In-Flight App Therapy

Flying anxiety, or aerophobia, affects many travelers, and is especially difficult to combat as those suffering are confined to a plane, far away from a trusting voice or familiar space. Fortunately, many app developers have taken up the cause, and you can now travel with a virtual anti-anxiety coach right in your pocket.

Created by the National Center for Telehealth and Technology, Breathe2Relax is a free stress-management app offering diaphragmatic breathing exercises that reign in your body’s fight-or-flight response. Users can even adjust the breath cycle depending on their current stress levels.

Another free anti-anxiety app is SOAR, which was developed as an additional resource to the SOAR program, a fear of flying course created by Captain Tom Bunn. The SOAR app offers a number of helpful tools, including G-Force, which monitors turbulence levels in real time to reassure users of their safety. SOAR also provides users with relevant information concerning how planes are maintained and kept safe.

If you’re willing to spend $3.99 on an app, VALK will live up to its cost. Designed by employees from Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, KLM Airlines, MartinAir, ArkeFly and Transavia.com, VALK dubs itself an in-flight therapist and provides flight safety statistics, real time turbulence data and weather forecasts to dispel any unwarranted fears. If anxiety levels continue to rise, users can push VALK’s panic button, which delivers auditory and written support for immediate stress reduction.

Those who aren’t opposed to a little hypnotherapy might want to check out Darren Marks’ Freedom from Fears and Phobias app. This $2.99 app offers visual and auditory hypnosis programs that promise rapid relaxation to aerophobics, as well as cynophobics (fear of dogs) and claustrophobics (fear of tight spaces). So if you find yourself squeezed between two sumo wrestlers while Kujo plays on the in-flight entertainment screen, this app has you covered.