Alongside traditional staples such as arachnophobia and fear of flying (aviophobia), can be found koumpounophobia, a button anxiety said to affect one in 75,000 people.
The creative imagination and aviophobia appear to fly wing-to-wing.
This is the central paradox of aviophobia: that dying in a plane crash is highly improbable while remaining vividly, eminently possible.
He has written widely on aviophobia, air rage and the training of crew to deal with fearful flyers.
I asked Bor the secret of his success in treating aviophobia.
I decided that 2014 was the year to do something about my aviophobia, which has never stopped me from travelling, but has spoiled many holidays, lent an extra patina of fear to hairy journalistic missions (I confess that my greatest concern when going to northern Nigeria was not the Boko Haram militants looking to decapitate me but the ancient Arik Air 737 that was to get me there).
A whole industry has sprung up to help alleviate the symptoms of aviophobia, with individuals and courses offering a smorgasbord of psychotherapy, hypnosis and other, wackier, cures promising to help those who fly to do so less fearfully, to persuade those who don't to make their first forays skywards.
We spoke by phone and he told me that 2001 marked a significant turn in the development of aviophobia.
Ms. Moutis, 69, of Union, N.J., was grounded her entire life by aviophobia (fear of flying) so acute that she couldn't even look at an airplane or go near an airport.
Those most paralyzed by their flying fear — called aviophobia — sometimes turn to programs like the one at Westchester County Airport in New York, run for 10 years by the Anxiety and Phobia Treatment Center at White Plains Hospital.
Aviophobia is pervasive and, it would seem, growing; we're flying more than ever, but that doesn't mean we like it.
