I was a travel writer with a fear of flying — here's how I overcame it

As a travel writer, a fear of flying is far from ideal. Raw, sweaty fear is wrapped in distraction and bizarre ritual. I have said the Lord’s prayer every time the plane hoicks itself off the tarmac into the sky since the age of 10, despite a religious absence at Sunday service.

And my heart thumps in my mouth when the jet’s belly hits the rising air, and the stewards and hostesses scurry back to their seats.

Yes, I’ve been fed the facts — that you’re more likely to meet a bleak end on the M25 than spinning from 4000 feet in a metal tin can, but it does little to relieve the fear. Nor does observing the snoozing or film-watching, snack-scoffing coterie.

See also: Best calming items if you have a fear of flying

It’s like they’re blissfully unaware of our doom, or were wired differently to me. I study them, fascinated by their enviable insouciance to turbulence, longing to be like them and resenting my clammy-handed twitchiness. Why, why does the animal part of my brain eclipse all rational, civilised thought?

I once clawed the muscular thigh of an Italian architect on a flight to Munich. The plane didn’t make it to Munich. The pilot took the executive decision to land in Stuttgart with a storm that ambushed us, battering the jet.

The plane bounced aggressively, people screamed, then on one particularly spicy drop, my nails dug deep into the architect’s chinos like the claws of a petrified cat. He held my sweaty hand.

It was that sort of flight. No judgement, just people rediscovering their primal instincts and a few seasoned flyers leafing through Die Welt while rolling their eyes at the inconvenience.

And I’ll never forget the flight back from Thailand, which I took on my tod as a teenager (I ran out of money), and the plane fell through an air pocket for what felt like an eternity until it thudded onto the good stuff. I shook like a leaf until we landed.

We’re repeatedly told that our adult insecurities and fears are firmly anchored in our childhood, and while age two feels too young for our ‘grown-up’ definition of clear memory, my recollection of this incident was undoubtedly cast and consolidated from years of my parents retelling the story, and perhaps it was the foundation for my fear of flying.

It went like this: Mum tucked a two-year old me under her woolly jumper as my parents anxiously clocked the sparks flying out of the plane’s engine. We’d taken off from Detroit, bound for Kingston.

The plane had ingested a shard of ice on take off which destroyed the turbines, leading to a fire when activated. There was no hysterics, “you could have heard a pin drop.” It was a silent, all-consuming fear from the entire plane as it coughed and spluttered in the sky, straight after take-off.

My Mother looked to the air hostesses for any signals, only to spot them holding hands. My father studied the flames now rushing from the engine and confirming that “this is going to be interesting”’ The story ends well: the heroic pilot circled Detroit airport, dumping fuel and landed under the gaze of all the airport fire tenders.

Fast forward some 32 years and we’re in the grip of turbulence again, me eight months pregnant with a toddler in tow. Proverbial self-flagellation layers onto the fear as I struggle to hold my nerve.

There’s a two year old studying my every move now, how I react, soaking it all up into her fragile, sponge-like brain, and a baby floating inside me, sensing every pang of terror, receiving it all from her watery world as little electric pulses that there’s danger beyond its walls. “Get a grip,” I tell myself.

I knew this needed urgently addressing but had dismissed fear of flying courses for years (only I knew the depths of my own cynicism). My great grandfather used to fly a plane, giving him the freedom to propel himself above the border on a whim.

So it occurred to me that I could do the same. The notion of overcoming a fear of flying by leaning into it felt more suited to my personality. So I found myself at Biggin Hill.

It’s a place that had always felt fictional to me — how the other half fly. The private jet hotspot lies within spitting distance of Croydon, brushing Gatwick’s airspace, and it’s where EFG Flying School operates from, teaching aspiring pilots in Piper Warriors (including me, though a more reluctant pilot with an introductory, instructor-led flying lesson).

There’s Top Gun energy to it, with students checking their engines, electrics, tyres, lights, and reporting into Chief Flight Instructor, Carmen Gardien, whose light banter and joshing belies a deep professionalism.

The office door shuts and I’m gently asked what it is that scares me about flying – a Pandora’s box I feel reluctant to open having psyched myself up on the train.

“Turbulence,” I answer.

Then there’s a speedy physics lesson. “You will feel the wind and a few little up and down drafts as we go over the Seven Oaks hills,” explains Carmen. “While weather is the main influencer of turbulence (a big storm or cumulus clouds being obvious culprits), but even on a nice warm summer’s day you can experience the heat pushing the aircraft up, particularly with a change in terrain. It is no different than driving on an uneven road for us.”

I feel like an extra in a period drama while clambering into the tiny Piper Warrior via its wing. The piercing sunshine illuminates a vintage dashboard. “She was made in the Eighties,” says Carmen. “So every time she’s MOT’d, they actually take this all apart and rebuild it.”

The intense, leathery smell sends me straight back to school runs in our old family Volvo. There’s the same clunky switches and amber lights, all of which have been meticulously checked prior to my arrival. Students at EFG build up to completing these checks independently, all 75 of them, including cockpit electrics, fuselage, wing surfaces, tailplane with the rudder, pedals, tires, breaks, fuel, oil. It’s a little overwhelming for a first timer so I was grateful for the quick run-through.

I’ve flown in a helicopter from Penzance to Tresco and from Nice to Monaco, but never a plane. It’s completely different, less simulator, more visceral.

Particularly in an old plane where you feel the engine rumble, the air lifts its wings and the view from the cockpit is somehow more focused and far more thrilling. Despite having absolutely no training under my boilersuit belt, I feel more in control than I ever would in the back of a large aircraft, calmer even.

A sinister looking private jet queue jumps as Carmen “talks to the tower” (air traffic control) who reads us the pressure (which we add into the altimeter), and gives us the go ahead to take off, after the Spitfire that’s grumbling out of the heritage hanger, of course.

Carmen runs through the brace position and checks continue — battery, engine temperature. We stand poised on the runway and I’m instructed to push the throttle up — the plane picks up 120 miles per hour in a remarkably short space of time and the out-of-body experience begins in earnest as we clamber up some 2,000 feet.

I focus on breathing out more than breathing in, but again, with the pilot beside me and the controls at my fingertips, I bizarrely feel calmer. What’s more, with each bump or jolt, Carmen explains where the drafts are coming from or I can see that it’s a direct impact of her turning or lifting up again.

The plane so closely resembles an old car from the inside, it all feels a little miraculous, hilarious even, like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang honking towards the clouds — surely this tin thing can’t actually fly?

Kent rolls out below us like a green patchwork quilt, Churchill’s Garden of England. It’s really quite pretty from above. We glide over enormous piles with the expected green and blue blotches beyond the gardens, the odd clandestine government building, and I can see the city’s skyscrapers surging ahead like a cheap office print.

It’s as if the whole of South East England has been shrunk in the wash, and I can marvel at it all in one sweep. ‘Easy’ Carmen reminds me that we can’t go too high as we’d be getting a speedy message from Gatwick to stick to our airspace.

I’m taught how to gently turn the plane using the controls while tracing the M25. “It’s really receptive,” emphasises Carmen as I jerk the control column and the ailerons on the wings change the plane’s direction.

“That’s brave. So, that’s more than I’d usually do as it's incredibly responsive, and our students tend to ease in on their first lesson,” which is instructor speak for: “I explained that it only takes a little nudge, are you trying to kill us both?”

I was in driving mode not pilot mode and momentarily forgot, tugging on the “steering wheel”.

“Don’t worry, I’ve corrected all sorts of things, that’s what instructors are here for, some of the landings I’ve had to rescue…” I decide that all airline pilots should be instructors, or instructors of instructors.

In the office, Carmen had described the profound feeling of peace that washes over you “up there.” I can see how it would be addictive — a privilege exclusive to winged creatures, where everything spins below you like a model town and you’re blissfully separated from it, free of it all.

While I’m sure the consistent hum of the plane helped, like white noise soothing a baby, her words really stuck with me as a sweet lethargy intercepted my plans to flip any fear into excitement.

Carmen seems to prefer my second attempt at turning, looping us back towards Biggin Hill — stomach flipping stuff before we straighten out (the plane does this for you as you’ve released the controls having gently edged it in the desired direction). I’m flying the plane now, with Carmen hovering over the controls if needed.

Her light-hearted remarks sound underwater as I laser the sky ahead, wide eyed, and hold the controls like someone driving home in the dark without their glasses. While we both have our headsets on for radio communications, we need to keep a constant eye out for other aircraft, which can quickly spin into view. The multi-tasking is extraordinary, and it makes you question whether this vocation is better suited to women.

I’m asked to pull the throttle lever down, which goes against all instinct, tipping you forward. Luckily, Carmen takes back full control as the runway approaches. This part is particularly cool, seeing the runway lit up from the cockpit, as the private pilots would see it landing politicians, shady tech tycoons and nepo babies on Biggin’s tarmac. The landing is textbook, velvety — for a plane whose every rasp and cough vibrates through my body, I barely feel its wheels touch the ground.

Carmen is beaming. I’m amazed that she doesn’t tire of the gig, but she’s one of those rare individuals who's managed to align their passion with their everyday. “How do you feel?” I feel incredibly emotional. Maybe it’s the altitude, or the moon cycle, or my lack of sleep with two young children. But this alchemic mix of fear, thrill, fatigue, fascination makes everything stop, numbing my hyperactive brain into a peculiar state of peace. Like a toddler computing the excessive attention and loud singing on their birthday, I could burst into tears at any moment.

I never expected to encounter any form of joy in a plane, particularly having mentally chewed over long-haul flights for weeks before the big event.

But this experience makes me realise that most real joy in my life can be found by not looking at screens — scanning the clouds for planes, connecting with the controls through movement, stretching my eyes across England’s pastures green from above. Anything that stirs your inner child, often quite basic stuff.

I still tense my legs during the violent bumps, and our recent deluge of devastating aviation stories has done little to improve my confidence in the entire thing. But my lesson with EFG gave me a much deeper understanding of the process and a ‘structure’ that I can apply to those sweaty moments. I only wish Carmen was flying the thing.

Book a flying lesson or course with EFG Flying School and Falcon Flight Training Academy

For nearly 50 years The Falcon Flying Group has been delivering comprehensive, cost-effective training to hundreds of students from around the world. With dedicated flight training centres — EFG Flying School and Falcon Flight Training Academy are able to offer extensive training for both private and commercial pilots. At London Biggin Hill Airport, just 40mins from London Victoria, there is a range of courses from introductory flight experiences up to commercial licenses.

We have a range of experienced staff including flight examiners, current airline and business jet pilots, and an operations team available 7 days a week. This means you can be guaranteed safety and quality from the training.

Enquire at ops@flyefg.co.uk or call 01959 540054