The fear of flying is less a single phobia than a place where other fears converge. For many people, it’s rooted in one or more anxieties that flying brings into focus — the fear of turbulence, of heights, or of having a panic attack in front of strangers with no escape.

For Vance, being inside an aircraft activates her claustrophobia — a condition she developed at nine years old. A series of surgeries caused her to feel severe anxiety in closed spaces. Her panic attacks increased during her teenage years, especially on airplanes.

“If I’m in a car, I can pull over, open my door and get some relief,” she says. “But when I’m in a plane, there’s no out.”

A safe space to face the fear

Air travel isn’t something that most people can do often enough to ease their anxiety. Each trip can feel like starting all over again.

Luckily, Vance found somewhere to practice being uncomfortable: the Fear of Flying Clinic, a nonprofit support organization hosted at the San Francisco International Airport.

Fran Grant and Jeanne McElhatton, both licensed pilots, founded the clinic in 1976 in San Mateo, California. They created an educational program in order to help Grant’s husband overcome his turbulence anxiety so he could travel to Australia.

The curriculum demystified air travel and addressed the physical and psychological roots of fear. The first clinic welcomed a small group of anxious travelers and, by the end, Grant’s husband was calm enough to sleep through turbulence that had once overwhelmed him.

Today, clients from across California spend two consecutive weekends understanding the mechanics of flight and learning how to rewire their anxious thoughts. A four-day workshop culminates in a round-trip graduation flight to Seattle.

Vance arrives at the clinic on the first day with her mother, Louise, joining eight other participants, including one couple who drove in from Fresno. Volunteers run the workshop — many of whom are nervous flyers and have gone through the clinic themselves — and include instruction from working pilots, air traffic controllers, flight attendants and aircraft maintenance technicians.

Volunteer psychotherapist Paula Zimmerman begins the workshop by asking everyone to introduce themselves and their concerns about flying. Reasons for signing up range widely: panic attacks, childhood trauma from an earthquake, a decades-old rescue mission during the Vietnam War. One participant in their fifties had never even been inside an airplane.

Often, Zimmerman says, they sign up because of an important upcoming trip.

Retrain the brain

Zimmerman wants participants to understand the difference between adrenaline and real danger. Her goal is to help them to distinguish between the thing that’s happening to them and how they think about the thing that’s happening to them.

She writes the letter “A” on a large sheet of paper at the front of the room. A stands for an activating event — like, for example, turbulence.

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — The jury has reached a verdict in the murder trial of Vicha Ratanapakdee, an 84-year-old man who was killed in San Francisco’s De Anza neighborhood in 2021.

Antoine Watson is guilty of involuntary manslaughter and guilty of force likely to produce great bodily harm, but not guilty of murder in the first or second degree.

Vicha Ratanapakdee’s daughter told the I-Team’s Dan Noyes that she’s “disappointed and painful.”

It was five years ago this month “Grandpa Vicha” was attacked in San Francisco’s Anza Vista neighborhood.

MORE: 610 days after 84-year-old Thai grandfather was murdered, SF street renamed in his honor

Surveillance video showed Watson running and then pushing Vicha to the ground.

He struck his head and died days later.

Watson was 19 at the time and testified he didn’t call 911 because he was scared the police would arrest him and panicked.

Vicha’s death became one of the flashpoints in the Stop Asian Hate movement during the pandemic.

Take a look at more stories by the ABC7 News I-Team.

With the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference underway in San Francisco, Union Square is alive.

“It’s a little bit more than I thought,” said Mark Davis. “It’s beautiful, I love to see it.”

Davis and his band, Danger von Davis, are one of several that played in Union Square as San Francisco welcomed its first major conference of the year. Davis said these events are one of the key pieces of San Francisco’s economic vitality.

“The conferences bring more visibility and business,” he said. “Things are picking up a little bit. We’re obviously here at this huge conference. Our shows in the Castro — which we do first and third Tuesdays at Blush Wine Bar — are getting more and more attendance and people have been enthusiastic.”

This particular conference brings thousands of people to the city, from investors to innovators to executives and more. For many of the attendees, the city is making a good impression, whether it be a first or new one.

“This is a beautiful city,” said Bruce Ahern, an executive from South Carolina in town for the conference. “There’s a lot of charm to it,  lot more than most quote, convention cities.”

That’s music to Anna Marie Presutti’s ears. She’s the President & CEO of the San Francisco Travel Association (SF Travel).

“I mean, seeing really is believing,” she said. “We didn’t have a lot of misses last year. That’s what kind of made it so beautiful.”

When it comes to this year’s convention outlook, she says the city is continuing the progress made last year.

“Right now, 2026 looks really positive. Certainly, 2025 was a big lift over 2024,” she said.

The number of Moscone Conventions has grown year over year, per SF Travel figures.

• 2024: 25 conventions
• 2025: 34 conventions
• 2026: 38 conventions

“All of the places that we were losing business to, all of a sudden are now, ‘Oh, we want back in. We want back in to San Francisco,” Presutti said. “We’re also really looking very closely at, some of these convention centers around the country are undergoing renovations or they’re completely shifting how they’re doing business. So, we’ve been able to pull from there.”

Looking at 2026 as a whole, SF Travel projects just over 24 million visitors this year, and it estimates they’ll spend $9.83 billion.

“I think what happens is when people come, particularly for a conference, they’re pleasantly surprised,” Presutti said. “Then, they go home and they tell two people, and those two people tell two people, and that’s what we’ve seen happen over the course of the last 18 months.”

Presutti said last year, a partnership with United Airlines allowed SF Travel to fly out San Francisco skeptics who were reluctant to book business in the city.

“It was sort of a see-it-for-yourself campaign. Rather than us telling you about it, why don’t you come and see it for yourself?” she said. “We closed over 70% of those.”

One big question mark for 2026?

“The only thing that is still sort of, up in the air? The international piece,” Presutti said. “That is very geopolitical right now, so we’re not really sure how that is going to behave this year.”