Welcome to Virgin Atlantics Flying Without Fear Courses

How do we do it?

From the moment you arrive, you are greeted in the warm and friendly manner you have come to expect from Virgin Atlantic staff.  We will sign you in and make sure that you have coffee and refreshments, while you wait for your course to start.  This is a great chance to talk to other people with a fear of flying, just like you.  Also, we have at least a 1:5 staff ratio so there will be plenty of us to talk to and support you.

Start

We start promptly with an introduction from the Course Directors and Founders.  Paul and Richard attend every course to make sure everything goes to plan for your day.  We then ask you to tell us the things that you’d like to know, in your tables of ten people.  Your table team leader will write down all of your questions ready to be collected in.  These questions are then pooled together and given to your speakers for the rest of the day which is how we know what to cover during the course.  This makes every course unique as people have different reasons for their fears.

The Pilots

Our current Virgin Atlantic Captains take the lion’s share of the first half of the course.  They are extremely knowledgeable, empathetic and highly trained.  This is your chance to hear the real facts from real experts.  This session is to give you knowledge.  With knowledge you gain understanding and therefore, feel that you have control.  When you understand something it no longer has control over you.

Some of the topics covered during the captain’s talk:

• How an aircraft flies
• How such a heavy thing stays up there!
• Why Turbulence is totally safe
• What the pilots are trained in
• What the pilots would do if there was an engine failure
• What all the noises are on board
• Stages of the flight with full explanation of noises and movement
• What are the airlines doing about Terrorism
• Why nothing is ever left to chance

Our course is not run in a ‘chalk and talk’ style manner.  It’s open, friendly and you’ll find it’s peppered with questions from you, which the Captains willingly answer.

Senior Safety Trainers

Our Senior Safety trainers run a short session on what the Cabin Crew are trained in. Amongst other things, they will talk about why, despite aircraft being so safe, there is always a safety briefing, how highly trained they are for anything medical, and what can be done to make you feel more comfortable onboard. 

Psychology session

The second main session of the day is taken by one of our highly reputed therapist, Gill Harvey-Bush.  She will take you through some practical strategies to help you with your fear of flying phobia, claustrophobia and any other flying related fears that you may have.  Gill uses psychological techniques such as Neuro-Linguistic Programming. NLP has been described as owning a user manual for the brain and how to systematically programme the mind for results. This session gets absolutely rave reviews from people just like you and words really do not do it justice. 

The Flight

Straight from the psychology session, we head out to take our short flight.  This part of the day gives you a chance to feel very differently about the flying experience.  You will be amazed at how different you are going to feel.  We will be with you all of the day including the flight.  With plenty of staff around, support is never far away if you need it.  During the flight, one of the Captains will give you a full commentary of what is happening at every stage of the flight.  Every noise and every movement will be fully explained.  Remember with knowledge, you gain understanding and therefore feel that you have control.  In fact, you will know so much about aircraft noises and movement that you will be able help other nervous passengers in the future or indeed bore everyone you know!

This is also the part of the course where you can bring a friend or companion with you for support.  This is the ‘flight only’ option costing £100 + VAT which you can book direct through the office on 01423-714900. 

We have a 98% success rate with our courses.  This is measured in two ways.  One is the number of people that board the aircraft.  The second measure is that we use a proven training method and randomly monitor how people feel before the course about flying and then again at the end. 

Course End

After your flight, we return to the conference room for our closing session and to see if there are any further questions that you would like answered.  We give out certificates signed by Richard Branson and your table team leader.  We also give you a free CD and booklet that previous clients have been known to take on all future flights with them.  We don’t leave until you are happy and have any further questions answered.

Refreshments

We always serve a hot meal and frequent refreshment breaks because we know it is important that your needs are catered for whilst in our care. This goes a long way to helping you feel relaxed and secure enough to get the full benefit of our expert team.

Other support:

1. Before you take your flight, phone Special Assistance to let Virgin know that you are flying.  Most airlines offer a similar service too.
2. We have a message board that we encourage you to fill in and with your questions or feedback.  www.flyingwithoutfear.co.uk then click on ‘Message Board’
3. We have a quality content, free newsletter which you can subscribe to from our website.  We answer a new question every posting which gets directed straight to your inbox.

IN SUMMARY, WE ARE TRULY UNRIVALLED BECAUSE WE:-

• give FREE insurance, FREE booklet and FREE CD (together worth £30), 2000 FREE Virgin Air miles, NO admin fees, NO credit card fees, so we’re actually substantially cheaper
• only use CURRENT Virgin Atlantic Captains (Some courses use a retired Captain, however, due to the nature of changes in this industry, we feel that it’s vital to have people who currently work the skies on a daily basis to help you overcome your fear of flying.  The aviation world has changed beyond recognition, since some ex-pilots have flown)
• offer you a UNIQUE training method, which includes sitting in small groups of 8 – 10 people with a DEDICATED TEAM LEADER / cabin crew trainer. This way you will feel fully supported and your individual needs addressed. We find that our small groups bond and support each other throughout the day to help you overcome your fear of flying (We could line you up theatre style by yourselves like other courses, however, even though it would be cheaper, we know that isn’t comfortable and so we don’t do it.)
• only use large commercial jet aircraft, such as those you’d travel by to go on holiday. (Unlike others, we have never used propeller driven aircraft as we know that those who attend our courses only want us to use jet engined, commercial aircraft.  By the way, propeller aircraft are safe as well, however, our customers prefer to gain their confidence in jet aircraft.)
• are the only course who can show you Independent feedback direct from past course attendees own e-mail addresses on our ‘Message Board’  (Anyone can post a testimonial on a website, but we feel that it’s important to prove where it’s come from.)
• serve a hot meal (We could also just serve you a sandwich, but it’s not the Virgin way!  We go for maximum support and maximum co