People with a fear of flying tend to spend a lot of time worrying about the things that can go wrong.  I like to call them the "what if's" of fear of flying--what if we crash?  What if the plane's too heavy to get off the ground?  What if there's turbulence and the plane can't take it?  What if I can't take it and have a panic attack on board?  And the ultimate...what if I die? 

Fear of flying leads people to do strange things.  Avoid flying.  Drive for miles and miles.  Take trains.  Dread vacations and honeymoons.  Hate turbulence. Bolt off a plane just before the door closes.  But for a man in Scotland, his fear of flying was so bad, he could barely walk off the plane.

This last behavior may sound strange for a fearful flyer. Landing is cause for celebration:  the plane hasn't crashed and the agony of the flight is over.  Walking off the plane should be a blessed event.

It's likely that if you have a fear of flying, you don't often fly.  Maybe you even avoid flying.  But just because you have a fear of flying doesn't mean you won't have to visit the airport to pick up family, friends, and business associates.

What's in a Google keyword?  On our Fearless Flight.com website, I monitor keywords that people use in order to land on our site.  I've reached a conclusion:  people who have a fear of flying are a pretty morbid bunch. 

Most of the time fearful flyers search predictably for plane crash statistics or information about turbulence.  And most of the time, the keywords reveal the searcher's pessimistic attitude toward flying.  Fearful flyers believe that flying is not safe, and their search phrases demonstrate their negative bias toward flying. 

You'd expect me to be a flying fan.  After all, I work for Fearless Flight.com and help people overcome their fear of flying.  During Thanksgiving week I became very grateful that people can fly.  And as the Christmas holidays approach, I'm very happy that flying is a reliable and safe mode of travel.   Yep, I'm a flying fan! 

If you're approaching the holidays dreading the visit to the folks back home, maybe it's not your relatives that make you hesitate about the flying.   Maybe it's the fear of flying hanging over your head, making you apprehensive about the once-yearly holiday flight.

If you haven't flown for awhile (and that's the way a lot of fear of flyers operate--in a no-fly mode), you may not be aware that most airlines are now charging fees for your luggage.  The first bag is one fee, the second bag is even more, and if your luggage weighs over 50 pounds--woe is you! 

Nothing like reading about a few celebrity phobias to make a fearful flyer feel like being afraid of airplanes isn't the worst fear in the world.  Which lovely Aussie actress is afraid of other things that fly--would you believe butterflies?  She has to be in the minority with that fear, unlike fear of flying which is quite common. 

Who do you think is terrified of revolving doors?   He has a brilliant white smile but not when he's trying to get into a hotel with this kind of entrance. 

A fearless flyer recently admitted that her fear of flying was centered on being afraid to fly over water. “I’ve never flown over an ocean," she said. " In case of an emergency, where's the plane land?” I called in Capt. Ron for the pilot perspective and as always, he provided a helpful answer on why she shouldn't be afraid of flying over water: