12 Stars Who Have Spoken About Their Fear of Flying

Travis Barker

In August 2021, the blink-182 drummer flew for the first time in 13 years. Marking the milestone with girlfriend Kourtney Kardashian, Barker hadn't boarded a plane since surviving a 2008 plane crash that killed four people, including his assistant and security guard, and left him with third-degree burns on more than half his body.

Barker said he had never thought of flying again after the traumatic incident, but his relationship with the Poosh founder empowered him to face the fear.

"I made a deal with her that she had just said to me, 'I would love to do so much traveling with you. I want to go to Italy with you. I want to go to Cabo with you. I want to go to Paris with you. I want to go to Bora Bora with you,' " he told NYLON. "And I said, 'Well, when the day comes you want to fly, I'm telling you I'll do it with you. I would do anything with you. And just give me 24 hours notice.' And that's what she did."

Megan Fox

The actress said another Hollywood star helped inspire her, in part, to overcome a fear of flying.

"There was a point where I was working in New York and I also lived in L.A., so every four days I was flying," she said on The Kelly Clarkson Show in May, explaining the frequent travel was "where the fear came from."

"So what I did, and what I do recommend to people if you hit turbulence and you're like, 'I don't like how this feels,' I would throw on certain music that I just knew I wasn't gonna die to, which, for me, that was Britney Spears. Like, the archives from when I was young, so like the Oops!... I Did It Again album."

Teasing the travel tip, Fox explained "That's not the soundtrack to my death. So, that always made me feel better."

Jennifer Connelly

The Oscar winner said she was nervous to tell her Top Gun: Maverick costar Tom Cruise about her "really crippling fear of flying" when production began, as she had originally signed on believing she wouldn't have to film in the air.

When the day came to film a scene on a small P-51 plane, Connelly had no choice but to overcome the phobia.

"He's like, 'Jen have you ever been in a plane like this before?' I was like, 'No I haven't, Tom. It's amazing.' He's like, 'Ever done any aerobatic flying before?' I started to get nervous," she recalled on the Graham Norton Show in April.

"'No, why? Will I be doing some?' He's like, 'It's gonna be very graceful. Very elegant. Very elegant rolls. It's going to be nice and easy,' " she added with a laugh.

"So that's how I found out I was going to be up in the P-51 with Tom flying it."

DJ Khaled

The "Wild Thoughts" rapper said he used to imagine the worst after a frightening plane ride in the early 2000s, Forbes reported. In fact, the particular flight was so traumatizing that he traveled on tour exclusively by bus for a decade.

However, a few years after his son Asahd was born in 2016, the new dad was inspired to face his fears once and for all.

"I kept saying, 'My son goes on a plane. Why am I not on a plane?' " the rapper told the outlet in 2019 of deciding to fly again. "So immediately I became fearless."

Jennifer Aniston

The Friends alumna said she got scared in in the air when she traveled with pals to Mexico for her 50th birthday and something went awry during takeoff.

"We heard an explosion, which sounded like a pothole if it was a car big enough to go over the Grand Canyon. It was so loud," Aniston said on Jimmy Kimmel Live! in 2019. "I have a real fear of flying, obviously, but nobody else [with me on the plane] does. So Courteney Cox, whose father is a pilot and is never afraid, says, 'Should we have checked that? Is everything okay?' They were like, No, no, it's taxiing, it's going smoothly."

Though the group was able to safely take off, the flight was forced to turn around two hours later after there was a mechanical issue discovered with the aircraft. They eventually boarded another plane and made it safely to Cabo.

Miley Cyrus

One ascent "The Climb" singer is wary of is into the high skies! Speaking on her podcast in 2019, Cyrus' older sister Brandi described her sibling as a "very nervous" flyer and said she got scarred from a harrowing flight to a U.K. music festival.

Though the aircraft touched down safely after a bit of a bumpy landing, the experience apparently inspired Cyrus to open up about her aerophobia — and overcoming it — around the same time.

Telling Twitter followers to write down three people, places or things that made them feel strong, she tweeted: "Flying in the sky (because it's always been one of my fears & I love conquering anything I'm afraid of."

Jennifer Lawrence

Opening up about her aerophobia in 2017, the star said she had been struggling with her "plane anxiety" at the time and once even hopped up out of fear during a flight.

"I tried to jump out of an Air France flight once. I can't believe I didn't get arrested," she told Entertainment Weekly. "I got really claustrophobic and I had to get out."

Nick Jonas

When asked to share the most private thing he was willing to admit in 2014, the Jonas Brother said he was averse to air travel.

"I hate flying. People are shocked by that because I fly all the time, but I think defying gravity is just frightening," he told Cosmopolitan.

Wes Anderson

"I have a phobia of flying, which is maybe somewhat rational. I actually love aeroplanes and I sometimes like being in a plane, but I need to be drugged," the filmmaker told Esquire in 2014.

"…Xanax is really the one that's served me best. Otherwise, I'm just not going to get on the plane," he added.

Sandra Bullock

In 2013, the Oscar winner said she was "deathly afraid of flying" after surviving a harrowing Wyoming plane crash 13 years earlier. However, when opportunity came knocking for her to star in Gravity, a sci-fi thriller set on a space shuttle station, she felt compelled to challenge her aerophobia once and for all.

"I convinced myself it was the universe telling me I needed to get over my fear. I said I would do it," she told The New York Times. "I wasn't happy about it. But I said I would do it."

Whoopi Goldberg

The View panelist spoke about her famous fear of flying in 2011, saying she became traumatized from air travel after witnessing a mid-air collision in San Diego about 30 years earlier. Goldberg said the scene was particularly terrifying to witness because "the people on the plane were aware that they were in some danger."

"And so that's what stayed in my mind," she told Piers Morgan, per CNN. "Because I'm a visualist. So if I see it, it lives in my brain. So I always see it."

According to the outlet, for years afterward, Goldberg would travel from New York to Los Angeles and back via private bus. The trip would take 23 hours and two drivers.

Though she said she was getting on airplanes again at the time of the interview, the comedian admitted she still felt hesitant.

"Some people are meant to fly. And I don't know if I was meant to fly, but I do it now."

Aretha Franklin

The Queen of Soul was no fan of flying after a nightmare flight in the early 1980s, and famously toured instead by bus.

"I was leaving Atlanta in a very small plane. A two- engine prop plane, I believe. And it was a very bad flight," she told The Atlanta-Journal Constitution in 1993 of the traumatic turbulence. "I'm very much a ground person now."