How I Beat my Fear of Flying

Jumping out of a plane was something I legit thought I would NEVER do. I used to be terrified of flying. My ground rule was that I would never let my fear stop me from going anywhere. I would rather have died in a plane crash than been confined to the borders of England. But, I would have rather driven to Thailand than boarded an 11-hour flight.

I was always OK with flying. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t enjoy it but I wasn’t particularly scared of it… Until 2011. A bad flight to Egypt shook me bad. We had the worst turbulence you can imagine and it lasted about an hour. I was in bits. I was praying for landing so I could get off and cartoon style, drop to my knees and kiss the ground.

Just as we were coming in for landing, the plane went straight back up into the air. There was no communication from the cockpit, presumably because they were concentrating on landing. Once we eventually stepped off of the plane, I could feel how windy it was and it was instantly clear that we had just been blown off the runway. No drama, but the anxiety it instilled in me resonated for years to come.

What if something did go wrong? Why was I putting myself in that situation? I began to catastrophise big time. My fear grew and grew. The thought of something going wrong and not being able to get out of the situation was what fuelled it. Imagine knowing something was wrong and not being able to do anything about. There’s no escape once you’re 30,000ft in the air.

I hated not being in control and having to put my trust in someone else. A great hatred and fear of flying developed. I frequently told myself that I would probably be OK if I knew how to fly a plane myself. During the run-up to a holiday, the flight was all I could think, and talk about. I should have been excited but I couldn’t think about the destination, only the journey there. Every tiny bit of turbulence had me on edge and I’d start looking at the stewards to see whether they were reacting to it. Listening to every announcement with full attention, trying to pick up on any anxiety from the pilot.

In 2014 I signed up with Charity Challenge to do a jungle trek in Sumatra. They took care of everything and I was anticipating the flight confirmation so I could begin my ritual of scrutinizing every scenario. Our flight was with Malaysia Airlines and shortly after discovering this, in March, flight MH370 went missing. My fear had never been greater. We were given the option to change our flights but I didn’t want to be that guy so I rationalised that it was unlikely anything bad would happen again. Queue flight MH17 being devastatingly shot down over Ukraine in July. Bad things happen in threes was all I could selfishly think.

I got sick of worrying all the time and I wanted to be able to be excited about my holidays. So, I decided to read into it. My dream was to do a fear of flying course with an airline but my budget wouldn’t allow it. I turned to a couple of tools that expanded my knowledge and helped me feel better about flying.

I purchased this book and never looked back. The first half of this book is written by an experienced BA pilot. It explains the mechanics behind how planes actually fly and even touches on how different weather can (marginally) affect the plane. The second half of the book is written by a psychologist who helps you cope with your stress and anxiety. I couldn’t recommend this book enough to anyone that dreads flying.

Armed with my knowledge I boarded that half-empty Malaysia Airlines flight and ended up soothing the women sitting behind me who was sitting terrified and alone. I knew what all the sounds were and understood the dropping feeling you sometimes get.

This app is probably more aimed at plane spotters. I know, how is that a thing? But, I found it very useful. It shows every single flight, air bound, in the entire world. Zoom out and you will see thousands of little planes in real time, just going about their business. Just seeing HOW many flights were in the air, problem free, made me feel so much better.

I couldn’t physically think a flight would be fine without immediately thinking ‘don’t think that. You’re tempting fate’. Spoiler alert, your thoughts don’t control planes. It’s OK to board a plane and feel confident. You’re not going to be punished by the universe for thinking everything is going to be OK. That is out of your hands. Regardless of how you’re feeling, whatever is going to happen will happen. So, why waste your time feeling anxious?

I began to let myself fantasise about the destination. What it would be like and how much fun I was going to have. Each time, I would land safely, have a fabulous trip and make it home in one piece. The more I did this, the more I began to relax.

This year I have been on no less than twenty flights and here I am writing this post. Old habits die hard though. Sometimes, I find myself on edge at turbulence, but I quickly relax and get on with what I’m doing. Flying has finally become as normal as getting into a car and I couldn’t be happier about it.

As you can imagine, the idea of jumping out of a plane was a nightmare for me. I used to avidly say I would never ever jump out of a plane. As I became more OK with flying, I started to think that actually, jumping out a plane would be like a final ‘fuck you’ to my fear. When Toby suggested finishing our trip with a baller skydive in Dubai my instant reaction was a grimace. But the more I thought about it, the more I was loving the idea.

Or lack of… I just kept waiting and waiting for the fear to get me. Sleepless nights, heart palpitations, not being able to think or talk about anything else. It didn’t happen. I’m serious. I slept like a baby the night before.

Can you think of a more beautiful place to jump out of a plane? I was last to board and first to jump so I was sat right next to the plastic style pull down door – with a view to die for. Probably the wrong turn of phrase to use but hey, I’m not dead so… It was so distracting. Here I was in the tiniest plane I had ever been in, strapped to a man I had just met with my fate in his hands. I didn’t have time to be scared before I was out of the door and dropping – no – plummeting to earth. I genuinely thought there would be some kind of resistance from the wind but there was not. Until the little parachute thing came out.

I’ve never experienced anything like it, my brain couldn’t compute what was happening so I wasn’t scared at all. After the parachute opened and we were still about 3000ft in the air I started having a little chat with my tandem jumper. His theory was that because you’ve never done anything like it, your brain doesn’t know how to respond and so, no fear.

I felt so proud of myself after it was all over. It really felt like I had kicked my fear in the nuts. Not only had I done something I previously said I would never do because I was too scared… I actually enjoyed it, it was seriously fun. Skydiving was an insane experience and I feel so lucky that I got to do it over such an iconic part of the world. It’s crazy to think that I could have missed out on this adventure if I had continued to let my fear of flying dictate.

If you’re reading this as someone who is scared of flying, I hope this has given you some motivation to try and get passed it. Stop wasting your valuable energy on pre-flight anxiety and try to overcome your fear. It feels good, trust me.