Those nervous flyers who download Virgin’s new Fear of Flying iPhone app (£2.99 from the iTunes store) will be greeted with a sight more terrifying than any aeroplane: that of a bedraggled Richard Branson, resembling a pleased, if sheepish, tramp who has slept, perhaps accidentally, in a bucket of bleach.
After a few platitudes (“Hope to see you up there one day”), he offers an encouraging “Good luck”. Luck? We flight wusses don’t want luck, Richard. We want a cast-iron guarantee that our plane will stay in the air.
The best this app will do, though, is bring on a gruff pilot called Captain David Kistruck to talk us sternly (off his Autocue) through every aspect of flight procedure. Planes are safe, he assures us, and not the scene of some “high drama, like you may have seen in the movies”.
For levity, Kistruck throws in the odd one-liner (“You may hear a whining noise. Contrary to popular opinion, this is not the pilot moaning about his pension”), interspersed with cheery piano interludes and lustrous video footage of Virgin Atlantic 747s (basically porn for plane-spotters).
What I found most helpful was to pause his intro — “I’m a Virgin Atlantic pilot” — after the third word and replay it, which sent me into fits of laughter until we were well over the Atlantic.
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When I tired of that, I listened to the Q&A, which includes nearly every question a fearful flyer could ask a pilot, as well as some you definitely wouldn’t (“What is reverse thrust?”).
You can also choose between a baffling number of hypnotic relaxation recordings (including tracks to help you through the ordeals of “aeroplane doors closing” and “wing movement”), and there’s a breathing exercise featuring what sounds like a drugged-up Darth Vader in a haunted garden. Sadly, the latter cut off abruptly (perhaps the force kicked in?), but the rest of the programme is slick and impressive. Which is all very nice, but does it work when you’re trapped in a metal cylinder at 33,000ft?
I was sceptical, given that I was using it for my first long-haul flight — an unreasonable 10 hours — and was plagued by both an overinventive imagination and my boyfriend’s hilarious jokes. (“What’s the definition of an agnostic? An atheist about to take a plane.”) Yet for all my flippant reservations about Kistruck’s grumpy spiel, I was surprised to find that it really helped to calm me down.
When I heard the crew-call bells ding alarmingly, I remembered his earnest promise that “these are not coded messages”; when the seatbelt signs reappeared suddenly halfway through the flight, I heard him intone, “Turbulence is uncomfortable but not dangerous.”
It’s perhaps proof of the app’s effectiveness that I boarded the plane equipped with sleeping pills to knock me out for the duration, yet felt relaxed enough to leave them unpopped in their foil.
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Cynics may baulk at £2.99 for what looks like an extended advert for Virgin Atlantic — but surely it’s worth investing in 10 hours’ worth of peace of mind for the price of a bottle of bleach?
Ariane Sherine is the editor of The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas (The Friday Project £12.99)