Fear of Flying? Take the Train.(author recounts one woman's effort to cure herself of phobia)

My friend Cath gets into her airplane seat like a death-row inmate being strapped into an electric chair. There's the same combination of terror and resignation in her eyes that comes from the certainty of imminent doom.

Like one out of six Americans, Cath suffers from fear of flying. One look at her tense face and white knuckles before takeoff is enough to put any Erica Jong jokes out of my mind. Her body language is that of a trapped animal: her anxious eyes dart from one corner of the plane to the next, looking for hidden dangers; her ears perk up at the slightest change in the tone of the plane's engines. "Is something the matter?" she hisses every time the plane dips its wings. "How much longer till we land?" she asks the attendant 17 times in the course of a two-hour flight.

Fear of flying seems an odd malady to afflict the nation that flies more passenger miles than the rest of the world combined. But America is home to more victims of aviophobia (yes, that's the term for it) than any other country in the world. It's second in the national list of phobias, exceeded only by fear of public speaking. Since this is America, there are also plenty of remedies offered by a variety of institutes and clinics, including Boston's improbably named Institute for the Psychology of Air Travel. Cath's tried them all. Therapy sessions, books with titles like "Fearless Flying," meditation, even hypnosis. Nothing worked.

One therapist tried to cure her with common sense. "The odds of being killed in an avalanche are actually greater than those of dying in a plane crash," he explained. "You're twice as likely to be struck by lightning." Cath boarded her next flight clutching a chart that helpfully explained the odds (risk of dying of a gunshot in America: one in 9,450; risk of dying in an airline crash: one in 8,450,000). Statistically, you'd have to fly every single day for 8,200 years to find yourself in ...