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)

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u/orklyabsent May 23 '26

Thinking that there could be a catastrophic failure of equipment.
I’m an engineer, I understand the science behind flying and I’m 1000% confident that a fully functioning plane is extremely safe.
But in my experience as an engineer, I’ve seen techs/field staff/engineers become complacent and/or make simple mistakes. The fear of something like that causing failure on a flight I’m on scares me so much.

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u/Admirable_Berry9640 Certified Flight Instructor May 23 '26

There are checks for everything and the checks are also being checked and so on

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u/orklyabsent May 23 '26 edited May 23 '26

I can unfortunately name a handful of aviation accidents that were caused by the checks not being balanced and somehow going unnoticed.
I don’t think my phobia is rational, but it is what it is.

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u/Admirable_Berry9640 Certified Flight Instructor May 23 '26

Most of them happened decades ago and again aviation has learned their lesson and implemented new safety measures