Fear of Flying: Now It's Even Scarier Up There

These are busy times for the departure lounge bars of the world's airports. "There's no way I was getting on my flight sober," says an Australian executive about his much-delayed flight home from New York to Bangkok when airports opened after the Sept. 11 air attacks in the U.S. "And it wasn't just me. The bartender was saying she'd never worked so hard."

Fear of flying is often aggravated by catastrophe. Stress and anxiety are known to trigger phobias: many people develop an aversion to flying after an individual crisis, such as the death of a relative. And global events like the...