I have those on a regular basis...still can't look a raw egg in the eye. And that was over 30 years ago...

My ex wife to this day still refuses to fly.
we never went to any vacations beyond 750 miles drive, she woould rather drive than to fly.
I tried to talk to her, but she refused to even talk about it, or to admit she had / has a problem with flying.

My new gf is a gamer, and she would fly anywhere in the world.

As a kid I didn't much care about flying. I had a fear of it because it was an unknown. Went up on an ultralight plane (think wing, tail, engine), it was pretty cool. Then I went up on a helicopter. No problem. But the next week that helicopter crashed. Followed by the TWA 800, Swiss Air crash in Halifax, an American Airlines crash in Columbia and there was an Egypt air crash. Needless to say I wasn't going to get near a plane.

We had a school trip to Australia. I had to fly. It was a mess. Got prescribed something (i think it was valium) for the flights. But they wore off before all the flights were done, and I couldn't take more.

Flash forward a few years, wanting to get over the fear of flying I decided to go skydiving. Somehow it worked. Its not the take off that'll kill you, and I proved to myself that I've landed without the plane. Plus its cool to say that you've taken off in an airplane more than you've landed in one.

Funny about skydiving. I was going for my private pilot licence when I was 18 and ran out of money. For the hell of it I started skydiving in Lebanon Maine because it was close and cheap. I was HOOKED. Ended up with 1.2 hours free-fall time by the time I retired my log book. The thing is I always expected that when I exited the aircraft I would feel like I was falling and get freaked out by the height. It is, as you know, nothing like that at all.

I think I am going to drive out to Perris this weekend :):)

The best fear of flying program is:

http://www.amtrak.com

or http://www.nationalcar.com or http://www.hertz.com

I have to wonder if the white-knuckled types who scream like five year old girls when the airplane encounters turbulence also scream out loud when they hit a pothole in their car.

I also wonder if those afraid of flying drive timidly, or if they are the ones blabbing away on the cell phone and not watching the road.

The truth is, most fear of flying is based on ignorance, as those with the stories of conquered fears demonstrate--a little knowledge cured them. So I don't think fear of flying is a typical phobia. Fear of heights, fear of spiders, fear of snakes, etc. are rarely "cured" with an "aha" moment of realization something is actually safe. Also, these other fears have a much longer history than fear of flying.

I would add fear of flying and fear of heights are two different things. I know people who are afraid of flying who have no acrophobia, and pilots who are acrophobic.

I actually think people somehow talk themselves into fear of flying. But these people also tend to have no fear of other forms of transportation.

Fear is not a rational thing and knowledge doesn't necessarily cure it. If you've never had a fear of flying, please don't judge those who have. It is real and no fun . Most of us don't scream out loud or cause any disturbance.

Speaking of ignorance, your post is full of it.

I am a very well-educated guy who flies frequently and who has flown all of his life. I understand the physics and engineering governing flight very well. One of my best friends from undergrad is a Delta pilot with whom I talk often about flight (particularly regarding pilots' training for exceptional circumstances). And I'm also an uncomfortable flyer.

Your first mistake was to assume fear is a rational condition. Or that something as simple as 'knowledge' will fix it. I'm also not sure how you can exclude aviophobia from such common fears as arachnophobia. You can't.

There are a lot of reasons that people don't like flying. Sure, some people don't understand the principles of flight. Others don't understand what would happen in an emergency situation. There are also terrorism concerns. Or potential problems with the plane that have nothing do with pilot preparation and safety checks on the ground. Just because those sources of problems are unlikely to ever occur in a given passenger's lifetime does not mean they are not legitimate sources of anxiety.

Sorry, I'm not one to attack people on the interwebs but yours was a woefully uninformed post.