and every little detail can be calculated. And so I just fell in love with it. And I started doing that, and I never looked back.

So aerospace engineering, what is that exactly? What does that mean?

So aerospace engineering was my degree. Technically, that's a combination of aeronautical engineering and astronautical engineering. Aeronautical is within the atmosphere, and astronautical is outside of the atmosphere. So astronautical was classes like planets and orbits and space missions, whereas, of course, aeronautical was all aircraft. So it was mostly propelled flight with what you would consider like, a commercial aircraft. We did do some studies, of course, on, like, helicopters or lighter than air. So like blimps and those kind of things, and then engineering, so the design of it and understanding of it.

So you were great at math, and you're interested in math, and so you're figuring out, like, what can I do with this? And you came across this field, which is really interesting. The way that you've done it is it's a combination, it sounds like, of space and all the things involved outside of our atmosphere, and then the things involved within the atmosphere, including blimps, you said helicopters and airplanes and different types of crafts.

Yeah. And then, of course, the one thing I should mention is most of the degree is actually based on mechanical engineering concepts, which is why I work as a mechanical engineer now, is that you learn all of the mechanical structures for building the aircraft, and then the aerospace part of it, of how it flies and everything.

So what you said that sticks out to me is the magic black box. And that's basically how I see flying, is it feels to me, as an uneducated lay woman, right, that it's this giant metal object filled with a bunch of really heavy humans and all of their stuff being propelled through the air. And so that feels, while I know logically, since doing a little bit of research on this topic, that it is within mathematics and physics laws, but it feels like it's in total defiance of that. And so when people are afraid of flying, they're like, oh, my gosh, I'm in this giant, huge thing. And we have primacy of, like, Looney tunes, right, where planes fall out of the sky. So can you tell me a little bit about how the heck this actually works with math and physics? Like, how do these things not fall out of the sky?

So it's funny because I hear that a lot about, you know, how airplanes defy the laws of physics. And it could not be more incorrect because, one, we don't have the ability as humans to defy the laws of physics. And what we're doing, really, is taking advantage of the laws of physics. And so if I can try and make this as simple and simple as possible. Aircraft works because basically, if you think of directional forces, you have an aircraft that has a lot of weight. You mentioned it's really big, it's really heavy. That's a force that is pulling it down towards the earth. So what you need to do in order to fly is create an opposing force that is lifting the aircraft up. And when that lift is greater than the weight, you fly. We do that by taking advantage of air pressure. And the shape of the wing is really important. And the shape of the wing allows basically kind of the creation of what you would consider like a vacuum. It's not a true vacuum, but it's a. It's a lower pressure area above the wing than is underneath it. So you're actually pulling the aircraft up with this lower pressure area above the wing. And when you do that on a massive scale, you can lift, you know, thousands of pounds of weight without a problem. And then because the aircraft is designed that way, it's natural for the aircraft to fly. When you move it forward, the moving forward is just pushing the air over the wing and creating that low pressure area above it that pulls it up. Does that make sense?

So what I hear you saying is that you have this weight and so that's going towards the earth. That's gravity. And so in order to make the plane fly, we have to have an opposite pressure that's pushing it up. And so the way that you do that is by creating a lower pressure above the wing than below the wing. And so that lower pressure, it lifts the plane up. And a big part of that is the design of the wing itself.

Yeah, you basically end up with the air underneath. The wing is pushing it up, and the air above the wing is pulling it up. Based. All based on the geometry of the wing. It's actually a very simple concept when you see it broken down. And there's a few. There's a few ways to kind of show that. And I don't know if I can explain this over the phone, but the best example I always hear is if you take a piece of paper, you put it up to your lower lip, and it'll just flop down, it'll fold down. I'll give you an example. It'll just flop down, It'll fold down. If you blow over the top of the paper, not underneath it, but if you blow over the top of it, the paper will actually rise because you're creating that low pressure system on top of the. On top of the paper. And so that movement, the movement of the air is what creates that suction. Suction that pulls it up. That's kind of a simple version of what's happening on an aircraft, except you also have the air that's going to push it up from underneath as well.

All right, listeners, I'm going to do this right now. And so if you guys are all with me, we're going to take. I have a tissue, and I would try paper.

Tissue's a little soft. Sorry.

Because then it's going to defy. It's going to defy. All right.

Yeah, just tear a little piece of paper and then.

Okay, so everybody, if you have paper, we're gonna pick up our paper and we're gonna put it up to our lips, and then don't blow underneath of it, but blow on top of it, right?

Yeah.

And so then what that's doing is it's creating a low pressure as compared to underneath of it. Does this have to do with the speed of molecules moving?

It does to some extent, but it has more to do with the effects of the. It's the speed of air molecules. Molecules is not quite the right term, but basically, when the air is coming towards the wing, it splits. Some of it goes above, some of it goes below that Air is going to get to the other end of the wing at the exact same time, whether it's going above it or below it. That's just how the laws of physics work. It's going to get to the other end at the same exact time. So if I create more of an. Of a curve and more area for the air to come on top, it has to move faster to get to the back of the wing. If I have a certain amount of volume and I spread it out over a larger area, it thins out. So there's less weight and there's less. There's a lower pressure there, there's less force pushing on, pushing down on the wing, and it actually ends up pulling it up.

Oh, my gosh. That's amazing. So it's really interesting that I hear you saying that, because I'm kind of imagining, like, if we were drawing, like, if I could create an image of this podcast, that the molecules are going at this wing, and then there's the greater distance, if you will, to have to travel up and over the curve of the wing versus those that are going straight to the target, the hypotenuse to the. They get there at the same time. And so the ones that are going over the top have to go arguably a little bit faster, right? Exactly.

So they have to go faster to get over there, and that's partially why. So the air pressure is going to be based on the velocity that you're moving, because that's going to determine how fast all of the air is moving, even underneath the wing, and then it's based on the density of the air, so how much air that you have there. So, like I said, if you take the same amount of volume, and you may be able to come up with a better example of this, but if you take the same amount of volume and you, you know, you spread it out over a larger area, it's thinner and it's lighter, based on how much air you have.

So that is neat because there's a couple things that are keeping the plane up in the air just by what you've been talking about is the pressure difference, and then also that negative space. I guess that's the pressure difference, but then also the speed of the air. And so when the plane is going up, people always talk about how the takeoff and the landing are the most dangerous parts of the flight. And so can you walk us through that?

So one thing I will say about that is that takeoff and landing in general are not dangerous processes. But there's a thing called Blue sky theorem that basically says that there is so much blue sky out there, the chances of an aircraft hitting another aircraft is pretty much impossible. If there's just so much air, there's just so much sky and volume up there and the size of an aircraft relative to that is so tiny that you, the chances are very low. However, you have a more, I'm going to call it congested area around an air, an airport. So if something is going to go wrong, you're going, it's going to be closer to that area in general. The other part of that is the altitude. So if an aircraft has some sort of failure at 30,000ft, that's 30,000ft to recover before hitting anything. If you are having some sort of failure at 150ft, which is nothing or even, you know, a couple thousand feet, you have much less time to recover. Aircrafts naturally recover. That is how they are designed and how they are built. They recover naturally because they want to be up in the air. And so if you're closer to the ground, you just have less time for that recovery to happen. But as far as takeoff and landing, the actual processes, landing gear and such, it's actually a very safe, very simple process.

So when we're going up in an airplane, there's lots of sounds that the airplane makes. And so you and I were talking about this, like, oh my gosh, what is that sound? What's happening? So can you walk us through takeoff?

Yeah. So takeoff has a couple parts that, if it's been a while since I've been on an airplane, all things considered, lately. But takeoff has a couple of things that scare people. For one, before an aircraft ever leaves the ground, it has to go through a full system check every single time an aircraft leaves. And if it, and then every, you know, I'm gonna make this number. But every five times an aircraft leaves, it has to do a, an even more detailed system check. And then every day it has to do an even more detailed check. And it goes through all these checks constantly before it leaves the ground. So when you're sitting on the tarmac and you hear the engine roaring, they're just running it just to see, okay, our engines are working. Cool. Good to know. Okay, you know, this is working. Good to know. They're just going through all of these checks and balances and so you'll hear things that you'll think, why are, why are they running the engines? We're not moving. There's a reason for that. We don't, we aren't Used to that, because when you get in your car, you don't hold your foot on the brake and then also push the gas just to see that your engine is working. But they do. So you'll hear a lot of sounds when you're parked on the tarmac or when you're waiting to take off. And then when you're actually taking off, I mean, you hear the sound of the aircraft running along the gravel at, you know, decent speed. And then when you lift off, shortly after, you'll hear the landing gear pull up. They don't pull that up until, you know, absolutely necessary, but they, but you'll hear that mechanical system move. So the landing gear pulls up. So you hear that one, that's usually something you can hear rumbling sometimes, but below your feet, depending on where you're sitting. The other one that you hear on takeoff and also before landing, that usually scares people because if you're on an eight hour flight and you haven't heard a sound and then suddenly you hear noise coming from the wing is the flaps. So the flaps are kind of wing extenders. What they do is they, it just goes back to what we were talking about, about creating lift. It extends the length and the curvature of the wing in order to get more lift. And so that way by creating more lift, you can go slower for your landing and your, for your takeoff. You don't have to come landing at, you know, 800 miles an hour, whatever it may be. You can land at a much slower speed because you're creating more lift. So the aircraft is gently lowering to the ground. And so you hear the air, the flaps extend again. That's another mechanical system where you hear those rotating out. And sometimes if you're sitting near a wing, you can see them extend from the back of the plane. And you'll hear and see that. And that's all, that's all intentional. That's all designed to make the takeoff and landing more smooth.

Oh my gosh, I love that you said that, because I see that in my mind. Because, you know, you look out the window and then you see that flat plane, that wing, and then you see these, these things that stick up, you know, 45 degrees or whatever, they put it out on the wing.

So there's also one more thing. So the flaps, the flaps extend the wing and extend the curvature so that if you had a wing that like, let's say, say is three feet long, it'll extend out so that now your wing is four feet long and it's, and it extends it along It. So that it's got that curve so that it creates more lift. The other thing that you'll see when you land only are speed brakes, which basically are. They're perpendicular to the wing, and they come up to block the air when you're landing. And it's. It's basically, it's putting your hand out the window with your hand straight up versus going along with the flow, and you're stopping the air. And it's. By creating a bunch of those along the wing, you're slowing down the entire aircraft. So you don't have to just rely on your. Your brakes on your tires. You're relying on stopping the air and therefore slowing down the entire aircraft. With the speed brakes. Those you don't normally hear the mechanical system, but you'll hear the wind, you'll hear the force of the air. And so you'll think it's this really dramatic landing because you hear how much air is coming at you and how much, you know, how loud it gets. But it's actually just the air hitting those speed brakes, which is slowing you down.

So there's. So this is a good correction. So there's two things on the wing, and then what I was talking about, that's on the top, that's like 45 or 90 degrees. It's the brakes on the wings. It's just basically creating air resistance. And then the lifting part that helps the plane fly more slowly as you're coming in for landing. Are those extenders that it basically makes the wing wider?

Yes.

Okay, got it. Oh, my gosh. That's so interesting. And so the scary noises. So we have the different mechanical things that you described. And then the other is like, once we get up in the air, there's. And use. There's the difference. And I'm excited to learn the difference is between just like, bumps in the air, air pockets, and then turbulence. And it feels like turbulence is incredibly scary. It feels incredibly dangerous. That's where I get the most scared. Like, I am proportionally more anxious the higher off the ground I get. Even though I know logically that that's the safest part of the flight. You have all that recovery time, like you were saying, but turbulence or bumps in the air feels really scary. So I was hoping you could talk with us about that.

So there's a couple of things. I mean, the first thing I would say is that the chances of turbulence causing any damage to the aircraft is almost impossible. It's terrifying for the people involved because they don't understand it. And they don't know it, but the only time really anybody gets hurt from turbulence is if you're not wearing your seatbelt and you weren't prepared for that, that jostle and you know, you hit your arm on the drink cart that's coming by or something. But it doesn't actually ever cause damage to the aircraft. The aircraft is more than capable of withstanding it. Turbulence is kind of a catch all phrase for fluctuations and changes in the air pressure. So if you're hitting kind of like smaller pockets of air or there's a strong wind gust that you know is, is going to affect the aircraft. It takes a lot to really move that big of an aircraft if you're, if you have a side wind or something. But, but it can happen and it is very normal. And like I said, At 30,000ft, you know, there's really no issue of recovery or anything. It's not going to make you drop out of the sky. And that kind of goes back to what I was saying previously about the aircraft wanting to be in the sky. So aircraft are designed to recover, which means that if a wind comes and pushes it up, it's going to come back down. If it pushes it down, it's going to come back up. It's called a dynamically stable environment. So what I compare it to is if you put a ball into a big bowl, it's gonna roll around at first, but it's gonna settle, it's gonna come to a stop, it's gonna come back to the point that it wants to be, which is like calm and centered. And aircraft do the same thing. They come back to their natural flight path on their own. There are many times where when I was learning training, it's like it, you're just told, just don't force the aircraft to do something else because it's going to naturally come back to this state. So in that sense, turbulence can be really safe as well. The other thing is, you'll notice not all the time, but sometimes, probably more often than not, the pilot will tell you we're going to encounter turbulence. Sit down, put your seatbelt on. It's predictable. Not always, but with all the tracking that the aircraft and the airports and the FAA are doing, they know what's happening with the air systems and so they know that it's coming, which means that they know it's happening. There should be a sense of calm and safety in that because it's not completely out of the blue. I was flying normal and then I just got thrown in general, it's a known. It's a known thing, and it is completely safe. So.

This is probably from Looney Tunes, right? And so, you know, we have this early childhood priming of what it. What physics are, you know, Roadrunner runs off the cliff, Coyote goes after him. Coyote stops, looks at the camera, realizes he's in the middle of the air, and then he falls straight out of the sky. Right, Yeah, I acknowledge that. And I suspect that there's at least one other person who will listen to this recording. And it's like, yes, exactly. And so what I think about is when that plane is in the sky, and it's kind of like if you imagine that a boat is going through the water, and then if, you know, if you've ever been in, like a canoe, and then you get that, like one edge and then the water starts filling in the canoe and then the whole thing just, like, falls over. Right. And so what I worry about is that we're flying through the sky, and if the nose gets, like, bumped down a little bit, then it's going to get, like, stuck in this wall of air and then just go straight down. Or like the wing is going to tip down just a little too far, and then the whole thing is going to roll over. You know, so talk with me about how the airplane likes to stay upright and not do that.

So, yeah, so that goes a little bit more back to my dynamically stable, which is if I'm driving a car and I'm turning right, I feel a force pushing me left. Is that correct? Okay. So there's a whole equal and opposite force situation that's going on. So if I'm in an aircraft, what happens is when you're lowering the wing, you're creating more lift in a kind of sideways, I'm going to call it, direction, but it's not sideways. It's up and to the right. If you lower the wing, you're going to start turning, but at the same time, that lower wing is still creating lift, which is going to want to put back to flat.

Okay.

So the aircraft, we call it a cruise condition, but the aircraft has kind of a chill mode that it wants to be in, and you can kind of disrupt it. You can make a turn, you can make it go up, you can make it go down, but it's going to return back to that cruise altitude. That cruise condition, I should call it that trim condition. That is where it actually wants to be naturally. That doesn't require, most of the time, doesn't require a pilot's interference A pilot has to tell the aircraft to turn because naturally it's going to want to be flat. An aircraft can tend downward, but it would never flip, as you called it, and hit a wall. It can trend downward because of a loss of velocity. If you slow down the aircraft, it's going to start lowering, which is why most of the time pilots keep it with their nose up, because that actually creates the most lift as well. And so if you lose an engine or whatever, you can just kind of calmly coast down to the ground. And that's all of these factors, all these things that can go wrong are kind of, they all fit into this whole. The aircraft naturally wants to come back to that stable position and it goes back to the ball in the bowl of like, this is just, you know, this is a natural occurrence if you, you can throw that ball in the bowl as hard as you can, but eventually, if you give it enough time, it's gonna go back and stabilize. Or in this case, it's not necessarily time, but also height. If you're at 30,000ft, it's gonna have time to recover. It's gonna have the space to recover.

And so when we're thinking about bottom, bumpy air and turbulence, this is so good. This is so helpful. So the plane naturally wants. There's like these laws of mathematics and physics that you're talking about. And so the plane can kind of bump along just like a ping pong ball, I'm kind of imagining in water. And so what about you said originally, like, damaging to the plane? Like, so some people are like, oh, my God, the wing is bending. Is it going to loosen square screws? Is the engine gonna fall off? Tell me more about this, the structure of the plane.

So I have an interesting story about that. There's a photo out there of the Dreamliner, the Boeing Dreamliner, the 787. And they basically learned that if you allow the wing to flex, it creates the aircraft more. A more stable environment for the aircraft because it will naturally kind of deflect air and allow. Allow it to only kind of lift as much as it needs to and then also and then stabilize back down. It kind of evens out the airflow because as the wing tapers and becomes smaller at the end, it doesn't get as much lift out there, but it doesn't need as much lift because it doesn't weigh as much. But by allowing it to flex, you kind of allow the aircraft to take as much lift as it wants and then stabilize back. So there's an image out There of the Dreamliner 787, where they did a flexural test. And you can see this aircraft in this giant hangar with these wings that look like they're at a 45 degree angle. They're incredibly flexed, which is not totally normal for an aircraft. But the reason they did this test was to see how the people inside would react. And while it was much safer for the aircraft, they learned that people couldn't handle it in general. And so they had to kind of modify how they were doing it. Because as you've noticed, the perception matters. Right? So even though I know looking out there that's stable, most people look out there and if they saw their wing going up at 45 degrees, they'd be having a panic attack.

Exactly.

So that's an exaggerated example. But it's also there to show you that they fold these wings up to try and see, or not to try and see, to validate how much stress they can take. Aircraft transportation is the most regulated industry of transportation. In my opinion. It's one of the most regulated industries in the world. Probably close to only the FDA is the next aircraft. Regulations are incredibly critical. And for a catastrophic failure to occur, I shouldn't phrase it that way. For something to be designed into the system, if it, if its failure would cause what we call catastrophic failure or a fatality or an injury, the probability of it happening has to be 1 in 1 billion 1 times 10 to the 9th power of it happening naturally. Now, most people hear that and think, that's plenty secure, we're fine. However, the FAA actually says, well, let's put a redundant one on there. Let's put an extra one just in case. So most systems on an aircraft have built in redundancy. There's a reason why your aircraft has four engines. It can run with one, it can land with zero. But we're gonna put four on there just to be incredibly overprotective. So safe.

That makes me feel so good. I love that.

Yeah, you can land perfectly fine and safe without an engine. It's not an issue whatsoever. Everyone trains in how to land without an engine. That is standard protocol. And so structurally speaking, all of the components in that, everything down from, you know, the engines to I worked at a company that did the actuators in your seat that lean your seat back, those are all tested to the ultimate crash test ratings. The worst possible conditions that it will never, ever see. And we put them through them over and over and over again just to make sure that this design is completely safe. And. And if you know, if there's a 99% pass rate, then we put two of them on there kind of thing. And so all these systems are incredibly redundant. It's incredibly safe. It's designed to withstand the worst possible conditions and then also fail and then still withstand the failures. Which is why something like 90% of crashes don't have injuries, because they're so well designed to be prepared for it.

Oh, can we go back to that? That 98% of crashes, you know, I, in my brain, I was like, 100% of crashes equals ultimate death. And so it. What? So tell me more about that. 98% of crashes result in no injuries.

Yeah. So I shouldn't say no. Maybe it's like there's probably somebody, like I said, that bumps their arm on the, you know, the cart, but it's 90. Don't quote me on this. I'll have to find the exact statistic, but I believe it's 98% result in no injuries.

And this is commercial pilot. Pilot flown planes. Oh, gosh.

I'll find the link and send it to you to make sure that that's correct because I'm always hesitant to throw out statistics, but. But it is. Even in a crash situation, it's incredibly safe.

Oh, my gosh, that's amazing. And so.

Wow.

Yeah, that's really cool. That's like. I'm delighted by that statistic. So 98% of crashes, and it might.

Be 98% of crashes have no fatalities. That might be a better. That might be what it is. So I have to check. Don't put that in there until I check. But. Yes.

Yeah, I love that. But it's because a lot of people are. Because what I'm hearing you say, AJ is there's a lot of protective mechanisms. The plane wants to fly. There's like these triple quadruple checks to make sure. Like, it's like one to. You said to the power nine, to.

The power one, to the power of.

Ten or to the power of nine and like all these checks. And then on top of that, if the plane crashes, your. Your odds of survival are like 98%.

Yeah. So it's, you know, it's incredibly, incredibly safe. I mean, I can't iterate that enough. But compared to everything else out there as well, I mean, automobile. Automobile industry is incredibly dangerous. And yet people get in their car every day, multiple times a day, and they drive and they have no problem. And yet they're significantly safer in an aircraft than they will ever be in an automobile or even As a pedestrian.

It's this feeling of powerlessness. You know, we think about like, I'm driving a car, I have this feeling of power versus when I get on an airplane, like no power. Like, I can't even choose to pee if the steward is says no, you know, so it's like total relinquishing of power to this pilot.

So, yes, to not just one pilot, there's a crew. Should something go wrong with the pilot, there's another one. Like I said, redundancy is the name of the game in aircraft. The thing that I would compare it to then. If you're concerned about control, have you ever been on a roller coaster? I don't think you normally control the roller coaster, and yet a roller coaster will literally put you upside down and you are okay with it.

And they probably have way fewer regulations.

Way fewer regulations, way fewer regulations. You go upside down, and yet when an aircraft moves a tiny bit, you panic because you don't understand it, right? Because you look at a roller coaster and you're like, oh, I'm on a track. There's a connection there. I'm safe. Whether that's true or not, you understand it. You know what's happening. Which is why I like to educate people and I encourage people to do their own education and try and look up or, you know, heck, you can contact me and I'll answer any questions you have.

I'll put your personal email and then show notes.

Go for it, Go for it. But ask the questions, do the research if you want, if that's what's gonna make you feel better. Some people, I can list off all the statistics in the world and it's not gonna matter because they just. They can't control it or, you know, whatever it may be, if it's a control issue, that's a separate thing. Talk to Dr. Kane. She can help you with that. But if it's a logic and statistics, you know, that's something that I can help with. And that's something that if you're careful on the Internet, the Internet can help you with. News sources make a lot of money from telling you that things are super dramatic and catastrophic. Don't look at a news website, but if you look at, you know, the FAA prints all of their statistics every year. They. They track everything. So you can go to these and like other government websites and see all of those statistics and see how many people actually were injured last year on a commercial flight versus how many flights actually took place and how many people went on it. And so if it's just the knowledge thing, the roller coaster analogy that I give, you know, that's something that can be easily fixed by this information age.

I love this so much. So to recap, we've been talking about how safe is flying actually, and you've made an amazing case. My brain is so happy about the safety of flying. We went through what the scary noises are that the plane is making and we talked about bumpy air. Is it dangerous? And you gave this great analogy of this plane that's wings were like bent up at a 45 degree angle, which was actually advantageous for flying, but people did not like it. So they're like, okay, will keep people happy. And I also saw a video a long time ago of a plane flying through a hurricane. Like, I guess planes can fly through pretty terrible weather. They just choose not to because of the quadruple extra.

Yeah. So in general with storms and things, most normal storms are at like three 30,000ft, 30 to 40,000ft. Aircrafts generally fly at about 35,000ft, but they can fly. Well, they can fly way higher than that, but sometimes they choose to fly a little bit higher so that you're actually flying over the storm. So you'll never, you won't even notice it, except for on takeoff and landing. Lightning. It's similar to your house. You have a lightning rod if you're in an area that has lightning issues and basically you may never even notice it gets struck by lightning because the lightning is passed through a path that is safe and it releases that charge without ever affecting anything. So again, it's designed for that, it's designed to withstand it. And then if you're under that 30,000ft, if you're coming in for landing and such, the tarmacs are designed to drain and obviously to be able to still grip and everything while. While they're wet. So that's not really, you know, it's still probably safer than driving your car in the rain because the cars, you're on the street where there's like mud and oil and leaves and things. And you don't have that on an airport tarmac. And so in general, yeah, you're normally flying above those thunderstorms. I think hurricanes and tropical storms are higher and those I'm not confident about. But a normal rainy day, you wouldn't even notice it if you looked out the window.

Which is one of the questions I actually was thinking earlier about asking, and I hadn't mentioned yet, is is it safe to fly during a storm and to reiterate what I hear you saying is that they're easily able to navigate. That one is they have the predictability with all the aerospace, communication and education. And then so they can fly above it or they can fly below it, just kind of moving the plane around to make it more comfortable for the passengers. But like, really what I hear you saying is that it's safe to fly through a storm. They have that grounding rod in the plane so that there's no problem with the lightning as opposed to like if we're just like driving our car on oil, that's way less safe. So this is, like you said, another example about how flying is arguably safer than being a pedestrian or in your car. And planes can sustain quite a lot of weather and they don't seem to mind because they want to be in the air. Like you said, they'll go back to that natural, that state.

Yeah. And one thing, one thing that I will mention that you can edit out is I mentioned commercial aircraft wanting to be in the air. And one of the analogies that I give whether for better or for worse, is actually a helicopter. A helicopter does not want to be in the air. A helicopter, if that rotary blade stops, you drop out of the stairs sky like Looney Tunes. Like you mentioned, you do, you have what, you basically have a chance to auto rotate to get it spinning again. And if not, it drops out of the sky. That doesn't happen in an aircraft. If the aircraft loses its engine, if things go wrong, it doesn't drop out of the sky. It will never drop out of the sky. It may coast down and come down slowly, you know, or more quickly, depending upon how, how much loss of control you've had as a pilot. But it doesn't drop out of the sky. It. Because it tries to want it to fly. And so it will coast down, you know, slower or faster based on the situation, but it doesn't drop out of the sky like Looney Tunes.

That's a really good reminder. Maybe I'll title the podcast something about It Will Drop out of the Sky. And is there anything else that you've been asked or that you feel, feel like you wanted to mention that you've heard before that we didn't talk about?

I think the one thing that I would mention, some people tell me that they're afraid of how fast it's going and of course, you know, concerns for crashing. The thing that I think of is when you're in an aircraft, you're thousands of feet from other aircraft and you're Going faster. But when you're on the freeway going 90 miles an hour, you're 4ft from the car next to you at most, these aircraft. And mind you, you know, you're four feet from the person who did five hours of driving school when they were 15 and then got their license, as opposed to somebody who has been training literally, you know, probably close to their whole life. Years and years of training and constant checkups, constant medical checkups to make sure nothing's going to happen, nothing is going to impair them. Constant tests, constant, you know, certifications and many levels of certification based on many levels of training and experience. You know, you can't go into. You can go into the DMV with no experience and say, I can drive a car and pass the test and be fine. You can't do that. As a pilot, you have to have a certain number of hours of safe flying and a certain number of hours with the instructor and a certain number of hours with this type of aircraft and with this type of conditions and with, you know, all of these things. And so it's an. It's not Joe Schmo walking off the street and flying an airplane. And so there's a lot more trust, in my opinion, of driving on a freeway, you know, like I said, three feet from a car right next to you going the same speed versus thousands of feet or thousands of miles away from another aircraft.

That's really an amazing analogy, actually, is the speed relative to the surrounding airspace versus the speed of a car and the space between you and your next car, as well as the level experience. And so pilots get tons and tons of training. And then I imagine that by the time they become a major commercial pilot as opposed to a small plane, private pilot, that it's just leaps and bounds of experience.

And you have to have a certain amount of training with that specific aircraft under specific conditions, weather conditions, flight conditions, you know, know, instrument conditions, you know, and you have to train for. If something goes wrong, they'll take you up in an aircraft and turn off your engine and say, okay, now what? Or put you in a weird attitude of, you know, you're facing the down, you're facing down and you're turning and whatever, and okay, you need to recover. So it's not. And that's not something you practice as a driver. They don't ever take you to the DMV and say, okay, we're going to run you into this wall and see what happens, see how you handle it. But as a pilot, they do. We're Taking away all of your instruments. This instrument has now failed. We've decided we're turning it off. You need to be able to fly without it. You need to be able to recover this without it. And so you practice all of these things, and so you have that experience. So again, if something goes wrong, it's not the first time you're going through it. You've been trained in it and you've experienced it. Not just written, read about it in a textbook, but you've actually physically done it.

And not just virtual. Like they actually will put someone in a plane and kill the engines and be like, okay, Fred, what are you gonna do?

Yeah, I. When I did my flight training, that was. It was actually one of my favorite parts was when they call it. What did they call it? Something about, like, odd attitude training or something where they take the aircraft, you close your eyes and you let go of the, you know, the yoke, and basically they put the aircraft into some weird attitude. And you have to just, like, open your eyes and figure out how to recover. And you don't know how you got there. You don't know what situation you're in. You don't know if you're pointing at the ground or if you're pointing at the sky. And you have to be able to recover. And so it was one of my favorite parts personally. But, you know, there are plenty of people that would hate that.

But, yes, Dr. Kate, I'm raising my hand.

But my. And that was just to get a. That was just like initial, initial first classes towards a private pilot's license. That's not remotely, you know, commercial aircraft. Putting other people's lives in your hands. That's the very, very basics, is to go through that training and experience it so that you know what to do and you have experience with it should something happen.

Oh, my gosh, I had no idea. So, as we finish up here, you described to me just the most wonderful, beautiful bliss of flying. And I was hoping you could share with our listeners. Like, what about flying makes you so happy? Like, it gives you all of the happies. Like, when I hold a puppy, I get all the happies. And when you fly, this is like. You were so happy telling me about it.

Yeah, I am. And that was. Actually, ever since I was little, I've been this. I always loved flying, even before I knew I was going to be an aerospace engineer. But there is always a moment every time I fly, still to this day, every time I fly, of being on the tarmac and, you know, you're just about to take off and you're driving along, and there's this moment of where the aircraft just has just lifted off the ground and you're weightless. And every single time I have this, you know, emotional experience, this epiphany experience of, like, all of my troubles and all of my fears and pain and everything being left behind me, you know, you're going to a new place, whether it's for a vacation or to see family, and whatever was happening is staying down on the ground. You left it behind. It didn't make. It didn't make the cut. It not coming with you. You're leaving it behind. And there's just that moment of weightlessness for me. I just. I close my eyes and I just. I feel. I feel weightless because I am. But I feel weightless in all of my troubles and worries and everything as well. Just. Even if it's just for that moment, that is. That is pure bliss for me. And I. So I would encourage. I told Dr. Kane, Next time you fly, think about that. Think about me when you go to take off and notice that one moment of weightlessness where you just lift off and, you know, the noise from the. The tires and things goes away and it's just you floating for a moment.

And you told me that there's the scent of clouds and. Yeah, when I was heard that before.

When I was doing my private pilot training, one of the things that I remember most was one of the first times we got up, we took off. We get up into the clouds, or we're going through the clouds. And in the small aircraft, there's no air conditioning, but you have windows that are open to let the air in to cool you off because it's very warm in there. And so the clouds were basically coming through the little windows, and I could smell the clouds. And it had been after it rained as well, so it smelled. It's like the difference between having a candle that says it smells like rain and then actually walking outside into the rain. It's so much more vibrant and so much more clean is the best term I can use for it. But if you love the smell of rain, I highly recommend going in an aircraft where you can smell the clouds.

Oh, what a beautiful way to end this amazing conversation is the smell of the clouds, that feeling of weightlessness, and allowing this experience to transform from feeling afraid to feeling fearless. And I'm so grateful for your wisdom, for your time. And I'm gonna. I don't know about everybody else listening, but I'M gonna have to listen to this podcast again and again and again because I feel like the best way to overcome the fear of flying, like you're saying, aj, is to really try to understand what's actually happening, because then you have that foundation from which we can construct our emotional reality. And so thank you so much for your time. Thank you so much for sharing this exciting and amazing new opportunity to perceive flying in a way that's not fearful.

Yeah, I mean, I'm happy to do it. Like I said, I want people to not just not be afraid of flying, but I want people to love it the way that I do. And it's not just me. There are plenty of people out there that feel that way and get excited about flying, and I want people to feel that. And I think, you know, with Dr. Kane's help, understanding what part of it are you afraid of? Is it the control? Is it the power? Is it the not knowing? You know, there's. There's a lot of figuring out what it is, and then you can hopefully listen to this podcast and help fix some of those things.

Yeah. And if you're struggling with the underlying anxiety and if the nervous system is frazzled, there's a lot of things that we have on our Facebook and my website and YouTube and the podcast that will give you tons of tips to help get calm on command, to help break free from anxiety. A great place to start is our Facebook group. And sometimes we'll be lucky and maybe we'll see AJ in there. But if you have a question or if you hear this podcast and you want to know more, you could always post a comment in there and then I can ask her and get back to you. And so you can find that Facebook group by looking up Dr. Nicole Cain. And then we have anxiety freedom one week challenge. It's totally free, so go and check that out. Take advantage of it. And thank you so much, aj. You're amazing.

Yeah, I'm happy to help. Thank you.

The recording you just listened to consists of the personal opinions of Dr. Nicole Nicole Cain, a naturopathic doctor with a Master's in Clinical psychology. While these opinions are based upon literature, her counseling education, medical training, and clinical experience, this content should not be viewed as the definitive opinion on these subjects. Listening to this podcast is not a substitute for any sort of medical, psychological, or other form of treatment. If you are in a Crisis, please call 911-OR call the National Suicide Prevention in line at 1-800-273-8255. If you're in need of counseling, don't hesitate to make an appointment with a counselor in your area. Dr. Nicole Cain is so passionate about people getting their life back. If this resonates with you and you think this podcast would help someone you love, please share it with them. Stay in the conversation with Dr. Nicole Cain about writing the next chapter of your life so that it plays out just the way you want it. Explore your options for working with her at www. Dr. Nicolecane.com that's Dr. D R Nicole N I C O l e Cain C-A-I n.com when you're there, be sure to take advantage of the free Anxiety Freedom One week challenge. We look forward to seeing you on the next episode of the get your life Back podcast. Here's to your next challenge chapter.

Sam.