So I flew two weeks ago -- a very short, 3-hours-round-trip trip to attend my best friend's wedding. I was all set to drive, but both my mother and my
husband insisted on my flying, because it was safer. 
The morning I flew I talked to my therapist about some of the recommendations here, especially the
5-4-3-2-1, and she added some recommendations on meditation. But really the thing that helped was having a friendly person sitting next to me. Also,
surprisingly, I found that having a window seat helps somewhat. I like being able to look out the window and judge where I am relative to the ground.
During takeoff (which is my worst time), I kept reminding myself about the analogy that to the airplane, the surrounding air feels like Jello. So as I heard the engines rev up, I said to myself, "Okay, here comes the Jello... we're about to hit Jello... up the Jello we go!" And that was less scary than thinking of taking off into the air.
The flight back was a little worse, because I had an aisle seat, because the person next to me was asleep, and because we hit turbulence on the way down -- there was a fair bit of cloud cover (which is not unusual for ATL, I think) and to me it felt like we didn't so much coast to the runway as wobble towards it. But there was never any stomach-dropping moment.
Now I just booked tickets AGAIN -- to fly in two weeks to an event in my mother's family and see my husband's grandmother as well. This time we're flying AirTran, which will be my first time flying AirTran since my panic attack back in June. (It is worth noting that NOTHING happened on that flight to warrant panic; it was a routine flight, but I had a lot of personal stuff going on.) I think back we have the 717 and going up we have a slightly larger plane (3 seats on each side, as opposed to the A-C-D-E-F layout of the 717). I used to fly this route all the time, so I'm hoping that the familiarity, the association with a time when I wasn't panicking, will help. I'm still a bit nervous.
While I'm posting (changing subjects a bit), I wanted to ask Capt. Tom whether he has particular parenting resources he recommends to new or expecting parents, since a lot of the material in the SOAR Library deals with infant development.
