This may be of some help to you:

http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/learning-to-fly

Take the train. Time saving by flying isn't anywhere near as significant once you include travelling to the airport, checking in 2 hours before your flight departs, waiting at the luggage carousel and then getting a bus train the 25 odd miles from the airport to the city centre where you're travelling too. The train is far more pleasant and civilised.

When I have to fly (States mainly) - I load up the iPod with a few films and have a good book. Seems to avoid me needing to actually think about being propelled in a highly pressurised over sized cigar tube at 650mph over the worlds second largest ocean at 33,000 feet.

I hate it too. I tend to avoid it nowadays. Funnily enough, the last time I flew (to North America) I was terrified for weeks leading up to the flight, and absolutely beside myself on the morning in question, but once I was on the plane and the doors shut, I was fine. The flight back was a piece of piss.

The anticipation is usually worse than the reality.

a period about 10 years ago of being pretty scared due to an aborted landing at Toronto. It lasted for about 3 years and then completely disappeared. Just as well because I make around 20-25 flights per year including holidays and business. Over the years I have spoken to a couple of commercial pilots and it is more than obvious that it is a completely safe form of transport making any fear completely irrational. I found this thought helped me 'if it was dangerous to fly would a pilot put his own life at risk?'. Certainly helped me dismiss my fears.

but I just hate all the hanging about and waiting.

Wish you could just stand at a plane stop, plane comes along, everyone gets on til its full up, everyone sits on fold down seats in first class or stands up holding onto those things they have in the underground in coach.

And for a little extra they can belt you in and administer knock out gas that lasts until you reach your destination. Can use the same oxygen masks used in an emergency and you wouldn't need to alter it in case of crash cos you'd rather be unconscious.

If I fly to Dublin mingle I will really be suffering for you bastards

but then got rational about it. Basically have a look around at the airport - look at how many flights and planes there are. Then consider how many airports there are in the country you're in, each with as many planes and flight. Then think of how many planes there are all over the world, how many flights per day. And how incredibly little goes wrong.

It's good to know a bit of the science behind the whole thing - to know that it's going to get a little bumpy when you go through cloud, what the bangs and whirrs are, how the plane descends from height - and think about those rather than the irrational. A lot of it is IS about relinquishing control - but you do that everytime you get on a bus.

If that doesn't work: drinks trolley.

I've had some terrible experiences. Oddly, as a child I loved it, and with my parents living abroad I used to fly a lot and enjoyed the whole thing.

Then about 15 years ago I was in a terrible storm over the east coast of the US which was so bad we to had to emergency land. Stewards were physically pulling people out of the loo and forcing them into their seats, the plane dropped lots of feet and all the lockers fell open,masks came down. I really thought it was the end and it put me off for ages. One bump and I'd be the one on my knees, praying.

But as the years have gone by I've got over it, and with my wife being a frequent flyer through her work and member of all these clubs and loyalty programmes, etc., being upgraded every flight and being able to use the lounges worldwide makes all the difference.

...however calm you might be in the outside, then you're a fool.

My wife refused to get on a plane for 20 years, then did a British Airways fear of flying course, which worked magnificently. They were talked through the mechanics and the voodoo of flying by their most trustworthy-looking silver haired pilots. (One of the pilots said, 'When I started flying, flying was dangerous and sex was safe. Now it's the other way round.') Then they were taken on a short flight. Nothing like taking off among a plane full of screaming people to make you think things aren't quite as bad as all that, apparently.

Anyway, she was left with a massive sense of achievement, and a piece of paper she could show to cabin crew on future flights so they were aware. She ended up in the cockpit for a landing in Oslo once.

So worth you thinking about if you can't beat it on your own.

When I started flying about 20 years ago, I was terrified and the only way I could manage it was to have a couple of stiff ones at the airport and top up with in-flight service(ah pre no-frills flying).

I gradually got over it.
It has been replaced by feelings of inhumanity, indignity, humiliation and hightened stress levels from being hearded on to no frills flights by RyanAir supervixons and suffering something just short of strip searching from airport security.

Stressed with such questions as:

is the shampoo in the check in luggage.
Is the check in luggage over weight.
Is the hand luggage too big.
have I printed my boarding card.
Is Faro the airport that RyanAir use for Rome.
How many miles is it from Departures to the boarding gate.

The only thing which helps is to wait until the last minute.
Stroll on hand my bag to the RyanAir supervixon (sorry steward/stewardess) and let them find me a seat.

When I sit down I am too knackered to be scared.

How I dream of the old days and topping with the in-flight free ones up to dampen my fear.

No but I believe they land in Denmark for Stockholm or in Sweden for Copenhagen. Not sure which way round.

who was a commercial pilot, had been for twenty years. He'd been in the RAF prior to that. He became very panicky about flying over water - a problem, unless you're happy sticking with internal flights - so his airline sent him for some sessions. They were paying, and the idea was that he'd get over the fear, go back to work, and all would be well. He did get over the fear but then realised that he'd never fully relaxed in his whole life until this point (relaxation being part of the therapy), but had been ridiculously stressed 'staying strong' as a pilot. As a result, he quit the job and decided to retrain. He was delighted, the airline less so.

"There are only two emotions in a plane: boredom and terror."

for me is fine.
Airports, however, make me sick.
It's not even the security that bothers me, it's the whole assumption that everyone is moneyed and revels in disgusting demonstrative wealth, just picking up some diamonds before flying first class to Fucking Dubai.
Don't they realise they let scum like me in.
The only thing to do is get mortally pissed.

but hate the flying. I'm not scared stiff, just bored stiff. However the airlines dress it up, it's a bus with wings. It may have been glamourous years ago but it ain't now.

Beam me up Snotty!

but just hate the enforced boredom of airports.

I avoid flying whenever necessary, and I hate going abroad for that reason. Standing around for hours on end and taking your shoes on and off and humphing wads of documents and tickets around? What's all that about? Do we really need all that security?

I wish planes were more like buses. Just turn up and wait at a stop and then get on one.