Best iPhone Apps

Best App for Beating a Fear of Flying

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Coming down from sky-high fears: The app’s Fear Attack screen helps you manage in-flight panic attacks, providing a breathing exercise to ease your mind and slow your heart rate. Of course, this screen can’t help much during takeoff and landing when you’re not allowed to use electronic devices. To help, the app encourages you to take time before the flight to listen to audio exercises and explanations of why air travel is safe.

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Anti-anxiety: The app features “answers,” interviews with a pilot about how airplanes work and why they’re safe, and “exercises,” narrated strategies for coping with specific fears spoken in a soothing (but perhaps overly dramatic) voice. Tell the app when you’re flying and the things that scare you most, and it suggests a program of activities to follow in the days before your flight. The app alerts you when fresh exercises are ready.

Virgin Atlantic’s Flying Without Fear

Version: 1.1
Website: Mental Workout

Afraid to fly? If you can dig your nails out of the armrest long enough to tap the screen, this app just might help. It provides a slew of soothing audio tracks targeting specific fears, along with reassuring info about the causes of bumps and sounds on flights. The New Age vibe skews a bit cheesy, but the solid info comes from the airline’s successful phobia-fighting courses.