Mum who refused to fly for 17 years and lost boarding pass on purpose finds cure

Mum who refused to fly for 17 years and lost boarding pass on purpose finds cure Debbie Anderson has found a very unusual answer to her problem A mum was so terrified of flying she deliberately lost her boarding pass for a family holiday - only to sob when helpful airport staff gave her another. Debbie Adamson suffers from aerophobia, an intense fear of being on an aeroplane, which affects approximately one in 10 people. The retired headteacher says at its worst she once hid her boarding pass in a WHSmith magazine at Gatwick airport in a desperate attempt to avoid flying to Orlando, Florida, with her 'theme park addict' husband and three kids. The 67-year-old says she 'didn't care' even when her kids started sobbing but when airline staff simply printed her another one so she could still fly she was left 'crying solid' for three hours. Her phobia started during the 'world's worst flight' from Budapest when she was a student that left her terrified that every airplane she got on was going to crash. However, she forced herself on eight trips to Disneyland Florida with her family but says cabin crew would have to console her 'howling' and she had to hold her husband tightly. Finally she decided she 'couldn't do it' anymore and quit flying for 17 years in 2008. After learning how planes worked from a pilot pal and joining a Facebook support group, she decided to book a trip to Santorini to celebrate her 40th wedding anniversary in 2025. After learning more about her phobia, Debbie discovered that listening to a playlist of her favourite songs by Korean boyband BTS helped calm her sensory overload. Focusing on the 'bulletproof' list of K-pop hits allowed her to fly to Orlando in Florida, US, again last year where she 'didn't bat an eyelid' even during turbulence. Now she hopes to spread awareness about her phobia to encourage others to 'give themselves permission to not be frightened'. Debbie, from Southampton, Hampshire, said: "When I was a student I flew to Budapest and we had the world's worst flight, it was my first flight and I was on my own. When we landed it bounced down the wrong way and there were sparks coming off the wing tips and it was lurching. It was your horror come true. "From that point onwards I thought every aeroplane I ever got on was going to crash. It was shocking and it was horrible. After that I didn't want to go anywhere on a plane ever again, I was terrified. I then went and married a theme park addict and I made myself go on those flights for my family. It was the flight crew that was my coping strategy. "When I had to fly during this terrified period, I would tell the stewardess [about my phobia] when I went through the door if I wasn't [already] crying. My husband used to come off every flight with permanent arthritis in his hands where I'd be holding onto him so tightly. "I can't explain it, you just can't control it. It's just abject terror, it's ridiculous. Even the slightest hint of turbulence I'd be crying again if I stopped. I never ate or drank, I came off flights feeling quite unwell. It was really quite bad. "One time I was sitting at the airport and said 'I need to go into the bathroom'. I veered into WH Smith and I had my boarding pass with me and I put it in a girly magazine where I thought no one would ever look on the top shelf. "I came weeping back saying 'I've lost my boarding pass, I can't go'. My kids all started crying. We got to an airline representative and said 'can you help, she's lost her boarding pass?'. There I was thinking they'd say 'she's got to go home' but they printed me another one. "I cried solid for at least three hours. I got onto that plane with dehydration I cried so much. I still did it though, it never got worse than that." Debbie revealed that she started learning how planes worked from her pilot pal and joined a Facebook support group to learn more about overcoming her phobia. After 17 years of refusing to fly she decided to book a trip to Santorini where she says she discovered that listening to her favourite boyband BTS helped to calm her sensory overload. Debbie said: "I'd always wanted to go to Santorini but I thought 'can I even face it?' My partner was pleasantly surprised when I suggested the Santorini trip. If I could pinpoint one thing, taking out the sensory overload was what changed it. I sat there with every sense bombarding me with distressing information. "So I thought I'd take two out and I made a bulletproof playlist - every single track I love so that I knew I'd keep listening. I shut my eyes during take-off and I also held on very tightly too, once I did that I began to rationalise it. "It just proved to myself that I gave myself permission not to be frightened anymore so I wasn't. All the pressure was put on me by my own mind. On the way back from the trip to Orlando the pilot said it was going to be a bumpy flight and it was and I didn't bat an eyelid. "Just as the first big bump came Bruce Springsteen started playing on the movie I was just watching and it was 'Born in the USA'. The plane went 'boom' and I just laughed. I'm completely different. [I was] bouncing along to the Bruce Springsteen film whereas before I would've been crying my head off with stewardesses on either side of me trying to calm me down. "It can be quite disarming when someone's howling." Now Debbie says she is looking to book more trips in the future and hopes to spread awareness about her experience to help others living with the phobia. Debbie said: "I'd never say I'm cured but having that self-awareness to think 'I'm going to take out those three senses and I'm going to give myself permission to not be frightened'. "It wasn't anything to be ashamed of, I couldn't help it, but what I hadn't done was to allow my mind the freedom to find out about this and be a bit more logical about this. It's understandable to feel like that but you don't have to and you can choose not to. It sounds so easy but it's so hard to do. I feel changed. It opens up a whole new vista."