Anyone else become scared of flying?

[SereneHighnessPrincessTheresa]

I've just returned from a short break abroad and realised I'm now really scared of flying. I'm not a frequent flyer by any means but I've been on planes probably 20 times before without feeling like this. I especially hate take off and landing. I think it's the feeling of not knowing what is happening. I imagine a crisis going on in the cockpit and being unaware. Reading articles where the pilots are unaware of issues and then the 'fun facts about flying' my son decided to share. Did anyone get over it?

I've never liked flying. I think Christine Mcvie said the same thing. She used to be ok but developed a fear of flying

I've found I'm more fearful of all sorts of things as I've got older. I'm not scared of flying exactly but I do feel more anxious during the flight than I used to. But I'm slightly more scared of motorway driving and boats and various things where I don't have control. Is it the menopause maybe?

Phobias develop at different ages. Really interesting from an evolutionary point of view. I ended up with a fear of flying in my 20s. Sudden onset. I worked very hard on it and am now mostly OK. You will have to fly more to get rid of it but it is possible.

I developed a fear of flying in my early 30s that lasted a good number of years until I discovered the Flight Radar app. Just seeing all the planes that are in the air at any one time on the app really helped me put in perspective how miniscule the chance of anything going wrong really is. You can even track the tiny Flying Dr planes in Australia. I really love it it's so addictive! Anytime I feel myself having a wobble about flying now I get straight back on the app to calm myself.

I developed a fear of flying at age 21 …was fine til then….then had a turbulent flight to Greece….I’m 59 now and although still nervous am much better than I was….think it’s because I fly more often now…whereas it was just there and back once a year when kids were small….I have 8 flights booked this year …so it has become less of a fear….I flew to Australia at Christmas and was ok even with some turbulence…although that fear is never very far from the surface…..it’s the take off I don’t like

It's not flying I'm scared of... it's crashing. I've been on a couple of flights where we've had dodgy landings and a fly round where landing was aborted. I've got a friend who survived a crash. I don't know how she manages to get on a plane tbh. That said, flying is the safest form of transport.

Have you read The Crash Detectives by Christine Negroni? I didn't think much of it but noticed loads of reviewers saying the book had helped them get over a fear of flying.

I will try and read this, thanks for the suggestion.

@trakehner I do find flight tracker fascinating and it did help thinking about it and just how unlikely it is that anything would go wrong.

@NigelHarmansNewWife how your friend still gets on a plane oh my she is very brave. I'd consider all my luck used up! Just out of interest when they have more than one attempt at landing did they tell you? What happened after the aborted landing?

The aborted landing was at Heathrow over 20 years ago. The plane suddenly roared back up after getting close to landing - I had a window seat. The noise of the engines was awful. The pilot didn't actually tell us that was what had happened in so many words. We went round again and the landing was totally normal.

The landing at Tivat, Montenegro in a storm last year was worse. It was really windy and the approach is tricky anyway due to the mountains. The flight ahead us diverted to Dubrovnik because they only get so many attempts and there were other planes approaching. The pilot told us they have plenty of fuel as diversions are quite common and we circled for about 15 minutes before he could attempt the landing due to the weather.

My friend is very brave. She has physical and psychological scars from the experience. She does try to avoid flying, especially long haul.