Am I normal ?

Yes of course you are normal, there are thousands of people like you who have a fear of flying, most of them ask the same questions about flying, and they have the same feelings about flying. The only difference between you is the special ingredient that makes you who you are. Please join our online community to meet like-minded people who can help you. If you’re not inclined to join in yet, then just read all the messages because they will inspire you, as they have inspired the thousands that have similar feelings to yours.

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The most common question about planes from people with a fear of flying is “How does something as heavy as a jumbo jet fly?” The answer is simple…take a brick into the garden and throw it and ask yourself why it doesn’t fly.

As you realise it won’t fly because it doesn’t have wings and that’s it in a nutshell, because, generally speaking things need wings to fly, in the sense that we mean it on this website.

Probably, what you find difficult to believe is that the wings can generate a force to lift the plane…a plane just looks too big and heavy for any force to lift it into the sky …and then propel it at 600 miles an hour.

Here's the answer:

It may look very heavy, but it’s nowhere near as heavy as it looks. It weighs as much as ten large lorries…and if you saw those alongside a jumbo jet, they’d look tiny by comparison. A jumbo jet is full of space, which weighs nothing, OK they fill the space up with some people and some fuel….but not all of it. There’s an enormous amount of empty space inside it. So the first thing is that size and weight don’t match. Try to stop thinking of planes as being heavy…they’re large. A brick is smaller and lighter than a jumbo jet but it doesn’t fly nearly as well though.

The CD set covers all the usual things people are scared of like; Can the wings fall off? Is turbulence dangerous? Is it more dangerous in cloud? How do you know where you are? What happens if you fly through a thunderstorm? The designer always makes the wings big enough for the plane and the plane’s size depends upon what it has to do. So the bigger the plane the bigger the wings. A plane flies because it has wings big enough to support it.

And of course we’re constantly reminded of the so-called miracle of flight. It’s not a miracle it’s a scientific fact. Planes don’t fly despite gravity; they fly because of it, and all the other laws of science. The same laws of science that allow us to understand how boats float in water, how trains run on rails and how cars travel along roads.

Remember, your fear is perfectly normal, and it can be overcome, starting today.