Virtual Jet Centre

2 days ago

A Fear of Flying Message from our very own Captain Andy Wilkins -

Having seen over 300 cases since the Virtual Jet Centre commenced operation in 2014, I thought it was time to put some of my findings on paper.
The success of the course has always been about my passion to treat the person as an individual, not a number in a room surrounded by 30 plus other nervous people afraid of flying.
This fact reminded me of the article that the Sunday Times reporter Chris Hart, a theatre critic, did on both our course and the BA course, making an unbiased comparison on paper. I always remember his comment to me during our course "that he felt like an individual not a number" and over the past four years I've come to realise how important that is when trying to help a person tackle this very real fear. Having attended courses provided by other major airlines they found it did nothing to alleviate their fear, or worse still, came away with a more pronounced fear.
An adult with fears or phobias can be very influenced by their surroundings. Many being learned from a very early age either by learned behaviour or experience. Hence I'm not surprised when I have people come to me asking for help, having experienced more fear from the mass courses held by major airlines. The structure of many of these courses start the day with a room full of people all with the same fear and all feeding off each other's horror stories! Then, following a "cover all" briefing on how safe aircraft are, the day finishes with an actual flight.
Now I accept that a flight is a very good idea when after all that's the desired effect with all people trying to tackle this fear. However, just imagine if you are the brave person out of the many who does manage to get on the aircraft, having left some of your fellow course members behind and then when eventually the aircraft does push back, it ends up having to go back on stand to let a passenger off who decides they cannot cope with the flight after all. Not a good day out!!!
So, how is our course different? In one word "Individual". Why is this important? Well it's because we're all different, with individual reasons why we have a specific fear or even sometimes many fears. The learning process is different as well. 'Knowledge is power' is the catch phrase we use about the course and the way you learn is totally different, less lecturing, more about experience, hence we use our training simulator to experience what it is like to actually fly an aircraft. The real strength of the course is about you, not just a number, but who you really are, what makes you as a person interesting, your likes/dislikes, what makes you excited or fearful.
After the Course you would then have an option whereby we can organise to fly with our local airline travelling with myself and being pre-boarded and meeting the crew.
One of the most important things in life is to live it to the full. Enjoying it means the ability to see the amazing things the world has to offer but most importantly is the ability to see friends wherever they are in the world. Flying allows us freedom. Enjoy it. ... See MoreSee Less