Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Cawler. It's Monday the 11th of March.

And today's travel podcast shines a light on fear of flying. Commercial aviation has never been safer.

Last year, there were no fatal crashes involving scheduled passenger jets.

But anyone who is anxious about flying didn't look too far to feed their aerophobia.

I'm thinking of events at the start of the year, such as the Japan Airlines Airbus A350

approaching Tokyo, which burst into flames. Everyone safely evacuated.

And the Alaska Airlines incident involving a door plug bursting out of the aircraft, the Boeing 737 Max, at altitude.

Again, everyone walked away. I consider myself very fortunate not to suffer

concerns about aviation, safety. I cycle every day and I know I'd be far safer on a plane.

But many people do have anxieties. And so British Airways has a one-day course called

flying with confidence that seeks to allay the fear and so British Airways has a one-day course called Flying with Confidence

that seeks to allay the fears of prospective passengers, culminating with a short flight.

I've been hearing all about it from course director and presenter Captain Steve Allright,

who has 33 years of flying experience.

Flying with confidence, what's it all about? Okay, so I joined British Airways in 1990.

In 1991, I joined a little team of pilots called the Flight Crew Customer First Team, who was still in operation today.

And two of the captains on that team had started courses in 1986.

They realized there was a need for people who were frightened of flying.

And they approached British airways and they started

running courses from fairly humble beginnings really because you know they were

just feeling in their way they didn't know how much interest they was or would be

and of course now all the research shows that one in four people has some kind of

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