A 50-year old man who boarded a plane on a domestic flight decided at the last moment that there was no way on God’s green earth that he was going to take that flight. So he ran. The man took off down the aisle, down the stairs, onto the tarmac and onward. Security personnel caught up to the old man and questioned him. He said, a strange sound coming from the side propeller of the small commercial aircraft gave him second thoughts about flying. As far as anyone could tell, the strange sound the old man heard was what others might call “the sound of the engine preparing for takeoff”. Eventually the old man was released after police realize that he was just a harmless man struck by a last-minute fear of flying. He was allowed to leave, to drive to his destination.
Aerophobia is the fear of flying. It is not the inability to travel in a plane. Most fearful flyers do actually fly, although, they find it very uncomfortable experience. Fear of flying differs considerably from person to person, from mild to strong.
Are there ways to overcome the flying phobia? Of course, there are many ways to dissolve phobia, as much as the other phobias. We should always remember that fear of flying like all other phobias, is a learned response. We were not born as a nervous flyer, we learned to feel this way. We have to decide once and for all that we do not have to learn to live with this fear.
Remember the much quoted exhortation, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”.
