One of the reasons people fear flying is because they just cannot understand how an airplane can stay up in the sky safely all that time.

If your fear is that airplane might suddenly fall from the sky you have to read this article by Capt Tom Bunn. I guarantee just reading this will make you feel a whole lot safer while flying.

The Jello Exercise

At five miles-per-hour, you walk through air effortlessly. But as speed through air increases, air becomes radically different. On a bike, people who are not bike-racers reach their speed barrier at about twenty-five miles-per-hour. Going through air at five miles per-hour is effortless. Going through air at twenty-five miles per-hour requires maximum effort.

At fifty miles-per-hour in a car, if you put your hand out the window and push forward, it takes the same effort as putting your hand underwater in a swimming pool and pushing forward. This means fifty mile-per-hour air is as thick as water in a pool to the vehicle penetrating it.

At eighty miles per hour, air becomes as thick as oil or molasses. Take off speed for an airliner is between one hundred-twenty and two hundred miles per hour. At that speed – as far as the plane is concerned – air is like jello.

Imagine a plane to jello in front of you. A cube of pineapple is suspended in the jello. Pick up the plane and shake the jello. No matter how hard you shake it, you can’t make the pineapple come loose from the jello. Replace the pineapple with a toy airplane. Again, shake the jello. As with the pineapple, there is nothing you can do to make the airplane plunge. The jello holding the toy airplane sits on a plate. The jello like air holding the real plane sits on the earth. Turbulence cannot break the hold of the jello. In jello-like air, there is no place to fall.

Once a plane reaches “jello-speed”, it has to go where it is pointed. Imagine you poke a shish kabob skewer into the jello behind the your airplane. Put the tips against the rear of the engines. When you apply force, you can make the toy plane cut forward through the jello. This is what happens in flight. Engines make the plane cut forward through the jello-like air. The plane can only go where it is pointed.

Next time you fly, as the plane accelerates down the runway, imagine the air getting thicker and thicker until it is like jello. Then, as the plane’s nose rises, imagine the plane being shoved forward through jello-like air. Throughout the flight, picture your plane held solidly in jello that is resting on the earth.

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Yours truly,

Tom

Capt.Tom Bunn LCSW

Licensed therapist and airline captain Tom Bunn LCSW has specialized in the treatment of fear of flying since 1980. He founded SOAR to develop methods to deal with moderate and severe cases of flight phobia.

SOAR was established in 1982 because no programs existed that could
help people with moderate to severe difficulties. Even today, no other
program offers help that is effective except for mild difficulties. No
matter how difficult flying is for you, SOAR can help visit :

Click Here for SOAR official site