Flying Nightmares

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kyleb

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Drake the Outlaw
I have two recurring nightmares.

The first is that is pretty common to folks I went to school with. The one where you show up to your final exam, the exam's been moved, and you run around looking for it like Dustin Hoffman looking for Emily at the end of The Graduate. 30 years after graduation, I still wake up with cold sweats from that dream. I've probably had it fifty times.

The flight nightmare is that I'm flying a C-150 (that's bad enough) and somehow I get the airplane stuck in high voltage lines when crossing a pass in the mountains out West. The airplane is suspended hundreds of feet high, and I have no (non-fatal) way to get down. I've had this dream 10-20 times over the years.

Any shrinks care to analyze these dreams?
 
I have a lot of plane crash dreams usually commercial.

None as horrible as what you just described. I know how I feel when I have them and when I wake up.

Your version sounds horrible
 
kyleb said:
I have two recurring nightmares.

The first is that is pretty common to folks I went to school with. The one where you show up to your final exam, the exam's been moved, and you run around looking for it like Dustin Hoffman looking for Emily at the end of The Graduate. 30 years after graduation, I still wake up with cold sweats from that dream. I've probably had it fifty times.

?
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I've had a very similar dream too, don't know why I can never find that class either.
Thank God I haven't had any bad airplane dreams yet.
 
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Leading up to my ifr checkride I kept having a dream/nightmare where I had to takeoff, perform one single maneuver, land, and switch examiners. I had to treat everything as a new flight and failed so badly that they wouldn't let me be a pilot ever.
 
i have one recurring 'nightmare', that I failed my last college class and never actually graduated......it's not plane crash material, but I have it over and over and wake up thinking "god dammit, I gotta take that freakin class over again so I can get my diploma", then realize it was a dream and I actually did graduate. you'd think I'd have learned by now, and in my dreams would actually punch that college professor right in his face, but I don't. i also still don't capitalize the first letter in sentences on PoA so I guess I really don't deserve a college degree anyways.
 
Most of mine are just odd crashes or just plain weird. Thankfully, knock on wood, I really don't have nightmares. At most I wake up thinking, "Hmm, that was interesting" and go back to sleep.
 
Sounds Horrible!!!!!!! :eek:
I had but don't remember whole after wake up some time, so I will try to rearrange them, but every time I feel I am missing something.
 
When I was a kid, I remember having a dream about two guys who went flying in a open cockpit biplane. They did all kinds of aerobatic maneuvers but while doing a loop, the passenger fell out of the plane. He fell, flailing and screaming, for a long time and just as he hit the ground, my father fell out of bed and shook the whole house.

I woke up yelling and my mother said, "It's just your father, got back to sleep."

Weird!!
 
I dreamt last night that I was at my friends house and hungry, and the only thing in the fridge was about half of a jar of no name store brand peanut butter. The only piece of silverware in the drawer was a fork, so I ate peanut butter out of the jar with a fork.

Strange, but better than hanging in high kV power lines.
 
All of you Slowly loosing your manhood. ......
Yep, that's the professional interpretation/diagnosis.
 
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I've had a recurring one where I'm in the back of an airliner taking off and they bank the plane. But it keeps rolling left and I realize it's too far and we are going in. That's when I wake up.
 
Bill Jennings said:
I dreamt last night that I was at my friends house and hungry, and the only thing in the fridge was about half of a jar of no name store brand peanut butter. The only piece of silverware in the drawer was a fork, so I ate peanut butter out of the jar with a fork.

Strange, but better than hanging in high kV power lines.
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wait, I actually do that. well, not typically with a fork, usually with a knife. not sure what that says about me.
 
All of my nightmares have to do with boats. Never airplanes,just lucky I guess.
 
Mine is that I show up for the student's final exam not having written the exam or taught the course. And not wearing pants, of course.
 
These are all Merlot or Cab type dreams. To get the really awful ones you need to drink gut rot the night before. The stuff that you would not even cook with.
That will get you #1 backfiring & surging at night with a load of ice in a mountain pass with wires overhead as tower swish by.
 
I really like flying at night. After the first flights at night, without a CFI, I however had the recurring nightmare, for a few days, that I fell asleep in the plane and that I woke up because the engine and the electrical system failed. There I was - sitting in the plane, engine out, nothing but blackness around me. In my frantic search for the damn flashlight, I however slowly came to realize that I might actually not be in the plane, but instead sitting in my bed... :rolleyes:

A few weeks ago, I had my instrument checkride, which went actually really well. For the following 1.5 weeks I woke however up, every single night, because I dreamt that the examiner congratulated me for passing the checkride and asked me to fly back to the airport. This was however the moment, when I entirely lost it, unable to tell my position, the position of the airport or to read any of the instruments (should I get a Cirrus, 6PC?). I woke up with the thought that the examiner will notice this and reconsider his decision... :hairraise:
 
All my airplane dreams are of me busting airspace, being in the wrong place, or otherwise doing something dumb or embarrassing. I guess maybe my fear of shame is greater than my fear of death. :dunno:
 
I had a "Thelma and Louise driving over a cliff" nightmare as a teen, decades before the movie. I can still recall the sensation of weightlessness. Can't recall any airplane nightmares.
 
bullwinkle said:
All my airplane dreams are of me busting airspace, being in the wrong place, or otherwise doing something dumb or embarrassing. I guess maybe my fear of shame is greater than my fear of death. :dunno:
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Mine are similar.

A recurring one is I've just landed at a big airport when I suddenly realize I never contacted anyone for landing clearance or whatever. I have a sickening feeling of worry and paranoia as I decide whether to just taxi in and what will happen to me.

On the plus side, what a feeling of relief when I wake up! :yes:
 
I'm a lucid dreamer and flying nightmares are a clue to me that I am dreaming, once I know I am dreaming I usually shed the plane and just spread my arms and fly thru trees. I tend to contact the trees on most dreams but never get hurt.
 
I've had the flying dream as well where I can fly like CharlieTango just go anywhere. Then something happens and I'm grounded, surrounded by zombies or some other hostile thing and all of a sudden no matter how hard I try I can't fly anymore and get swarmed.

My greatest fear IN the plane is a mid-air breakup or collision where, instead of dying on impact, I'm falling and can do absolutely NOTHING but wait for death.

Really any dream or situation where there literally IS no out freaks me out.
 
I have recurring dreams of entering or landing in controlled airspace without permission, then trying to figure a way out without being noticed. I also dream about trying to fly my way out of a maze of towers, wires, and cables.
 
One airplane dream I had; I was on a ramp in a twin, taxiing in to shut down, noticed a little kid running and playing off way up there, and a dad standing right there with the kid. I looked around again, stopped, looked inside and was shutting off all the avionics, when I felt a hard thump and vibration, and there was a second of pure silence in my dream, where I KNEW what had happened, and I was afraid to look up, and then the father started screaming, as in pure, animal, sounded like a woman screaming. You can imagine how I woke up feeling. Two days later I flew an Aerostar to Kansas, was pulling up on the ramp, and saw a little kid running around off to the side there, with a man standing watching him. Gave me goosebumps--I never took my eyes off that kid, shut everything down by feel.
 
also dream about climbing out thru a maze of wires ... and usually the spread arms, no airplane kind of flying.
 
Not just trees but wires and other obstacles are often in my dreams. I'm often flying through a hole that is too small and I usually don't make it. No harm done because on some level I usually know its a dream and go with it.

I learned to fly in an ultralight and my flying dreams tend to be ultralight, light sport or just use my arms. I'm surprised how others have the same wires and arm flying.
 
I've had some pretty horrific incidents in planes since 1965, including a number of fatalities, yet I NEVER have nightmares about flying.
Weird.
 
I once had a dream that I decided to drop ethics in college, quit going to the class, but forgot to drop it. Failed the class and didn't graduate. I woke up so convinced it was true, I had to go dig out my transcripts to verify I did take the class and pass. Craziness.
 
What is it about the failing to graduate dreams?
I graduated 16 years ago and I still have that dream.
 
ETres said:
I also dream about trying to fly my way out of a maze of towers, wires, and cables.
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Which reminds me of my other flying dreams.

I need to take off from the two lane road in front of my parents' house. Knowing the road, I know there are plenty of spaces where the overhead wires that cross the road are far enough apart that I can climb right through one of the gaps. But I start the takeoff roll, lift off, and accelerate at low altitude and the gaps never materialize. Every time I'm about ready to pull back on the stick, I see another set of wires. Nothing scary, only frustrating.

I do have one where I'm flying without an airplane. That's a weird one in that what it comes down to is I can essentially do a broad jump, but instead of landing, it is like I'm in ground effect and could skim the ground forever without touching it. That's a pretty vivid dream when I have it.
 
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I have the flying w/o a plane dream but it is always more of a floating a few feet off the ground and it never ends up being a practical mode of getting around. It is always fun though.
 
I thought I must be having a nightmare about my instructor practical test and found I couldn’t wake up because it wasn’t a dream.
 
I had a dream the other night where the wife and I were flying commercial to visit her family (terrifying enough) when it turns out my first instructor was our pilot. Oddly enough they were flying with the cockpit door open and my seat was in the first row behind the cockpit so I could hear them and see out the front of the plane.
My old instructor got taxi instructions and he starts navigating the taxiways when he suddenly decides the route they gave us is going to take too long, it'll be much faster if he just takes the direct route, off road. So we go off the taxiway and across the grass, over a hill, through some small town-type area (I really don't understand where the runway we were going to was). During all of this the wings are getting banged up, the winglets break off, basically the plane is being beat to hell, but the pilot is committed to his course of action now so he keeps going.
Eventually he ended up with the nose of the aircraft in a river and we all had to deplane. At that point the airline rep (Southwest I think) came up to everyone and told us we were going to have to take tomorrow's flight and walked away.
 
Nightmares usually come from flying trips with multiple connections on American.
 
I used to have a dream about flying through obstacles, such as under (very tall) trees or through downtown buildings and not being able to get clear space to climb out safely. Not sure why I never land, it's just one dodging maneuver after another. I never hit anything, I just dodge a lot.
 
Weird...I've had the same dream as Fredbob711. Left DFW on a commercial flight but the plane wouldn't get more than 10 feet off of the ground. Pilot decided to fly down the streets leaving bits of the plane on obstacles and one engine on a flatbed truck ultimately going off the edge of an under construction overpass and into the water.
 
Here's my advice, create dreamsigns and when you recognize them, enjoy the flight!

If obstacles and wires are in your flying dreams then begin to say to yourself when flying and encountering obstacles 'ahead is an obstacle to avoid and I'm not dreaming' this is assuming you are not dreaming. If you continue this the next time you have the obstacle/flying dream it is likely you will say to your self 'obstacles ahead but I am dreaming' so I won't fear, I will even take control of the dream.

If you arm fly then do a little arm flying simulation from time to time and say I'm flying and I'm not dreaming. Hopefully the next time you start arm flying in a dream you will say 'I'm flying and it is a dream' and then you can have no fear and enjoy.
 
kyleb said:
The flight nightmare is that I'm flying a C-150 (that's bad enough) and somehow I get the airplane stuck in high voltage lines when crossing a pass in the mountains out West. The airplane is suspended hundreds of feet high, and I have no (non-fatal) way to get down. I've had this dream 10-20 times over the years.

Any shrinks care to analyze these dreams?
Click to expand...

I've had one numerous times where I'm taking off with trees on both sides of the runway and power lines criss crossing above.

Just last night I had a new one where I flew from one towered airport to another and back, and then realized I had not used my radios at all.
 
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