I wonder if this thread has misinterpreted the context of ‘scared of flying’ as fear? An alternative is ‘fearfulness’ involving awareness, projection, and preparation, both of personal capability and situation risks.
“Never forget to be afraid” James Reason.
Having known the author as ‘boss’ and friend, I hope he will forgive the following. Outward personality could be interpreted as being ‘mad’, as in mad scientist, or very intelligent and capable. I favoured the latter, suspecting that to be scared of flying was much more to do with fearfulness and being well prepared, particularly in those flying posts identified.
Whilst there was an apparent willingness to engage with risk, - a necessary requirement for learning, gaining experience, and progress, this was done with risk awareness and judgement.
When flying, risks have to be identified and understood, and judged to minimise or avoid the extremes.
This alone is a demanding task, which with continuous engagement can be stressful.
Pilots need to be ‘fearful’ in order to acquire the skill of awareness and judging risk. The process has to be balanced between being overly cautious - stressed out, and engaging in unwarranted or unnecessary risk.
High performance flying is very demanding and over time can induce ‘risk fatigue’, at such times we all need time out.
One concern in modern aviation, particularly in civil flying, is that new pilots do not have opportunity to engage with higher levels of risk, to gain experience and practice the judgement required in demanding situations. As a result of these lower levels there is opportunity for higher stress levels (fear).
Training and the level of experience has to be sufficient for the envisaged task - management’s responsibility; similarly individuals have to prepare themselves - aspects of airmanship. A critical aspect is not to be ‘overly fearful’ of the unknown, but still never forgetting to be afraid. Make the unknown known.
”Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant - there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing - and keeping the unknown always beyond you.
You and I don’t know whether our vision is clear in relation to our time or not - No matter what failure or success we may have - we will not know - But we can keep our integrity - according to our own sense of balance with the world and that creates our form”. Georgia O’Keeffe.