Pan Am the airline that cared. I found this article about how far PanAm went to help people get used to flying.
When I was young our family used to take big vacations for the holidays, but because my mother was afraid of flying, we often ended up on cruises in the Caribbean. Finally, after we had visited what seemed like every island in the area, Pan Am introduced a new initiative called the Pan Am Fearful Flyers program, designed to help people with fear of flying overcome it and (of course) fly Pan Am. These days there are a host of web sites. books, and third party classes to help anxious flyers, but the Pan Am one was, I believe, the first.
They took it very seriously, with a series of weekly or monthly meetings that went through aeronautics, statistics, engineering and psychological techniques, all designed to rationally and emotionally allay people's fears. They had lectures from pilots, a visit to the air traffic control tower, and got to experience a flight training simulator. It was really, really impressive. But the best was yet to come.
For the finale of the course, they took all the students out to LaGuardia airport, along with one spouse/guest each, and put them on board a real 727. There, they not only met the pilots, but found that also on the plane were the pilot's spouses, along with the off-duty air traffic controllers who had showed them the tower. After getting a full tour of the plane, and a complete, detailed safety briefing, the boarding door was closed and they just started taxiing the plane around the ramp to give them a feel for a moving aircraft. Throughout this, the pilot was talking them through the whole thing on the PA.
Once they were comfortable, the plane moved out to the runway, where it did a simulated take-off, roaring down the main runway, but not actually taking off. Finally, after ensuring that no one had freaked out, the plane actually did take off, and took the class on a 30 minute ride over New York. During the flight, the pilot turned off the seatbelt sign, had all the passengers get up and walk around, and then had them rush from front to back and side to side, proving that they couldn't tip over the plane in the air. When they landed, they had a champagne toast, received a certificate of recognition and a Pan Am pin, and were declared no-longer-fearful-flyers.
It was a Very Big Thing back then, and the group seriously bonded, keep in touch with each other for several years afterwards. One funny epilogue to the story is that a few years later Pan Am became the first airline allowed to fly American citizens to China, and they had a special inaugural trip that immediately sold out. My mother called up Pan Am and said "YOU were the ones who made me able to fly, so the least you can do is fly me to China!" And so they did.
just thought i'd share....
You seem pretty cool to me the way you turned out exactly!