Why do many people fear travelling by air?

Question

How does the elements of the weather - Thunderstorms,Lightning, Wet runways etc -, Aircraft Engines and Human factors etc, contribute to this fear of travelling by airplanes?

Answer 1

Have you seen the people that they make you sit next to?

Answer 2

The basic reason is that people fear accidents that they cannot control. You will realise that most motor car drivers are happy to accept much higher risks than aircraft passengers because they feel they can actively control their vehicle to use their skill to avoid accidents.

In addition, aircraft are fundamentally badly designed from a psychological point of view. The passenger cannot see where they are going or what the pilot is doing. They are constrained into seats where they do not have freedom of movement. People are squeezed into a psychologically overcrowded space; proximity to other people causes stress. The whole air travel experience consists of being told where to go, to check-ins, aircraft lounges, passport control etc. Finally, the riskiest moment, the landing, comes at the end so that people have literally hours to think about it.

I do not know the experimental data, but I would hypothesise that people feal more confident in a small plane where you can see out, and what the pilot is doing, even though statistically small planes are less safe.

Answer 3

I get scared everytime i go on a plane...i think about all the thing's you have mentioned, last year i flew for the first time to the State's, on my own. Although the flight was the longest i have ever done, i felt a lot safer because the plane was a lot more comfortable, the noises of the engines did'nt seem as loud either. This year i went to Spain and was glad i was only flying for 2 hours. I thought i had gotten over my fear of flying but i haden't, of course the threat of terrorism is always there but the way i see it is if you don't get on a plane then you can't go anywhere!

Answer 4

I've travelled by air for many many thousands of miles for the past twenty years, and only had a couple of 'near misses' ! One was taking off from Houston, the planes were lined up like a line of taxi cabs and followed each other out right up each others as*****!
I suppose I have always had a certain 'fear' not because of the near misses but simply because it doesn't 'feel' right ! What the bloody hell are we doing up there in the first place sitting in a missile which could burst into flame at any second ? its just not right, then we have a touch of this "Reverse thrust" thing coming into land, and your brains 'pop out' of your ears! I don't think we were designed for that ?
How any one can squeeze into a rocket ship and go blasting away into outer space beats me.
I did fly in the Concord from Bahrain to London once, it took about half the usual time to fly, and I was still scared in fact even more so!
My only comfort was looking around me and knowing that everyone else on the flight was just as scared as I was.
I would just like to add, any one says they are not scared BOL****S!

Answer 5

Well, if something goes wrong when you are that far up you know you don't stand a chance of surviving - that's a pretty scary thought. More people die in car crashes, but at least with a car crash you have the hope that you could survive it, you don't have that with flying. When you look at a big plane it really really doesn't look like it should be able to stay up there - that is pretty scary too.

Oh, and I agree with mykidsRmylife, the people you have to share space with - eek....! The food is pretty bl**dy awful too.

Reading that back, it reads like I'm afraid of flying, just for the record I'm not - not that it is anything of which to be ashamed.

Answer 6

only attempt to get a attitude of only what percentage flights take to the skies each and every 2d all over the realm, and how lots of those have an incident properly worth noting? very nearly none, ever. i'm scared witless on the theory of being 38,000 ft or thereabouts with no longer some thing less than me, pretty when we start up bouncing round in turbulence, however it is section and parcel of flying each day for tens of millions of human beings and fairly no longer some thing to agonize about (a lot less confusing suggested than performed i comprehend) yet attempt to loosen up, watch different passengers gently sitting reading and chatting and comprehend it is only a classic, ordinary, run of the mill flight. chuffed flying!

Answer 7

The fear for a lot of people is the fact they have no control over what is happening and add to that the fear of knowing if anything went wrong there is precious little they could do .

Answer 8

I don't know how safe flying is. I do understand that the optimum work on airplanes is not always done. Now, with terrorists and the like, the airplane is my last choice for travel. Remember this, "If God be for us, who can be against us?" - Romans 8:31. Peace and God Bless.

Answer 9

They're paranoid. The truth is, pilots are all trained to deal with these situations in the safest ways possible. They have huge amounts of experience behind the controls of an aircraft. People need to stop worrying.

Answer 10

My best friend and mum are both terrified. My mum seems to think the plane is going to fall out of the air without her extreme willpower holding it up. Any turbulence sends her into a fit, lighning just might cause a heart attack.

Answer 11

i dont know. i love traveling tho the air. maybe people have more of a fear since 9/11. it a shame cos i love it!