Flight Experience Singapore offers the opportunity to climb into a simulator and pilot an aircraft. (JG Photo/Katrin Figge)
For many years now, my older sister, Natalia, has suffered from a fear of flying, or aviophobia, to use the technical term. It started 15 years ago after a tumultuous landing during a snow storm in Berlin and has worsened in recent years after she experienced heavy turbulence on a short flight from Cologne to Frankfurt.
She has some superstition-based rituals she conducts every time she boards a plane — and she does so often, because her work for a Singapore-based foundation requires her to travel a lot. But it doesn’t really help to erase the fear.
“I always try to get a seat close to the wing because I think, in case of turbulence, it feels less bumpy there,” Natalia said. “During takeoff and landing I am waiting for certain sounds, like the folding up of the wheels, so I know everything is in its right place. If the sounds aren’t there, that makes me nervous.”
A friend of hers, a pilot for German airline Lufthansa, once invited her to sit in the cockpit during one of his flights, and afterward, she said she felt better about flying for a while.
“He explained to me how everything worked, and afterward, I was more confident,” she said. “But that was a long time ago, and suddenly the fear of flying came back.”
Her friend suggested that she take a lesson in a flight simulator, as that might help her overcome her fears. Luckily for her, she lives in Singapore, where such a flight simulator opened two years ago.
Joanna Caston and her husband, Michael, established Flight Experience Singapore in February 2008. The Castons have more than 50 years of combined experience in aviation: Michael was a captain with British Airways and Singapore Airlines for more than 35 years while Joanna worked as a flight attendant.
“After Michael retired, he was visiting family in Sydney and saw the Flight Experience there being set up,” Joanna said. “He was really keen to bring this amazing and unique concept to Singapore and to share his passion for flying with both locals and visitors.”
Since its establishment, Flight Experience Singapore has attracted many visitors who come for a variety of different reasons.
“We have customers from all over the world and from all walks of life,” Joanna said. “Some have long held a dream to be a pilot but were unable to because of their circumstances, others are fascinated by what goes on behind the flight deck door, others want to prepare for job interviews with the airlines, others spend hours playing flight sim games and want to test their skills on the real thing.”
Joanna, who has flown the simulator quite a few times, said the experience in a flight simulator can be quite addictive.
“We have our regular guests, including some who travel each month just to come to Flight Experience, as well as people who just want to try it once,” she said. “We even have customers who have traveled down from as far as Japan or added Singapore to their travel itinerary just to have this amazing opportunity.”
And then there are those like my sister, who will try anything to feel relaxed on an airplane. Joanna agrees that a flight lesson in a simulator can help people conquer aviophobia.
“Since access to the flight deck has been restricted [since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks], our nervous passengers are even more anxious as they now have no idea what goes on during takeoff, flight and landing,” she said. “Flight Experience gives them the opportunity to hear from a real pilot about the effects of turbulence, how aircraft fly and what the noises, bumps and clicks mean.”
More than just hearing explanations, these would-be pilots are able to take action.
“We allow them to take control of the simulator and find out how much training pilots go through before being allowed to fly commercial aircraft,” Joanna said. “We also pass on relaxation techniques and give them many useful tools to lessen the stress of flying, from tips about packing cabin baggage to how to organize yourself on board. We have already run several successful courses and the feedback has been amazing.”
So Natalia decided to take up the challenge and signed up for a 60-minute, 255 Singapore dollar ($180) flight lesson. She was allowed to bring two guests, and since I happened to be visiting that weekend, she invited me to come along. Her boyfriend refused, saying: “What if you crash this thing? No thanks.”
On a sunny Tuesday morning, we arrived at Flight Experience Singapore and were greeted by staff members who asked us to sit down and watch a video as preparation. The video, meant as an introductory briefing, was full of technical terms that left us somewhat intimidated, and I promptly forgot most of them before the video was over. Honestly, I was a bit relieved that all I had to do was sit in the jump seat and observe.
After watching the video, we stepped into the cockpit — an exact replica of the widely used Boeing 737. Natalia seemed to be cool on the outside, but I could tell that she was pretty nervous.
Our flight instructor for the day was a pilot named Cooper who has worked part-time at Flight Experience Singapore for one and a half years.
“He looks young,” Natalia whispered to me. “Do you think he knows what he’s doing?”
As it turned out, her worries were unfounded, as Cooper did a good job, not only in explaining the steps ahead but also in reassuring her and keeping her calm.
“All our pilots are real pilots and all the crew are highly experienced in calming nerves,” Joanna confirmed.
The profusion of buttons, switches and instruments were a bit overwhelming, but as it turned out, Natalia only needed to learn the basics to be able to manage the takeoff and landing.
After Cooper explained to her what to do, he smiled at her and said, “Ready? Now choose the airport you want to go to, and then we can start with the first round.” The company has footage of more than 20,000 airports from which customers can choose to take off or land, and which are projected onto the windshield of the cockpit.
Natalia decided she wanted to fly to Frankfurt first — maybe because the city represented something familiar in this strange setting. When Cooper told her “whenever you’re ready,” she gazed over her shoulder and looked at me a bit desperately.
The cockpit shuddered as the “engines” roared to life, we taxied down the virtual runway and, pulling back on the control stick, Natalia lifted us gently into the sky. In the end, it was not as scary as she thought it would be, and she handled the takeoff without any difficulty.
“You have no idea how sweaty my hands were during the first takeoff,” Natalia admitted afterward, laughing.
There was not much time, however, to enjoy the view from the air because unlike real life, we were approaching Frankfurt airport after only 10 minutes.
Landing was much more difficult than taking off, Natalia said. But with instructions from Cooper she managed to land us safely on the runway.
From Frankfurt, we flew to Jakarta, first to Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, and afterward to the old Halim Airport.
“This one is a bit tricky,” Cooper said. “Halim is the airport where British Airways made an emergency landing after they had flown through volcanic ash and lost their four engines.”
He laughed when he saw the look of shock on Natalia’s face.
Joanna said that even though the simulator could recreate dangerous flying conditions, they had never had a client quit during a simulation.
“We can recreate turbulence. We can even make it snow in Singapore,” she said. “[But] no one is forced to do anything. We have actually set the sims we use for the public to ‘bounce back’ if it does crash.”
Since Natalia had only signed up for the basic lesson, she didn’t have to go through turbulence or bad weather, but she asked Cooper what to do in such situations.
“The first thing you would do is slow down,” he said. “It’s like when you’re driving in the car on a street with many potholes, you slow down, you wouldn’t go full speed.”
He also reminded us of something we’d heard numerous times before: that flying is actually the safest way to travel, and that statistically there are many more car accidents than plane crashes.
“I think it’s this feeling of not being in control,” Natalia said, trying to explain her fright. “If something should happen when you’re in the plane, you don’t have the power to do anything about it.”
Several takeoffs and landings later, the lesson was over. When I asked her if she thought the experience had cured her aviophobia, she just smiled.
“It was definitely a great experience,” she said. “I hope it worked — we’ll see about that when I have to fly the next time.”
