I am afraid of flying! How to overcome a fear of flying?

Even the ironside sometimes experiences unpleasant sensations when he sees the airplane by which he will fly. And especially great attack of aerophobia can be seen when you go up airstairs that separates you from land and takes you into an uncertainty.

“But what will happen if the plane falls?” – all the people always ask themselves. However, this question remains just one more mindset for many people, but for someone the answer to this question becomes the reason of panic fear of flight that they cannot stop. Such kind of fear may definitely spoil someone’s life because airflights that often last for some hours play a big part in the lives of many people.

Airflights include business trips, traveling to far-away countries, visiting relatives. How can you master aerophobia and live a fulfilled life at last?

At first, you have to make it clear if you have aerophobia or not. Almost all people feel uncomfortable and anxious a little bit during the flights, but all those unpleasant emotions should not be called a fear of flights.

The real fear of flight makes the person avoid traveling by air but if he must fly then that unfortunate person will have frayed nerves.

Besides, people very often mix up aerophobia with other forms of “phobia”, for instance, claustrophobia, acrophobia (fear of height), fear of uncertainty and impossibility to influence the event. In actual practice there are mixtures of these fears and one article is not enough for explanation of this phenomenon.

The worst cases of aerophobia and other phobias can be treated by a psychologist, how it is fortunate Russia has the specialties who work in this domain. Sometimes pilots, flight attendants and other personnel whose life is a part of everyday flight are invited to the lectures; psychologists, in their turn, teach their advisees to control fear.

If the fear of flight is not too strong, you can manage it by your own efforts. Your attention, please! At first, let’s discuss what we should not do.

The first thing you should not do is drinking alcohol as a depressant. This can only harm you, especially in the cabin with dry air and low pressure on the board. On high altitude alcohol action increases and even a little of it can bring you to intoxication, total breakdown and quickly can cause bad-head.

The second thing you should not do is to study the information about the airplanes too thoroughly; also to search the information about accidents with this model of airplane on the internet as much as you would like.

Going up airstairs keep in mind that nowadays the airplane is the safest means of transport. How often do you hear about air crash?

Yes, sometimes it happens, once or twice a year, but if we take into account how many flights are realized all over the world daily, then it will turn out that air crushes are very rare things.

Imagine one more thing: there are from 4000 to 10000 airplanes in the atmosphere each minute!

Dozens of thousands flights are realized every day. Every year over 5 milliards people fly by airplanes, in other words, the whole population of the Earth figuratively speaking.

The total number of air crash victims is 300 -400 people. Only one person out of 12 million does not come back from the flight. If the passenger gets on occasional flight every day he will need 21000 years to get into air crash.

A day in the life of air traffic over the world

Studying the subject of aerophobia we came to a conclusion that about 65 per cent of people who suffer this affliction (it is a disease), are afraid of turbulence, jumping of airplane in the air and, in general, they consider that this piece of transport may just come crushing down from 10 kilometers height falling into the air-hole. We are preparing an article “Turbulence and elementary laws of physics” especially for these types of passengers.

And do not worry if the aircraft you are going to fly by is 10, 15 or even 20 years. For instance, in the major airline in the world Delta Air Lines more than half of the aircraft fleet makes those airplanes that are over 20 years.

Any aircraft is examined every day and it is even remarkable how thoroughly they do it. Look through our short article on this issue – airplane service.

“I would, but it does not help. It is because I am such an unlucky person. No wonder if the airplane I fly by crashes” – this is what many passengers think, in spite of all statistic data.

If we do not look at all logical explanations such kinds of thoughts hide then you have just to relax. For example, you can listen to music or nature sounds, read a book.

Generally speaking, you must find a way to distract yourself. As practice shows, many people are distracted by tasty food and drink, that’s why take a chocolate with you. As for coffee we do not recommend you to drink it while flying because caffeine may damage your bad nervous system. Instead of coffee it is better to take the herbal pill with water.

All above mentioned methods do not help you, do they? Then close your eyes, increase focus on the way you breathe and imagine the place you are going to. This is a wonderful country that you want to visit, isn’t it? You are on your way of achieving your dream. This trip will help you to make progress in your job, won’t it? It means that now sitting in the airplane you are following up your future wealthy being.

And summing up, there are some facts about airplanes:

• The plane stays clear in the air like any car on the road and a ship on the sea.
• Absolutely all systems of the airplane are reproduced, and some even have 2 or 3 reserved copies.
It is a common case that there are 4 brake systems, 3 landing gear extension systems, 3 fuel flow systems, 3 fire safety systems, 3 aircraft control systems and so on in an aircraft.
• The passenger carrier has at least two engines. All engines failure is an off chance. For example, the only one engine failure happens per 2 million hours of flight that makes up 228 years of constant exploitation.

  According to the current requirements for the aircrafts of pa
  ssenger aviation, the airplane with one engine failure must keep on flying without descent (at normal flight weight and in simple weather conditions) and safely make a normal landing.
  For instance, scheduled time of emergency flight on single-engined takeoff of the popular Boeing 737 is two hours.

• The engine is one of the most expensive pieces of an aircraft. It costs 10 million dollars, that’s why it is handled with great care.
• Each air crash has its own reason, and more often, not just one, but a combination of circumstances. Each of these kinds of cases is thoroughly investigated and certain measures are taken in order to avoid it.
• Every year the total passenger flow goes up by 10 %, and the number of accidents goes down by 15 %.

Taking into account all these and statistics, we confidently state that the airplane is the safest means of transport on the Earth!