We’d like to share a few considerations for those who are controlled by their travel fears and a bit apprehensive about traveling the world.

The travel fears that can control us

What are the travel fears you have? I don’t want this to become a venting session where we get into deep dark secrets, but I do want you to know you’re not alone. There are many fears that still control us through each phase of life. The goal of this article isn’t to eliminate those fears, but rather mitigate them so you’re not controlled by them. My own personal belief is that when you let your fears get the better of you, you’re no longer in control of yourself. Imagine all the adventure you could miss out on if you don’t get out of your self-imposed comfort zone?

Tackling and controlling travel fears isn’t going to be done overnight. We’ll touch on what we think are a few more common reasons we’ve heard of that prevent people from traveling. There are certainly far more things inhibiting people from doing anything, but to focus us a bit more on just a few topics, we’ll look at the following.

• Aviophobia, a fear of flying
• Xenoglossophobia, a fear of communicating in a foreign language
• Atychiphobia, the fear of things not going as planned
• Atelophobia, a fear you’re doing it wrong

This isn’t meant to replace any advice you’re getting from a medical professional. I just want to have a rational conversation that I get it, you’re not alone, and we’ve all been there in some capacity before.

Aviophobia, a fear of flying

Can I raise my hand and admit that I’ve had a fear of flying? It was also a mild fear–one that made me cast doubt about flying, though never enough to keep me from getting on the plane. I’ve wondered if I would be getting safely off the plane at the end of the journey. With constant reminders these days of the perils that come with air travel, it’s not a bogus concern.

I’ve had a Lyft driver admit to me that he gets over his fear of flying by getting intoxicated. I certainly can’t say that’s the best method to overcome a fear, but I think what he was trying to say is that it’s easy to overthink things. Having some “liquid courage” would reduce that tendency to overthink. But it’s also true that looking at things rationally will also achieve a similar goal.

But what are some ways this fear is irrational?

Safety by design

What I ended up doing was thinking about this logically. If something happens while in the air, the plane won’t simply fall out of the sky. Those big wings on the plane will help it glide back down to the surface and the altitude should give pilots enough time to find the best place to land. Turbulence might feel scary, but think of them as just potholes or speedbumps in the sky. As long as you’re belted in your seat, you should be fine.

There are many redundant systems on the plane to make sure pilots aren’t flying blind. So, even if you look outside and you can’t see anything, it doesn’t mean the pilots are in the same boat. It’s fair to recognize that some airlines are riskier than others, but most major airlines follow roughly the same safety procedures.

Pilots go through years of training before they’re allowed to fly your commercial flight. And if you worry about the possibility of the pilot going through a mental episode, a single pilot is never allowed to be left alone in the cockpit. There are controls in place to help minimize the likelihood of this.

Safety in numbers

If all else fails, just go to FlightRadar24 and zoom out to see all the flights in the air at the same time. This should be proof that plane travel isn’t risky. You might hear about one incident, but tens of thousands of flights go off without any material issues each day. Air travel is undeniably safe, so you should take comfort in it not collapsing for everyone all at once.

Knowing the weather on your path

Let’s talk a little more about turbulence. You know that feeling of running over speed bumps in the air? That’s really all it amounts to in terms of the physical forces acting upon the plane. It might seem odd because air is invisible so you assume it’s uniformly dense. But we know that’s simply not true.

Sometimes it can be a bit more obvious where bumps will occur. If you’re going through a storm cloud on takeoff or landing, you’re going to feel the bumps.

Want to see the current view of what turbulence looks like? Then check out https://aviationweather.gov/gfa/#obs and look at current conditions across the world. What you might care about more in this context are the carat symbols (those triangles with no bottom line). These are where other pilots reported experiencing turbulence in the sky. When pilots say it’s a smooth or bumpy ride along their path, they’re referencing something similar to what’s reported on this site.

Want to know what rough path you might be taking? Go to https://gcmap.com/ and to get a sense of your path. Just knowing what’s coming can help alleviate the stress of experiencing it, especially if the pilot’s words don’t bring comfort.

The effects of turbulence feel stronger if you’re in the back of the plane. This could be your excuse to move up to business or first class!

Rationalizing specific events

Yes, there have been a number of issues with flights that come up in the news. A near-miss Southwest flight. The Delta flight that overturned. Stories about diversions like the potential bomb threat on AA. Collectively, it makes you wonder about the safety of travel.

If you measure safety by the mortality rate, air travel is undoubtedly one of the safest ways to travel.

But, of course, there is a wider variety of outcomes than just living or not. You could get injured while in travel or the emotional damage could scar you for life. Those are real possibilities, but the odds of it happening are incredibly small. Does the risk of a car accident keep you from stepping foot in a car? What about the risk of getting hit while on a bicycle? Or the off-chance that a tree falls on you as you’re walking down the street?

The best advice I have is to rationalize it as much as you can if you have a fear. Is there a threshold of risk that is acceptable to you? Everyone has a limit, and getting comfortable with your limit is a chance to become satisfied with the choices you make.

Also remember that the media feeds off these events. They’re looking for captivating content to report out on that will attract eyeballs. So try not to get wrapped up in the media hype. Air travel isn’t any extra dangerous than it was a year ago.

Xenoglossophobia, a fear of not knowing a foreign language

Here’s one that gets me still to this day. I’ve had some hesitation at times with interacting with locals in other countries, be it at restaurants or buying tickets to an event or just asking for directions. My fear–rational or not–is that I won’t say something correctly or I come across as brusque or unintentionally rude. Admittedly, this fear comes up a little more in Japan, a country whose language is built around politeness and I worry I might say something to offend.

Not knowing the language and culture is normal, almost expected

I ultimately end up needing to remind myself that people will know we are tourists wherever we go in the world. There’s a basic expectation that tourists aren’t going to get all the local customs right. But you can always try. And the secret sauce is indeed just that–try. If you try to learn a little bit of the language, locals will be more accepting. If you try to learn a little bit of the history and culture of the place you’re visiting, locals will appreciate it.

Learn a few phrases that might get you by, but one of the biggest ones you can ask is if you can say “do you know English” in their language. Whether that’s a “parlez-vous anglais” in French or a “Sprechen Sie Englisch” in German or a “habla inglés” in Spanish or a “eigo ga dekimasu ka” in Japanese.

You have made an effort to communicate in their language and they will try their best to communicate back to you. In our years of travel, this is arguably the most powerful statement to say if you’re looking to start a conversation, even a brief one. If you just start off talking in your own language, there’s no shared interest in making communication work from your end and they will mirror that to you. But starting with their language, there’s shared buy-in. They might not know how to speak it, and the conversation might be brief, but you can then efficiently move onto someone else who might help more.

This could be a chance to build your education

When we have a new destination circled on our calendar, we spend some time learning about the place we’re going to. I spend some time with the kids leading up to the trip to watch some informative videos about the country. Perhaps we spend some time on Duolingo to learn a little bit of the language. Or we head over to the local library and check out some books to read up on the destination.

Every trip out of our comfort zone is an opportunity to teach ourselves and our children about the world around us. And the journeys we go on are much more than the lie-flat seats on a plane or a suite at a nice hotel. It’s a way to read up on the world and then walk in their shoes once we get there. Not every trip will have the same level of immersion, and that’s OK, but it’s important to try.

If you have a fear of messing up the language or the culture, that’s fine. Stop placing all that undue stress on yourself to get it right.

Atychiphobia, a fear of things not going as planned

We’ve all been there before: you book a trip that you want to be perfect and it goes upside-down. Your flight goes mechanical and it’s delayed a full day. Or you show up at your hotel to find it’s not what you imagined. Maybe you rent a car and then get into an accident during the trip.

Stop seeking perfection

Stop being a perfectionist. Things aren’t guaranteed to be perfect in your everyday life, so why are you expecting your vacation to be perfect? Once you accept the fact that things will go wrong, you can move past it quicker and get to resolution.

While you’re at it, please remember that while you’re frustrated that things go wrong, it’s not all right for you to take it out on the first employee you see. That employee might be your only way to get things back on track. Getting them to help you out and on your way should be the exact end-result you wanted when you started the day.

We know things won’t go right all the time. That’s why we stopped planning big things for us on the day we arrive to the destination. Placing so much emphasis onto on-time arrivals makes it just so stressful if there’s a delay.

Have a plan to get back on track and follow it

Have an actionable plan to get thing back on track. Flight delays or cancelations? Find out what other flights are on sale that would as an alternative for you. That can be as simple as a search on Google Flights. It would also help if you booked with a credit card that gave some trip interruption benefits that allow you to take recovery into your own hands.

Worry about the compensation piece later. You have time after your journey ends to get that part squared away. Right now your focus should be on getting yourself back on track.

Arguably, this can be the best benefit of having elite status

When things go awry, who does the airline or hotel prioritize helping first? The one who gives them the most business (read: the most valuable customer). Thus, those with higher elite status will generally receive resolution faster. Logical, right?

When things look like they might start to get hairy, having top-tier elite status might mean you get customer service agents who can double-book you on alternative flights. It’s hard to put a price on how much this is worth, but it’s definitely an asset to have during irregular operations.

To be clear, we don’t advocate seeking elite status just for this benefit. But having elite status has saved us quite a few times over the years, even when the airline bent the rules in our favor to get us where we needed to be. Those bent rules are hard to come by if you don’t mean something to the airline.

Atelophobia, a fear you’re doing it wrong (or sub-optimally)

I’ve certainly known people who are afraid that they aren’t doing things the right way. Perhaps they need extra assurances that what they booked wasn’t laughably wrong. Or maybe they missed out on a benefit. That fear might even get so strong that it paralyzes you during the decision process so much that they don’t do it.

Does it really matter?

Is it fair to say “who cares?” to those concerns? I don’t mean that in a rude way. I just genuinely want to know why it matters so much to you. There’s no scorecard that everyone gets graded on if they didn’t use the right miles to book their flights. There is no competition. Who cares if you used a different points currency that caused the price to be 10,000 more points than an alternative?

If you went on the trip and enjoyed it, isn’t that what matters the most? I’ve made plenty of mistakes over the years. You learn from them and move on. Or sometimes you don’t even realize you made a mistake. In that case, perhaps ignorance is bliss? You can’t correct what you don’t know is wrong.

Just remember your goal isn’t to be hyper-efficient with your points or routing. Your goal is to enjoy life while you still have it. Isn’t that why we’re all in this hobby together?

Build off your prior experiences

Think of this as an iterative process. Even the so-called “experts” are learning all the time. There are going to be new things everyone experiences and some old things that will challenge us. The point is to learn from the past and make yourself stronger in the future. Do I admit that I did things incorrectly in the beginning? Absolutely! Am I still doing things incorrectly? Probably, to some extent.

To err is to human. That’s especially true in the points world. You might not have the optimal points that gets you the best rate. There’s no shame in that but maybe it encourages you to earn those points for the next time you travel.

There is no right or wrong answer, just one marked by efficiency and that efficiency should get higher over time as long as you keep at it.

Suggested reading:

• Primer: How to Travel with Kids and Infants
• The Travel Gadgets That Make Our Travel Easy
• How to Book Award Travel Like a Pro