What could be worse, just as you are about to take off for a highly strategic meeting, to discover that you have a panic attack... of flying? A real ordeal, more or less pronounced, more or less accepted by business travellers, and against which willpower or habit are not always enough. So a new mobile application aims to take up the challenge of aerodromophobia, or at least to provide some reassurance to the many nomadic businesspeople who suffer from a fear of flying.
Available free of charge on smartphones and tablets - on both the Apple store and Google Play - the Fofly app aims to address the different stages of fear, with courses focusing on take-off, landing and turbulence zones, as well as the "at home" section before the flight.
In particular, the application offers a breathing exercise based on cardiac coherence, to reduce anxiety once on board the aircraft. The site peurdelavion.fr, which created the application, also turned to experts in the various fields concerned. The new tool includes technical information provided by an airline pilot, as well as psychological explanations from a specialist in behavioural and cognitive therapies (CBT). The aim is to identify the phobia of flying so as to combat it more effectively. Finally, four relaxation tunes have also been specially composed for the Fofly application...
The www.peurdelavion.fr website, which has been organising on-site or remote courses for four years now, estimates that "30 % of the population experience, to varying degrees, anxiety or a 'fear' of flying".
