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Before the trip, avoid drinking coffee. Try drinking chamomile or passionflower tea instead. Caffeine stimulates the fight-or-flight response (via adrenaline), which will only add to your stress/anxiety.
Read Ask the Pilot by Patrick Smith, a former airliner pilot. The root of many fears may be found in an ignorance of how flight works and how airliners operate. (e.g. No the plane cannot simply fall out of the sky. And turbulence is actually quite harmless.)
Just do it: in my case, the more I fly, the easier it gets. Feel the fear and do it anyway. With most fears, multiple exposures to it makes it easier to overcome it.
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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön
Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot
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