ABSTRACT
Air travel has never been so accessible to travellers. Airline advertisements continue to raise expectations among air travellers, because the product being promoted is still being perceived as glamorous. Air travel brings us into close contact with strangers, and an understanding of the social psychology of behaviour within groups and teams is relevant. Most passengers have expectations about travel, and these may be built around punctuality, quality of service, or amenities available at airports or on board aircraft. For some passengers, the ordinary anxieties of travelling reach more insidious levels and can come to constitute a constellation of symptomatology known formally as "fear of flying". Relative to other phobias, a fear of flying affects a large proportion of the population, and it affects up to 20% of airline passengers at any one time. Research into airline passenger behaviour has, been overlooked because it had been assumed that all passengers are compliant and adaptive to the unique demands of air travel.
