You might want to go see a therapist. Might be an underlying anxiety disorder.

I have occasional panic and have a fear of flights and other stuff that stem from my fear is of not being able to escape/relax but I try to consistently meditate and stretch daily to be able to handle the situations. The last flight I took, I was getting huge flares of anxiety and I just keep thinking “1,2,3...” etc in my head so I’m not focusing on negative thoughts. The daily meditation helps get into that “mode” when the stressful moments do come.

But yeah, see a doctor and/or therapist. Better than a bunch of random folks of the internet can do for you.

'.......am tempted to take a $400 loss just because the thought of getting on a plane again is making me feel sick.'

I think if you do this it will be a long time before you are able to fly again?

A friend of mine suffered a similar situation a couple of years ago. He was so nervous that he froze at the check-in desk.

As it happened, this turned out to be useful since it triggered some kind of procedure with the airline and assistance was offered immediately.

What happened then is that they took him to the VIP lounge where the pilot came and had a chat with him. He suggested my friend board the plane 15 minutes before anyone else just so he could get used to the idea - with assurances that he could get off again if he wanted to.

It turns out that was all that was needed; and the experience of being whisked through security with an air hostess on each arm was something he quite enjoyed too.

So, what I would say, is speak to the airline and tell them your concerns because they might be able to help you in a similar way?

This actually happened to me when I was younger. Nothing specific to trigger it, it just suddenly started out of the blue. My flight history sounds similar to yours - something I'd been doing very regularly my entire life.

I remember the specific flight where I got over my fear - a 10 hour flight to India on an Airbus A330 (I live in the UK). It must have been about halfway through when I was just so exhausted from being terrified that it just stopped. I had a couple of internal flights on very dubious planes immediately after this and they didn't bother me at all. Perhaps it's what psychologists call "flooding".

I'm now back to flying all over the world again and I really look forward to it. The worst part for me now is the hassle of security and delays and the like.

Anyway, I just wanted to give you some hope that there is indeed an end to all this. As others have suggested, in my case I think it was just a general anxiety issue manifesting itself in this way rather than a specific phobia of flying itself.

At which age did that start?

For me at 25 I had my first true panicked state while flying which coincided with being afraid of being on highrises + all bridges over Thames in London.

This all also coincided with panic attacks in crowded theatres.

I am currently 27 and it’s getting better. But damn it freaked me out the first time and when it persisted - I had been anxious before, but could control that.

But I agree - I myself think it’s pure anxiety which is disconnected from specific phobias; it’s just somehow triggered by specific high-level concepts.

I have a strong fear of flying, and I deal with it medicinally. My doctor wrote me a prescription for Xanax - I take one on the way to the airport, and by the time we're boarding, all the anxiety is boxed away.

This is a medically sound use for benzodiazepines.

Long-acting benzodiazepines like Klonopin for general anxiety will get you addicted, make you fall down, etc.

Short-acting BZs for situational anxiety are mostly safe and effective.

As you will see at airport lounges, many people self-medicate with alcohol when they fly, Xanax is a healthier option than that.

I had a heart-attack in Nov of 2014, and in the immediate aftermath of that, I had a lot of anxiety issues. To the point that it was keeping me from falling asleep at night (it probably didn't help that I had the MI while I was in bed, in the wee hours of the morning). Anyway, my doctor prescribed me some klonopin, and it absolutely worked great.

Then I went to work one day a couple of weeks later, and found a copy of Rolling Stone laying on the break room table, with an interview with Stevie Nicks. I read the article, and she talked about how she got addicted to klonopin when they used it to help treat her addiction to cocaine. Except she described the klonopin withdrawal as "worse than cocaine"[1]. Jinkies. I did some reading up on klonopin and immediately went back to my doctor and asked for something different.

Luckily for me, my anxiety issues eventually disappeared and I don't need to take anything for that any longer. But yeah, be wary of klonopin and related drugs. I'm sure they have valid uses, but I'd prefer not to mess with the stuff personally.

[1]: https://benzo.org.uk/nicks.htm

A friend was in the same situation as you, with the difference that he always in his life had fear of flying (and he moved abroad so he couldn't visit family or go on holiday without spending half the time on the road!!). He went to a training course that British Airways runs in the UK: https://www.britishairways.com/en-gb/information/travel-assi... and since then he's even flown across the Atlantic a number of times.

I'm guessing you're not in the UK, so probably flying across the Atlantic to go on this course would sound as a sick joke, however you might want to check if in the US there's anything similar ran by other companies (or even BA!).

For me the fear comes and goes. At some points flying feels like catching the bus. At other times I am 100% confident I won't make it to the other side! so I don't think it is rare to be scared of flying even if you fly often (I do). In my case there's also the problem that I fly a lot with my family, so I'm also scared for them.

I fly just about once a week and have for 18 years or so. Never had a problem with it until 5 years ago when we had our first kid, and that's when anxiety started. I would have a recurring dream about my plane rolling over and pancaking into the ground. Sometimes I would have that dream while I was sleeping in a plane, which was fun. Panic attacks - the kind that start to feel like a heart attack - were common.

It lasted for almost a year. I saw a doctor to make sure there was no underlying physical condition I should be worried about. (Being able to tell yourself that it's probably not a heart attack when it feels like a heart attack is really helpful.) He recommended talking to a therapist, which I should have done but didn't. I did self medicate with alcohol more than I should have, and I don't recommend that.

Ultimately I found that a stress free airport routine (plenty of time, pre check, and hanging in the club lounge) helped as did breathing exercises while on board. Generally in life it was get more exercise, put the phone away, reduce work stress, and so on. Just regular life stuff. But I never stopped flying, and eventually the anxiety stopped.

This 737MAX nonsense is certainly bothersome, but to me no more so than all the other ways the whole thing can go south in any given aircraft in any given day.

Bottom line, I would suggest talking to someone who can help you identify the possible underlying issues. Hope you can work it out.

I used to be deathly afraid of flying until I took a flight in Costa Rica in a small 20 passenger propeller plane through a storm. The turbulence was so bad, you could see the pilots barely holding on to the controls, people were screaming and we were bouncing off our seats.

When we landed, I couldn't believe a plane could survive turbulence like that, and the pilots didn't really seem disheveled.

Ever since then, I've never been afraid of flying again.

There is a psychologist in the Netherlands who has developed a very brief (1 session typically) phobia treatment based on her research into fear memory activation and reconsolidation. The theory is that when a fear memory is triggered, it can go into a labile state whereupon it can be blocked from being re-saved using Propranolol (a common beta-blocking drug). There was an article in the New Republic about her research it:https://newrepublic.com/article/133008/cure-fear You can find more information about the treatment here: https://kindtclinics.com

Any chance you've had a recent shift in your personal life? The reason I ask is that I also didn't have a fear of flying until later in life and what I think is the source was meeting my wife (to-be) and then having kids.

This may sound silly, but before, when it was just me, without dependents, I didn't think as much about doomsday scenarios. Of course, I was still afraid of dying, but it just didn't cross my mind as much. After becoming a husband and a father, I started to (perhaps irrationally) worry about (a) not being there for my family or (b) the lives of the people I care so much about (when flying with my wife or kids). Fortunately flying is not a regular event for me, although I still do it when necessary (probably once or twice a year).

Previous discussion with good advice here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17654487

For focused help, definitely see a therapist. I wish I could recommend a way to find one focused on this service. I wish recommend-me-a-therapist was a service that existed.

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Whenever I find myself on a rough flight, I generally find it helpful to put on either heavy metal or an action movie or to imagine myself as an aerial photographer returning from a dicy mission over the Baku oil fields.

Try some fear of flying and anxiety 'talk downs' on Youtube. If it gets really bad, get a referral for a psychiatrist and try taking something like Atavan (xanax didn't work for me). Combining the medication with the narrated anxiety "talk downs" has given me decent results.

Look into beta-blockers - they are safe and not addictive, I take them every time I fly. They will keep you cool and collected without the negatives the come with benzo's.

Anxiety can be a symptom of some physical conditions, and maybe you have one that's exacerbated by air travel. Might want to get yourself checked out.

I developed a fear of flying the summer after my freshman year in college, when my flight from NYC to London had engine trouble shortly after takeoff and had to dump fuel and return to the airport. I was quite nervous during the incident (it didn't help that I'd read John Varley's novel "Millennium" the previous night!), although in the end nothing particularly dramatic happened, and I was well aware that a single engine failure on a Boeing 747 wasn't that a big a deal. In fact I don't recall being particularly concerned about getting right onto the next flight, which was uneventful. Unfortunately I had the whole summer to anticipate the stress of the return trip and incubate a dread of flying which ended up lasting me quite a few years. In fact I didn't fly at all throughout the rest of time at college, once going so far as to take a train across the country to visit a friend. Avoiding flying didn't help: it just built the fear up in my mind into a formidable monster. I was headed to Europe after college and seriously considered trying to take a freight ship; that's how bad it was. And while I did fly in the end, the dread I felt in the weeks approaching made my life miserable.

While avoiding flying definitely exacerbated my fear, frequent exposure didn't really work that well for me either. I flew quite frequently after college and in grad school, and it nevertheless took many years for me to get over my fear.

Here's what worked for me over the years. It was a combination of things:

(1) On the whole I associated flying with enjoyable outcomes -- in many cases, visiting my partner, who lived far away. Unfortunately, that tended to make return flights after an enjoyable visit all the more stressful! It sounds silly, but I made a conscious effort to shift my perspective a bit: both the flight there and the flight back were an integral part of the visit. I equated the "ritual" of flying with seeing my partner. It worked.

(2) I read a lot about aviation. Not just shallow statistics about how safe they were -- I'll admit went down the rabbit hole a little, learning about the physics of flight, aviation technology, meteorology, models of planes, etc. I played flight simulator games, seriously considered taking flying lessons, and so on. One result was that every flight I had a bunch of things to look out for both inside the cabin and out the window (oh, I'm on a Fokker, wonder how the tail speed brakes will work... nerdy things like that), and being occupied with those details diverted my attention (and was kind of fun besides).

(3) I learned to sort of "judo" my fear. I read up on air crashes and absorbed all the grisly details! When I got nervous during a flight, I would morbidly imagine all sorts of horrible things happening: lightning striking and setting off the air-fuel mix in the tank, the wings snapping off in violent turbulence, the engine suddenly throwing a turbine blade through the hydraulic lines, you name it. I imagined myself being pulverized, incinerated, dismembered, ... Of course all that over-the-top visualization had two effects: first, it made what was actually happening on the flight (namely, nothing much) seem boring by comparison, and second, it allowed me to confront the unlikely horrors of a crash with a certain amused detachment.

(4) The most important thing: I realized very early on that I wasn't really afraid of flying per se. I was afraid of being afraid of flying, if that makes any sense. It was the mostly uncontrollable physical response that I dreaded: the elevated heart rate, the cold sweat, the sense of doom, and so on. For years, I would still quite frequently feel that agitation before a flight; over time, it tended to be less of an issue once I was actually on board, but any little disruption of the routine (say, worse-than-normal turbulence) would bring it back. What I found, though, was that as unpleasant as the physical response was, it was manageable - sometimes it would be as simple as deep breaths and staying hydrated. Realizing that I had at least some control over it broke the positive feedback loop that was feeding the fear and eventually it stopped bothering me: I'd anticipate my heart beating faster and so on, but didn't really fear it, so it didn't end up getting out of hand.

Basically, it took a while for my fear to go away completely, but over the years it became less and less of an issue. Now I simply dislike flying because it's boring and uncomfortable, not because it's frightening :-)

if your leg suddenly started hurting badly you would go see a doctor. If your mind starts hurting you (this is arguably hurting you) why wouldn't you do the same thing? Only in this case it's a doctor of the mind not the body. I.e. therapist, psychiatrist, etc.

Go to a psychiatrist and get some benzos.