British Woman, 67, Overcomes 17-Year Fear of Flying by Listening to BTS Music Even During Turbulence

A woman from Southampton, England, who avoided air travel for nearly two decades because of a severe phobia has found an unlikely remedy for her fear: the music of K-pop group BTS.

Debbie Adamson, 67, said her anxiety around flying traces back to a turbulent trip from Budapest she took as a student decades ago, an experience that left her convinced every subsequent flight might end in disaster. That early fear never faded. In 2006, while preparing for a family trip to Orlando, Florida, with her husband and their three children, Adamson attempted to sabotage the vacation entirely by hiding her passport inside a magazine at the airport. Staff discovered the situation and issued her a replacement travel document, allowing the trip to proceed as planned. Adamson later described spending the following three hours in tears after the plan failed.

Two decades without flying

By 2008, Adamson had reached a breaking point with her aerophobia, the clinical term for an intense fear of flying that researchers estimate affects roughly one in 10 people. She made the decision to stop flying altogether, a choice that held for the next 17 years and shaped where and how her family could travel during that stretch of her life.

Her flying anxiety manifested physically as well as emotionally during the years she still boarded planes. She has described gripping her husband's hands so tightly during flights that he developed lasting joint pain in them, and said she routinely warned flight attendants about her condition as soon as she boarded, often already in tears before takeoff. She avoided eating or drinking during flights and regularly felt unwell afterward, describing the sensation as an uncontrollable, overwhelming terror rather than ordinary nervousness.

A shift in understanding

Adamson's relationship with flying began to change last year, after a friend who works as a pilot walked her through how planes actually function, information she said helped ease some of the fear rooted in uncertainty. She also joined an online support group for people who share similar anxieties, a step that gave her more confidence to confront the phobia directly. Motivated by an upcoming milestone, Adamson set a goal of booking a trip to Santorini, Greece, to celebrate her 40th wedding anniversary with her husband.

Before committing to that longer international trip, Adamson and her family returned to Orlando as a test run. It was during that flight that she discovered an unexpected tool for managing her anxiety: listening to music from BTS, the seven-member South Korean pop group composed of RM, Jin, Suga, j-hope, Jimin, V and Jung Kook. She said she made it through the entire flight, including a stretch of turbulence, without the physical distress that had defined her past experiences with air travel.

A carefully curated playlist

To prepare for the flight, Adamson built a dedicated collection of songs meant to keep her calm and distracted throughout the journey. "I made a bulletproof playlist, every single track I love," Adamson said, describing the approach she used to ensure she stayed engaged with music rather than her anxiety once in the air. She also described closing her eyes during takeoff and holding on tightly, a habit that helped her work through the moment rather than avoid it, and said the experience allowed her to reframe her relationship with the fear itself, recognizing that much of the pressure she felt had come from her own mindset rather than any external threat.

A message for others

Adamson has since spoken publicly about her experience in hopes that it might help others who struggle with similar phobias. She has been careful to note that she does not consider herself fully cured of her fear, but says she now has enough self-awareness to give herself permission not to feel frightened when flying, a shift she describes as significant even if the underlying anxiety hasn't disappeared entirely. She has also emphasized that there was nothing to be ashamed of in experiencing the phobia in the first place, noting that what had been missing for years was simply an opportunity to understand the fear more logically rather than avoid it altogether.

With her confidence continuing to build, Adamson has said she is now looking ahead to booking additional trips, a marked change from the nearly two decades during which flying felt entirely out of reach.

A common but often misunderstood fear

Aerophobia remains one of the more widely experienced specific phobias, with estimates suggesting it affects a significant share of the general population to varying degrees, ranging from mild discomfort to the kind of debilitating anxiety Adamson described experiencing for years. Mental health professionals commonly recommend a combination of education about flight mechanics, gradual exposure, and coping strategies such as distraction techniques, controlled breathing or calming music as tools that can help people manage the condition, though approaches that work vary considerably from person to person.

Adamson's story adds to a broader public conversation about flight-related anxiety, an experience shared by numerous public figures and everyday travelers alike, many of whom have spoken openly in recent years about the toll the fear can take and the varied methods they have used to cope with it. For Adamson, the unexpected pairing of a K-pop group's discography with a decades-long phobia offered a path back to something she had given up on entirely: the ability to travel by air without being overwhelmed by fear.