Some try to get around the tension with medication or alcohol, but the aftereffects can leave an athlete duller than the tension itself. Just knowing that, statistically, climbing a flight of stairs or driving a car is much more dangerous than flying can put some aviophobics at ease. It can also be helpful to familiarize the aviophobic athlete with the basics of aviation and the extensive training that all airline pilots must go through in order to be allowed to fly. Briefings on how planes work and why weather-related matters like turbulence and lightning are of no concern to a sound aircraft can bring about shifts in the fearful. And it certainly helps to know that, once fully qualified, professional airline pilots are given further training and competency checks every six months.
Few professions are so closely and continually examined and monitored.
Still, some athletes take no comfort from such statements. For them, this rational approach to what is fundamentally an irrational thought process does not work in the face of an overpowering imagination. In the case of a runaway imagination, the key lies in keeping the visual part of the mind busy. A solution that works for many is to have a number of magazines to flip through on the plane. That can keep the visually oriented part of the brain too busy to make up imaginary disasters.