My Proven Strategies to Conquer Flight Anxiety and Overcome Fear of Flying
Bell | 10 August 24
Are you terrified of flying? You’re not alone. Millions of people, including myself, struggle with flight anxiety. So, I have put together my top, proven tips that I used to overcome my fear of flying.
To me, overcoming my fear of flying wasn’t about being impartial to flying. I still don’t love it. However, I have found ways that make flights more comfortable as well as techniques that help me handle my fear, especially during stressful situations such as turbulence or takeoff and landing.
For years, every flight I took was preceded by sleepless nights, tears and even panic attacks. So, I did my research and found ways to make flying a little less awful and slowly it worked. I’m not going to bore you with statistics in this article about how safe flying is – I’m sure you’ve already been told that many times.
Here are the exact things I do that help overcome my fear of flying and curb my flight anxiety:
Table of Contents
ToggleHow to conquer your fear of flying
Distractions are your best friend
The less time I have to think and hence overthink, the better. Hence, I always prepare lots of ways to keep myself busy during a flight.
For takeoff and landing, that means a great pair of noise-cancelling headphones blasting my favourite songs. I prefer upbeat songs that make me excited for the trip ahead or make me reminisce about my favourite memories when returning home. Ensure you have enough songs downloaded to your app of choice before takeoff!
During the flight, I either watch movies using the entertainment system (if it’s a longer flight), download movies or shows to my laptop or phone on Netflix/Disney+ or bring a good book. Some of my current favourites are all by Emily Henry and Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
Learn from the experts
While I don’t find safety of flight statistics helpful (e.g. on average, a person would need to take a flight every day for 10,078 years to be involved in a fatal accident) as my anxiety doesn’t listen to reason, it does listen a little to the people actually flying the plane.
The experts in this case are pilots and my brain somehow accepts that they are qualified enough to calm me down. If you know a pilot, the best port of call is to talk to them directly.
If you don’t, here are some excellent books written by pilots regarding flying and flight anxiety:
- Cockpit Confidential By Captain Patrick Smith – this book explains the ins and outs of air travel and is perfect for anyone who might feel better if they understand what exactly is happening in each moment and the training behind each possible scenario.
- The Other Side of Fear… A Pilot’s Life by Keith Godfrey – a mix of the technicalities made easy, fun flying stories and overall anxiety-reliving lessons
- Flying with Confidence by Steve Allright and Patricia Furness-Smith – a summary of the British Airways’ Flying with Confidence course with stellar reviews and the promise to change your life
The Jello Analogy
If you’re like me and occasionally spend too much time on TikTok, I’m sure you have heard of the Jello Analgoy before. Popularised by Anna Paul during one of her travel vlogs, this is a really helpful technique to visualise just how harmless turbulence is.
The idea is that a plane is like a chocolate chip (or something else small, I can’t quite remember to be honest) in the middle of a jar of jello. When you tap the jello, it jiggles the chocolate chip, yet there is no way that the jiggle would cause the chip to drop through the jello.
In more scientific terms, turbulence is some sort of change in the air around your plane. Air, like water, isn’t nothing – it moves, ripples, changes direction. For pilots, turbulence isn’t scary, a little inconvenient if anything.
This quote by Psychology Today explains why turbulence feels so much worse than it is:
“The same changes in the air are not noticeable to a passenger drifting in the air aboard a hot air balloon, But in an airliner, forward speed amplifies the slight up and down changes. Speed can amplify a downward movement of less than an inch, making it feel like the plane is falling a hundred feet.”
Try to get some sleep
To be honest, one of the best remedies is still to sleep for much of the flight, especially for the long international ones. Bonus points if you are landing in the morning as it helps with jetlag.
Some of the things I do for good sleep on a plane are bringing an eye mask, my pair of noise-cancelling headphones and a comfortable neck pillow (though a rolled up blanket works too).
I would also recommend avoiding any caffeine and alcohol prior to sleeping as they can affect your sleep quality, especially on a plane.
Allow yourself to feel fear
Despite everything I have done and the big steps I have made to overcome my flight anxiety, I still panic sometimes. Usually during takeoff and landing, sometimes during turbulence and other times when I let my brain get too far off-topic.
One thing I learned in therapy years ago was about allowing yourself to be anxious in order to “fight” the anxiety. The idea was that the more you think about what is making you anxious rather than just allowing yourself to feel, the more anxious you get.
The same applies to flight anxiety. Allow yourself to feel. You are scared and it’s okay. It’s better to feel it and let it ebb naturally than beat yourself up over it and spend the entire flight in an uncomfortable limbo.
Is being scared of flying “silly”?
Anyone with a fear of flying has seen the famous statistics. The odds of something happening are 1 in 7 million versus 1 in 14,000 for a car road trip. In 2022, 0.000016% of flights were in fatal accidents. There are people who say you are literally safer on an airplane than doing anything else.
And yet, the fear prevails. I have had a few people telling me that my fear is “silly” and quoting those exact statistics, but guess what – I didn’t magically stop being scared of flying.
Fear doesn’t listen to reason. As the mental health foundation explains: “No matter how much we inform ourselves we will not stop experiencing fear.”
In my opinion, it isn’t silly at all. We all have our own fears and phobias, and flying is unfortunately one of them for so many of us. Others are scared of spiders or deep water or even small holes (trypophobia).
So, being scared of flying is not silly. However, you shouldn’t let it affect how you live your life. I travel a lot even with my fear of flying. Using the points I have laid out in this article as well as speaking to a professional can help you do the same.
Hi, I'm Bell
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