Do you have aviatophobia?

A phobic response to flying
The recent crash of an airliner in suburban Buffalo, New York may have sparked underlying anxiety from those with a fear of flying.

Although this fear is very common most people manage to make their flight without too many difficulties. In other words they have a fear of flying (or more usually a fear of crashing) rather than a phobic response. A flying phobic would not fly not matter what inducement was given.

Actually that's a useful (non-medical) way to determine is a person is phobic about a situation or simply has a strong fear; would you do X for a £1Million? If a person says yes then it's a strong fear, if they say no regardless of the amount of money then you have a phobia.

In the CNN article linked here, mention is made of using hypnosis to reduce the anxiety and even remove the phobia. The article seems to suggest that even seeing stories on the news about aircraft crashing can trigger off the extreme fear response.

It's worth noting that a fear of flying can also be a disguised form of claustrophobia or even fear of loss of control.

Anyone tempted to try hypnosis for a phobia would do well to find a practitioner who has been trained in Tom Silver's Emotion Replacement Therapy. This hypnosis based technique links the fear to physical body movements whilst in a hypnotic session to effectively let go of the phobic response.

I have found that with the right client ERT has an astounding ability to allow the client to let go of the negative emotion and replace it with feelings of calmness and event comfort.

I'll post a link to a video if I can find it for you. Tom Silver is based in California but he has trained students from around the world in the ERT method .