Flight Chops: Helping a Friend Overcome a Fear of Flying

"My friend MJ is deathly afraid of flying," Steve Thorne explains in the opening of one of his more popular Flight Chops videos. He's not embellishing her fear at all, as MJ becomes the ultimate pessimistic passenger the moment she simply sits in a cockpit to get a feel for the airplane. "That's scary because it's so close to my face," she says of the instrument panel, "If we crash it's like, forget my nose, forget my teeth."

"What if we're in the air and there's a tornado," she asks to the delight of her friends, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. In today's throwback Flight Chops video, we get to watch as MJ faces her greatest fear, all while Thorne, in the unique role of pilot-therapist, tries to keep her cool, calm and collect. (Be warned that MJ's fear comes with some colorful language.)

As he mentions in the video, Thorne felt like a bit of an idiot for a "minor screw up" at the end, and you can watch his analysis of the wake turbulence here. And while MJ was exhausted by the "therapy," it worked well enough that she later took a flying lesson.

As always, enter the latest Flight Chops giveaway, which features the Bose Aviation A20 headset, as well as a subscription to Flying.