7Fear of Flying: Impact on the U.S. Air Travel Industry

One of every six adult Americans—25,000,000—is afraid to fly. These people make two-thirds fewer trips on commercial aircraft than those who are not afraid. The 1978 impact on the U. S. air travel industry is estimated to be a $1.6 billion revenue loss and a 9 % reduction in air travel. These are the conclusions drawnfromfive surveys conducted between 1976 and 1979 to measure how fear of flying affects the air travel industry. An airline pilot with 19 years experience occupational-ly disabled by fear of flying... a 60-year-old aeronautical engineer unable to visit the European country of his birth... a lawyer whose firm was floundering because he could not visit clients across the country... a secretary unable to vacation in the tropics... a housewife unable to accom-pany her husband on business trips... Fear of flying is a ubiquitous phenomenon. It has been observed to occur in almost identical frequencies in New Orleans (Fear of Flying-Who’s Got It, 1976) and Bur-lington, Vermont (Agras, Sylvester, and Oliveau 1969). It has been the subject of many TV talk shows and magazine articles, in which a recurring theme has been that there are between 20 and 25 million Americans who are afraid of fly