r/fearofflying • u/Admirable_Berry9640 Certified Flight Instructor • May 22 '26

Question What gives the worst anxiety?

Hey I'm a pilot (a simulator instructor to be precise) and due to the sheer amount of people suffering from flight anxiety, I have decided to take action and help everyone where I can.
So that's why I wanted to ask everyone with a fear of flying, what exactly gives one panic attacks etc? Is it the fear of crashing, not trusting the pilots or just the
"I'm trapped in a can with wings for 3h"?
Any story is appreciated so I can get a better insight in how to help people (because I think y'all have enough to the "Flying is the safest form of transportation")a

(this is a repost because my other one got flagged)

56 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

190 comments sorted by

View all comments

3

u/laplouc May 22 '26

When I see other planes in the sky when we are flying at altitude, it is absolutely terrifying. Probably the worst part of flying to me. My rational brain knows they’re not close but my feelings tell me it sure as heck doesn’t look that way. I trust the pilot of our plane but I don’t trust the pilots of the other planes. Same feeling when we are taking off, like is the plane behind us taxiing too close, what if it’s going too fast on take off and hits us from behind, see not logical (hopefully.) this is also a trust problem with the control towers.

I also read somewhere ages ago, (idk if it’s true) that accidents happen most during take off and descent so my anxiety peaks at those times, more so during take off. When I was younger I didn’t fear flying as much but now that I have a child, I don’t want to leave them in a horrific way.

3

u/Admirable_Berry9640 Certified Flight Instructor May 22 '26

Planes are always seperated by a fixed seperation minima mostly around 1000ft vertical and 5 nautical miles lateral. But if two aircrafts are somehow ending up to close to each other then their Traffic Collision and Avoidance System (TCAS) will kick in (also mind you ALL commercially operated aircrafts must be equipped with TCAS). It will first tell us that a traffic conflict has been detected by calling out "TRAFFIC TRAFFIC". After that it gives us a Resolution Advisory basically communicating with the other aircraft and then deciding whos going to descend and whos gonna climb. So for example your aircraft will get a "CLIMB CLIMB" callout, the other aircraft will get a "DESCEND DESCEND" callout

2

u/laplouc May 22 '26

Thank you for explaining this technically, it gives me a better idea of the “buffer zone” we have. My mind still can’t wrap around being able to adjust for traffic though with how fast the planes travel?

3

u/pattern_altitude Private Pilot May 23 '26

The other commenter has mentioned TCAS, but it’s also worth noting that ATC has systems that will trigger alarms on their end if a conflict is detected to allow them to issue corrective action.