Fear is flying high
As a series of crashes ratchets up air-travel anxiety, a Psychology professor explains why so many people are scared and offers tips for bringing that nervousness back down to earth.
Not long ago, getting on an airplane was a routine, if somewhat unpleasant, experience.
That started changing when a fleet of jets was grounded after crashes overseas. Then, a door fell off a jet in midflight. Then came 2025 and a flurry of high-profile accidents, including, in January, the first fatal crash of a commercial airliner in the U.S. since 2009.
Predictably, people are starting to get nervous about flying.
They don’t need to be.
Commercial flying is one of the safest ways to travel, said Chad Kendall, associate professor and Federal Aviation Administration chief instructor in Metropolitan State University of Denver’s Aviation and Aerospace Science department.
“Despite recent high-profile accidents, aviation safety data overwhelmingly supports that these events do not indicate a growing trend but rather isolated occurrences,” the former commercial pilot said.
Among that data: In 2024, 5 billion passengers flew on more than 40 million fights worldwide, according to the International Air Transport Association. During that time, the global accident rate remained less than one per million flights, Kendall said.
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So why do a handful of air crashes inspire such fear when, say, news of a car accident doesn’t typically make people afraid to get behind the wheel?
“We’ve become inured to auto accidents because they are more routine and plane crashes, thankfully, are less routine, so they assume greater significance in our brains,” said Randi Smith, Ph.D., professor of Psychological Sciences.
Despite the safety statistics, flying remains one of the most common phobias. Various estimates put the percentage of adults in the United States who are afraid to fly anywhere between 15% and 40%.
4 techniques for taming the fear-of-flying beast:Distract yourself. Many airlines offer movies or music. If not, download games or shows on your own devices. Listen to soothing sounds. Many apps now stream ocean waves or raindrops or other sounds that relax and block out real-time noises. Just fly. Smith calls doing the thing you’re afraid of “exposure therapy,” and said, “There’s a lot of research that points to its effectiveness. When you fly a lot, you’ll find your fear gradually diminishing.” Medication. If nothing else works, there is always medication, Smith said. As long as it’s not abused, it can be effective.
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The nature of air travel makes it particularly susceptible to phobias, Smith said. “Say you live in Denver and want to visit a friend in Lakewood. You schedule a time, and you go. There’s not a lot of time to dwell on it or the dangers.”
Whereas with air travel, you make reservations in advance, get to the airport hours ahead of your flight and go through security. “There’s a lot of time to fall into anticipatory anxiety,” she said. Then on the plane, you experience another common phobia trigger: “You have zero control.”
One thing you do have some control over, Smith said, is the conversation inside your head. “Yes, something terrible could happen. But how well you are able to turn down the volume on it” has a lot to do with how frightened you become.
The good news is that there are techniques and therapies that can help you overcome, or at least minimize flying anxiety, Smith said.
But, she said, if you grab the armrests with every bump or hyperventilate during takeoff, don’t expect any technique will get you to a place where you can’t wait to get on a plane. “Most of us don’t enjoy flying. We learn to overcome our fear because there’s a great reward on the other end.”
