2026-07-22 12:02:32

A mum deliberately misplaced her boarding pass because she was so scared of flying.

Debbie Adamson suffers from aerophobia, which is an intense fear of being on an aeroplane, and she went to extraordinary lengths in order to avoid boarding a flight – but the move ultimately backfired.

The 67-year-old mum – who was supposed to board a flight to Florida – told the Daily Mirror newspaper: “When I was a student I flew to Budapest and we had the world’s worst flight, it was my first flight and I was on my own. When we landed it bounced down the wrong way and there were sparks coming off the wing tips and it was lurching. It was your horror come true.

“From that point onwards I thought every aeroplane I ever got on was going to crash. It was shocking and it was horrible. After that I didn’t want to go anywhere on a plane ever again, I was terrified. I then went and married a theme park addict and I made myself go on those flights for my family. It was the flight crew that was my coping strategy.

“When I had to fly during this terrified period, I would tell the stewardess [about my phobia] when I went through the door if I wasn’t [already] crying. My husband used to come off every flight with permanent arthritis in his hands where I’d be holding onto him so tightly.”

Debbie recalled one time when she deliberately lost her boarding pass at Gatwick Airport, because she didn’t want to board her flight to the US.

She shared: “One time I was sitting at the airport and said ‘I need to go into the bathroom’. I veered into WH Smith and I had my boarding pass with me and I put it in a girly magazine where I thought no one would ever look on the top shelf.

“I came weeping back saying ‘I’ve lost my boarding pass, I can’t go’. My kids all started crying. We got to an airline representative and said ‘can you help, she’s lost her boarding pass?’. There I was thinking they’d say ‘she’s got to go home’ but they printed me another one.”

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