Dublin here we come

The day before a course is often busy, passengers ring up becuase they have lost their joining instructions and last minute bookers realise they can't put it off and need to overcome their fear. Capt Andy Shaw and Air Traffic Controller Tony Brown are heading over today and Patricia Furness-Smith and Tim Lloyd will be up early to get the Aer Lingus flight that leaves at a very unsociable hour! Dublin is a great fear of flying course, the people are always friendly and willing to overcome their fears and the crew at Aer Arran do a great job of looking after us. Hopefully the weather will be lovely and the day a great success. The thing I love about these days is you never know what is going to happen! Roll on that first pint of guiness when they day is over. Happy weekend.

The Sim

As I sit in my office at the start of the week, I have just spoken to Capt Gordon Black. Gordon is a training captain with British Airways on the Boeing 777. Today he starts his 2 days in the simulator. Pilots are put through their paces every six months for their entire career! Gordon has run several of these as a trainer and has sat through many as a pilot but he still feels the pressure everytime he goes into the sim! There are very few jobs where continual training is so religiously maintained, but as passengers we should feel resassured that the pilots flying us are perhaps the most checked and highly trained of any profession.

Count down to Dublin

Just over a week to go to our first Dublin course of 2008. We have been running courses at Dublin for over two years and it must be something to do with the "luck of the Irish" because every course we have run we have managed to get everyone on the aircraft. On the day we use an Aer Arran ATR72. The last aircraft we used was only about a month old and still had that new car smell! The final week always seems to be the busiert for bookings, lastminute.com seems to have impacted all our decision making!

Aviatours - Fear of Flying

Welcome to our first blog. We have been running fear of flying courses for over 23 years and in that time we have helped over 45,000 people overcome their fear of flying. Most recently we have added a new venue and on 21st June we will be at Plymouth and we will be using a Air Southwest Dash-8. I would never have imagined when I started our first course at Manchester back in the 1980's that we would now run our courses at 10 airports around the UK and Ireland!

Capt Peter Hughes