Fear of Flying

U

UTViking

250+ Posts
Has anyone successfully conquered their fear(anxiety) of flying. My fear of flying is directly related to turbulence, turning, and flying through clouds (not sure which way is up). I've been dealing with this crap for almost 20 years now. My dad is a pilot, but he's not a psychologist, and understanding the science of flying has not helped.
 
im extremely afraid during takeoffs and somewhat during landings because that is when most crashes occur. my fear has grown as i get older probably because i have more responsibility and feel more mortal.

it it isnt really early in the morning, i usually have a drink before i get on a plane. im fine once im at a cruising altitude....

i can think of nothing more terrifying that falling out of the sky in an airplane wating for the fiery mass below knowing that i am toast and having time to think about it as im going down.

i still fly but i hate it...i really wish a company would invest in a bullet train all over with tunnels underneath the ocean for transcontinental travel.
 
I love turbulence.
We flew into Reno into some ball busting turbulence, and finished with a wicked crosswind landing. It was glorious. Had worse on a flight to Little Rock. It was so bad, they didn't even try to serve drinks. Just tighten up the seat belt and hang on.
Makes you feel alive.
 
turbulence doesn't bother me like it used to, mainly because of how I think about it. Its like being in a boat on the lake, unfortunately you can't see the riples in the water (air) when you're in a plane. If you could tell what was coming turbulence wise it would be much better. Anybody have an invention to see air turbulence? You'd make a gazillion dollars.


My problem with flying is without the engines we are ******. Engines, as made by man, can fail. I hate listening to the engines during take off and in flight because any little 'click' or change in tone or something scares me to death.
 
P/C wrote the post that I was about to write. The older I get and the more I fly, the worse it gets. I have 2 or 3 drinks before I get on the plane and then a couple more on the plane. It really doesn't matter what time of day it is. It's the only thing that really works for me.
 
Somewhere on Youtube there is a documentary of a stress test done at Boeing on the 737 wings (I believe).

Those damn things do not snap until they are bent to the point where they are both almost pointing directly up.

Watch this, and you won't sweat turbulence. The wings are supposed to shake, that's a good thing.
 
My Father could have traveled the world, but for his fear of flying.

One day, he decided to go to Dallas to visit me and my brothers. Well, he loved it. He travelled a lot after that. Went to Puerto Rico, California, New York., and more. I'm glad he finally went for it.

He always told us kids anything was possible, but it took him until he was 50 to prove it to himself. It took my uncle until my dad did it, plus a couple years. He also flies regularly now.

I love the take off. What a rush! They have to hit around 200 on the ground to get up. I love that. After that, it's just like riding a bus, only a shorter ride, and better looking company..
 
I was getting pretty comfortable with flying until I got into a flight from Denver to Laramie. It was a ****** little plane and by far the smallest I have been in. It was OK, though loud, and I had been flying all day so everything was fine (I was tired.).

On the way back from Laramie to Denver- that plane ride ****** me up. (Side note: I don't understand how people **** themselves when they are scared cause my sphincter could have produced diamonds.)

The sky was dark as we boarded the plane, sun had yet even started to come out. I take my seat, **** no window. I open the air vent which is basically a hole in the wall and a flap. The pilot gets on, and greets us, and some asshat passenger starts talking to him. Turns out the ****** was just injured and is back for his first flight having suffered from a broken leg. Alright. Everything is fine. The airport we were leaving from was too small to have drinks... I am not opposed to drinking in the morning. Make a long story short, the sun started rising as were were flying and the ******* plane was bobbing and weaving and I could watch the horizon through the cockpit. Needless to say I walked into the first place open with drinks and while people were ordering a breakfast burritos I was ordering whiskey.

The later flights that day were not bad, but I was too rattled and even normal turbulence bothered me.

But I am back to normal and can deal with it fine, I do not mind turning unless it is while we are trying to land and the turning is choppy and abrupt. That unsettles me, but not too much.
 
I usually take a Benadryl and crash out. I used to love flying, then in my 20s, I would always imagine myself leaning forward against the seat in front of me as we plummet to the earth over 2 or 3 minutes, or imagining the wing ripping off. It was never the death I was really afraid of. It was the thought of having to know that I was definitely gonna die in a fiery crash for a few minutes before crashing. That feeling went away in my 30s, and I don't know why. I don't enjoy flying much now, but I don't get scared, usually just irritated by the crampedness and poor service.
 
I do the Benadryl trick.

I take half of one on the way to the airport and half on the plane.

No problems.
 
In 1958 I flew in a CAT (China Air Transport) C-47, a pre-war DC3, from Taipei to Hong Kong. We sat in military web seats.

About 1/4 of the seat space was taken up by a long range fuel tank which was located directly across the narrow aisle from me.
All the way to HK, a Chinese crewman laid on a old thin mattress on top of said gas tank...reading comic books & chain-smoking cigarettes.

There was also a broken window in the rear of the plane, and looking out at the wing I could see several rivets vibrating & rotating around in their holes - some of which were empty.

We had to skirt around the mainland at quite a distance to avoid the possibility of being shot down by PRC Migs....or so we were told. !957-58 was an extremely tense time betweem ol' Mao & Chiang Kai Shek - read up on the shelling of Quemoy sometime - my Dad was there.

Six months after we made the trip, that same plane ran into the side of a mountain somewhere in the HK Colony during foggy weather, killing all aboard.

Flying on Southwest Air is a pleasure compared to that experience.
 
puddle said a lot of it for me.

honestly, for me, it started on a flight to ft lauderdale where my then girlfriend and i would take a cruise. on that cruise i would ask her to marry me. that entire flight i was a nervous wreck. i imagine it had something to do with the idea of having something to REALLY live for.

since then, my flight anxiety has only gotten worse. 4thgeneration swore after vegas last year that he would never travel on the same plane as me. we booked our flight to and from vegas this year independently. he's on my plane both ways. i bet he doesn't even sit near me.

i'm a wreck on a plane. my heart rate goes bonkers, and i feel genuine fear. sometimes we are talking debilitating fear.

maybe it has to do with having a fight or flight response completely removed. not a lot of "getting the **** out of here" going on at 35,000 feet.

i think a lot of it also has to do with not knowing what the **** is going on. i can't see out the windshield.

i don't know. it's stupid. i know it is. i know it is when it hits me on the plane.

part of me thinks it is the total absurdity of the whole operation. we're in a ******* aluminum tube loaded with flammable material thousands and thousands of feet in the air. it reminds me of a paper towel tube. it's the ultimate "give up." once you board that plane, you aren't getting off until your final destination unless you want to go to jail.

i try to watch the planes on my deck, and tell myself that thousands and thousands of planes take off all over the world and don't crash - including to and from third world countries.

i keep waiting for an epiphany, but until then, i'll medicate with the old booze. i, too, don't like pills.
 
yeah i used to be terrified of flying even though i flew many many times growing up.

i hated turbulence (even though i knew it was impossible to crash from turbulence and has never happened). i hated takeoff b/c it meant we were leaving the sweet security of the ground.

but then i just thought about all the athletes that travel hundreds of flights a season and i realized eh, not that big of a deal.
 
I have definitely fluctuated wildly on being terrified in planes, being indifferent, being medicated, and passing the **** out as soon as I get on the plane.


In my late teens through late 20's I was a wreck- same as you describe. The one flight that wasnt a disaster was the 8am Austin-Pittsburgh flight on the old US Air that I took getting back to my parents in May 94. Got on that plane, having been drinking the whole night previous, not getting a lick of sleep and I woke up in Pittsburgh to a completely empty plane and a worried stewardess begging me to get up.

I have mellowed out a ton in my 30's- still worried, but not losing my mind.

Took a Frontier flight on Dec 31, 2005 from KC- LAX (Rose Bowl). I feel asleep on the plane.
I woke up in LAX as half the plane had already de-planed. Turns out that must have been a HELL of a plane ride with turbulence. I saw no less than 20 used barf bags sitting on the seats as I walked to the front.

I hadnt felt a THING
biggrin.gif
 
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