With recent news coverage of plane crashes, it’s reasonable to have some concerns about safety before booking a flight. While flying remains one of the safest modes of transportation, these high-profile incidents can trigger some anxiety.
Occasionally, however, fear of flying can be more intense, interfering with your ability to travel or even go about daily life. This type of fear is often known as aerophobia or aviophobia, and it can be a specific phobia, sign of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), or symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Fortunately, therapies like exposure and response prevention (ERP) therapy and prolonged exposure (PE) therapy can help. Read on to learn more about aerophobia, causes, symptoms, and treatment options.
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What is aerophobia?
Aerophobia is an extreme fear of flying on a plane. You might know that your fear is irrational, but you can’t help but feel scared anyway. Fear of flying is common, affecting around 25 million people in the United States—even those who have flown countless times without any incident.
In some cases, people with aerophobia experience physical symptoms like rapid heartbeat, trembling, sweating, or difficulty breathing as the day of travel approaches. During the flight, symptoms may escalate—causing trouble concentrating, nausea, or a sense of impending doom.
Signs of aerophobia
If you’re dealing with a fear of flying, you may find that you’ve developed one or more of the following behaviors:
- Avoiding air travel in favor of other forms of transportation, even when it’s inconvenient or inefficient.
- Checking or excessively researching safety statistics or potential mechanical issues.
- Ruminating on news stories or media coverage about plane crashes, even though these incidents remain statistically rare.
- Constantly asking flight attendants or other passengers about the safety of the flight for reassurance.
- Difficulty breathing, elevated heart rate, dizziness, sweating, and nervousness while thinking about flying, preparing to fly, or flying.
- Anxiety that persists for days or even weeks before the flight.
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What causes aerophobia?
Aerophobia may develop spontaneously. However, it can also occur after a prior bad experience on a flight, or exposure to media about plane crashes.
Specific phobias like aerophobia fall under the category of anxiety disorders—but these fears can also be related to obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Specific phobias
Specific phobias are a type of anxiety disorder characterized by excessive fear or worry that interferes with your day-to-day life. This intense and persistent anxiety can be related to specific objects or situations such as needles, throwing up, animals, and more.
Anxiety about flying is quite common, but not everybody develops a flying phobia. For people with a flying phobia, the anxiety goes beyond temporary nervousness—causing extreme distress that can lead to avoidance of flying altogether.
Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)
OCD is a condition involving a cycle of intrusive thoughts, images, urges, feelings, and sensations known as obsessions, followed by repetitive physical or mental behaviors called compulsions.
For someone with OCD, obsessions can center on a variety of fears including contamination, harm, death, or a loss of control. You may engage in specific rituals before or during a flight, such as counting or arranging personal items in a particular way to feel “safe,” or repeatedly checking your seatbelt and emergency exits.
While both phobias and OCD can involve intense anxiety and avoidance behaviors, they are distinct conditions (though they can co-occur). OCD is about using compulsions to try to neutralize distressing thoughts that can—and often do—occur repeatedly throughout your day, while phobias are reactions to specific objects or situations.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
PTSD is a mental health condition that can develop after witnessing or experiencing a traumatic event. This can look like having intrusive memories, such as flashbacks and nightmares, or avoiding situations, places, or people that remind you of the traumatic event. PTSD can also include physical symptoms, such as digestive issues, headaches, or the constant feeling that you’re in “fight or flight” mode.
If your past trauma involves a plane crash, hijacking, or other plane-related emergency—you may develop symptoms of PTSD that make you fear flying. This can make it extremely difficult to get on a plane, even if you logically know you’re safe.
How to know if your fear is a problem
Reasonable concerns about flying, such as worries about turbulence or flight delays, can be common and usually won’t prevent you from boarding a flight. These anxieties are grounded in rational concerns, and can typically be addressed by following standard safety protocols, choosing well-established airlines, or reminding oneself that the likelihood of accidents is extremely low.
“Given the news about plane crashes, it’s normal to feel uncertain,” says licensed therapist Marybeth Overstreet, MA, LPC. “You might also feel anxious because the news publishes these crashes but not every car wreck. But, I always remind people that if they can handle uncertainty while driving, they can learn to accept it when flying.”
However, if your fears of flying are getting in the way of daily life, work trips, or vacations with family, Overstreet says you may be dealing with a larger mental health problem.
Treatment for aerophobia
Tips for nervous flyers
If you don’t struggle to fly, but sometimes feel anxious before or during your flight, here are some tips to help you manage:
- Don’t try to fight your anxiety. Instead, let yourself participate in an activity that you enjoy, such as reading, writing, or watching a movie.
- Focus on your values. Remember why you are traveling, and what you hope to do when you get there.
- Remember that despite how you may feel, air travel is actually much safer than driving—something you likely do way more often.
- Practice mindfulness or deep breathing techniques that can help you stay calm.
- Limit caffeine intake, as it can contribute to increased anxiety.
Tips for people with OCD and/or phobias
If your fear of flying is significantly impacting your ability to travel or affecting your daily life, it may be time to seek professional help. Regardless of whether your fears are a result of a specific phobia or OCD, the most effective form of treatment is ERP therapy—a specialized form of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).
ERP therapy works by having you gradually confront the fears that trigger your intrusive thoughts, while a therapist teaches you to resist compulsions. The goal is to help you learn to tolerate the anxiety these thoughts cause, and reduce the behaviors you usually engage in to relieve that anxiety.
That doesn’t mean you have to fly right away if you’re not ready. You might start by just looking at a picture of an airplane during therapy. While doing so, you’d observe any anxieties or intrusive thoughts without trying to push them away, or perform any other compulsions—learning to accept discomfort.
Over time, you might start to watch videos of planes, or movies featuring plane crashes. “Or, your therapist may have you look at real life news stories where there’s been a crash landing but people survived,” says licensed therapist Taylor Newendorp, MA, LCPC.
With practice, you’ll find that your tolerance for uncertainty and discomfort increases, and your fear of flying becomes more manageable.
Tips for people with PTSD
Prolonged exposure (PE) therapy is a type of CBT that can help you confront and process traumatic memories and feared situations in a safe and controlled environment, gradually reducing the emotional intensity attached to these memories.
Your therapist will guide you to repeatedly recount traumatic events in your past, in detail. This helps you process the emotions and memories tied to the trauma, reducing their power over time.
Like ERP, it can be difficult to face your fears from trauma when doing PE, says Overstreet. However, the reward in doing so is getting to live a life that isn’t controlled by your fears.
Bottom line
Flying can cause immense anxiety and make it difficult for you to partake in certain activities, such as traveling for work, attending family events, or going on vacations. However, exposure and response prevention (ERP) therapy and prolonged exposure (PE) therapy can help you learn to manage and reduce this anxiety. By working with a trained therapist, you can build confidence and feel more at ease traveling in the future.