Imagine that you are boarding a plane for a business trip or a vacation, and you feel a tightness in your stomach. You hold your breath as the plane takes off, hoping for a safe departure. Once the plane is in the air, you wait until the flight is finished, and you can feel calm again. It happens to at least one in three Americans.

Fear of flying, or aerophobia, as it can be termed, is extremely common in adults in the US. As a result, some people have never been on a plane in their lives because they can’t handle it. Certainly, safety concerns over the last few years have contributed to the issue, even though flying is said to be safer than driving a car on the road.

So what is it that makes people afraid? “I’ve flown before but I typically prefer to drive. I don’t know, it just seems like I have more control over my fate that way,” said 25-year old Anthony Mennuti, a Montclair, NJ resident.

“For me it’s all about the takeoff,” said Douglas Frye, a 34-year old Brooklyn, NY resident. “At that point you are cargo. You have lost all control of your physical being and if something happens to the plane that’s that.”

Despite a disturbing experience flying on New Year’s Eve where his plane lost one engine and had to make an emergency landing, Frye continues to fly.

”It’s the only way to get where I’m going,” he explained. “My girlfriend and all of my family live outside of NY. It’s either that or never see them.”

Taking the risk despite your fear can be helpful, or it can be hurtful, as was the case with 26-year old Cory Murphy, a Clifton, NJ resident. She decided to go skydiving to overcome her fear, and found that it actually made it worse.

“Scratch my European dreams,” she said. “I feel that I will never go on a plane again.” Despite a few plane trips after her skydiving experience, one with her family and another with friends, Murphy would prefer to drive in the future.

“Even though I know my chances of dying in a car accident are greater than flying, with a car I feel like I’ll have more control.”

Lack of control or other innate phobias are often what contribute to the refusal to get on a plane. Claustrophobia, fear of heights (agoraphobia) or fear of terrorism can all contribute to fear of flying.

According to therapists, an Initial Sensitizing Event (ISE) can come about in your younger years and trigger the fear of flying for the rest of your life. Hypnotherapy will sometimes help you work through these fears, which may have nothing to do with the actual act of flying in a plane at all.

Fear of flying is not limited to a certain group of people; in fact celebrities like Jennifer Aniston, David Bowie, and even President Barack Obama have cited a similar anxiety.

As a result, a large amount of support groups online are dedicated to breaking people out of their comfort zone by providing them with the facts about flying and the reality that fatalities are incredibly rare in the airline business.

Richard Pantone, a formerly fearful flyer, established a site called Fearofflyingphobia.com, which published an online manual that breaks down all types of questions directed to airline pilots and industry experts to provide the facts and help break the cycle of fearful flying.

“I think that knowing these answers will help you too in seeing that much of what you fear cannot happen in reality,” Pantone states in the introduction to his brochure. On his site, he posts links and many different resources that people can access to curb their fear.

“At my worst, I didn’t get on a plane at all,” Pantone revealed. He also shows helpful videos that let the viewer see the flexibility of plane wings and the ability of planes to fly in severe weather.

As of late, highly-publicized plane crashes or plane incidents, such as the bird strike that caused US Airlines plane to crash land on the Hudson in January or the devastation caused in 9/11, might contribute to people’s fears, since they are widely covered in the media in extreme detail.

Brandy Bishop, a 37-year old marketing director living in California, has always been afraid of flying, but said, “9/11 definitely made me more scared. Watching the second place crash live on TV freaked me out. I have only flown twice since then.”

Bishop, who is actually married to a private pilot, decided to seek out a psychiatrist about her fear last summer. “We discovered it comes down to a control issue,” she said. “I am completely at the mercy of others.” She also experiences motion sickness and now takes Xanax before each flight to help calm her down.

In addtion, she has her own theories about what times are better to fly. “I like wide body airplanes, like the 747 or 767. I want to fly super early in the morning, before the winds kick up, which I think makes it less bumpy.”

With flying on planes, it all seems to come down to control: how much you need in order to feel comfortable and whether you can hand over that control in spite of your fears. There are various reasons not to fly, but a few important reasons to think again.  Get on that plane, fly over that ocean, and get where you need to be.

Bishop elaborated on her first (and last) flying experience with her husband in his small, private plane. “I went up with him once. I made him take us back down right away. It was awful!” she said. “Thankfully, he still married me. Now that is true love.”