What is Fear of Flying (Flying Phobia, Aviaphobia)?
Fear of flying is simply a learned response. The only fear a baby is born with is that of loud noises. How you learned your fear of flying is totally irrelevant in terms of eliminating the ‘fear’ response. At some point you simply got very scared about flying. Maybe there was a lot of turbulence during a flight, maybe the plane spent ages flying in a holding pattern above an airport waiting for permission to land and you began to wonder how much fuel was left; perhaps you saw pictures of an airline crash on television, or in a newspaper. Many people don’t even remember how the flying phobia started. However, like we say, it doesn’t matter how the fear started, it can be eliminated anyway. Categories of Fear of Flying Most often people simply imagine something disastrous is going to happen to the plane while taking off, flying or landing. Sometimes people have a fear of confined spaces (claustrophobia) as well which just compounds the fear of flying. Occasionally, it is the fact that th
