The most common cause of a fear of flying is a perceived ‘bad flight’ experience, and that experience is most likely to be turbulence. But it’s also true to say that this is more likely to be a perception rather than a true account of the actual flight. If the fear has been caused by a perceived danger then it’s very useful to re-structure the thinking and reach the conclusion that in fact there was no danger. This removes the source of the fear and should lead to overcoming the fear.And this simple process can be applied to many myths and misunderstandings about flying. Knowing the facts first, is the only way to overcome a fear of flying, every other part of your ‘cure’ comes after   that. Perhaps the only two things you ought to do first are to see where to start and then organise a plan by going to those two pages.

Quite often experiencing a Go Around can be upsetting for a nervous flyer whereas in reality it’s a very straight forward and simple thing to do. Once again re-structuring the thoughts will bring about a change of thinking and behaviour. A general feeliung of anxiety about life in general will often project feelings on to flying and often cause a fear of flying to develop.  It’s common to hear from anxious fliers that the aircraft they have been travelling in has dropped thousands of feet.

Whilst this is clearly untrue, it is nevertheless, reality to the person affected. Remember what we said earlier about “Thinking makes it so.”

Turbulence is often quoted as a major cause of a fear of flying, and it has an influence out of all proportion to what actually happens on board.

Anxious passengers often believe that the aircraft is in danger during turbulence. There is a widespread feeling that the aircraft is not strong enough to withstand the forces although the truth is quite the opposite. It’s not unreasonable for passengers believe that it’s difficult to control an aircraft during turbulence because of its apparent irregular flight path. However, a simple observation of a glass of water on the tray in front of any passenger would show how little the aircraft is actually moving around.

Control; For many people the apparent loss of personal control during air travel is a major cause of fear and not surprisingly it affects many intelligent and highly successful people, yet despite that or perhaps because of that, they seem unable to accept that other people (pilots especially) have skills upon which they are dependent but they themselves lack. It is vital to your success that if you feel this way that you develop confidence and trust in the skills of pilots, cabin crew, engineers and Air Traffic Controllers and everyone else involved in commercial flying. In reality the lack of control statement is more to do with the feelings and thoughts  of the person concerned rather than physical control of circumstances.

Claustrophobia causes a number of fears, however with the fear of flying is particularly acute because, unlike being confined on a bus or train in an aircraft it is not possible to just get off at the ‘next stop’. Normally for a claustrophobic their anxiety can be relieved slightly by opening windows or doors and in almost every other area of life there is some opportunity to change the environment or avoid it altogether. These opportunities are clearly not possible with air travel. See the Forum and the book for helpful information about this.

Many people who are unfamiliar with air travel are likely to make many assumptions about aviation and aircraft. They have doubts about how a heavy aircraft can get airborne, they are subjected to media accounts, which distort the truth, and once on board they are concerned by the noises and sensations on the aircraft, all of which go towards a general feeling of insecurity and anxiety.

That’s why we’ve included audio files and pages of information about these things on this site.
Panic attacks.

Despite the awful symptoms of these attacks they will not cause you any actual harm. Cabin crews are trained to deal with them and give you assistance if you feel that you are going to have one. The fact is that very few people actually suffer them in flight…and they are easily controlled.

Finally, in this short summary of reasons for a fear of flying we must mention parenthood and falling in love. Both of these highly emotional events can influence the ways that we see our lives. When we have the responsibility of children, we naturally feel protective and whilst we may be able to rationalize our own fears on an aircraft, we find it difficult to subject our offspring to any perceived risk.When we are in love, we have so much to lose. Suddenly we become aware of the frailty of our lives. We see more risks, and we exaggerate them. Bereavements can cause a sudden feeling of vulnerability and can be the manifest itself in a fear of flying.Indeed any significant life event can trigger a fear of flying. See our Audio Cd Set for more information about this subject