Dreaming about a plane crash: what this dream usually means

Dreaming about a plane crash: what it usually points to

Dream interpretation is not prediction and not diagnosis. This article separates what sleep research observes from what popular interpretation associates with the theme, always saying which is which.

Dreaming about a plane crash is not a warning of an accident or a sign that you should cancel your trip. The scene tends to show up when something important feels out of your hands: a project that depends on other people, a move to a new city, waiting for medical test results, a stretch of life when all you can do is wait. Inside a plane, nobody in the seats flies or brakes, and the dream uses exactly that feeling.

The general meaning of planes in dreams, with takeoff, turbulence and missed flights, is covered in dreaming about a plane. Here the focus is the fall itself: seen from the ground, from inside the cabin, over the sea or ending in an explosion.

Read also: Dreaming that you are falling and Dreaming about an airport.

Where the image of a falling plane comes from

Michael Schredl and Friedrich Hofmann showed in 2003 that dreams tend to follow whatever occupies waking life. A falling plane has easy shortcuts into the night: news coverage of an air disaster replayed for days, a disaster movie watched before bed, the ticket you just bought for vacation, the roar of jet engines for people who live near an airport, as happens in the neighborhoods around Congonhas, the airport set right inside the city of São Paulo, Brazil.

Falling itself is an old acquaintance of researchers. Tore Nielsen and colleagues included falling among the typical dreams in the questionnaire they gave to Canadian university students. The plane simply gives the fall a bigger stage, with an audience, noise and nowhere to run.

For the Finnish researcher Antti Revonsuo, threat dreams work as a rehearsal of danger carried out in a safe place. The dream often wakes you at its peak, seconds before impact, with your heart racing and the feeling of having lived the scene.

Sources: Schredl and Hofmann, Continuity between waking activities and dream activities, Consciousness and Cognition, 2003; Nielsen and colleagues, Dreaming, 2003; Revonsuo, The reinterpretation of dreams, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2000.

Near your house, into the sea or with you on board: the scenes

If the dream ended in the water, read also dreaming about drowning. If there were flames and smoke in the sky, compare it with dreaming about fire.

See also: Dreaming about a stolen car and Dreaming about a street.

Fear of flying and recurring nightmares: when to take care

A single dream about a plane crash does not call for any action. It is worth remembering a fact that the scare itself hides: commercial aviation is among the safest means of transportation there are. It is precisely because crashes are rare that one becomes news for days, and that repetition of images feeds the sense of risk.

Fear of flying is common and treatable. Cognitive behavioral therapy, with gradual exposure and breathing techniques, has good results, and there are courses designed for people who are terrified of planes. If the fear makes you turn down trips, see a psychologist.

Pay attention as well when the nightmare repeats several times a week, when you become afraid to fall asleep, or when you went through an emergency landing or severe turbulence and the scene keeps coming back almost unchanged. Frequent nightmares have treatments backed by good evidence. See how to have fewer nightmares.

Source: Morgenthaler and colleagues, Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 2018.

The falling plane for Freud, Jung and faith

In Freud's psychoanalysis. In the first chapter of The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud gathers cases of noises that make their way into dreams. One of them is about Napoleon: asleep in a carriage, he was woken by the explosion of a bomb, and in the dream he was once again crossing a river under bombardment. A clap of thunder, a slamming door or a motorcycle in the street can become an explosion in the sky. Freud, however, thought the stimulus explains the setting, not the choice of it: the question remains what that plane reminds you of.

In Jung's psychology. In Man and His Symbols, Jung writes that many crises have a long unconscious history: a person walks toward them step by step, without noticing the danger building up, while something inside already senses it. He was not talking about premonition, but about signs that were seen and not taken seriously. In Jung's key, the falling plane asks what has been slowly losing altitude: your sleep, your finances, your health, a relationship.

In symbols and faith. Psalm 139 says that even in the uttermost parts of the sea, God's hand leads the believer (Psalm 139:9-10), a verse many people pray as they board. In Acts 27, the ship carrying the apostle Paul is wrecked near Malta, and the chapter ends by saying that they all escaped safe to land.

Bringing both readings together. Research shows where the scare comes from; psychology and faith ask what you feel is flying without a pilot. Writing down who was on board and where the plane came down helps you choose the right question.

Sources: Freud, Die Traumdeutung, 1900; Jung (ed.), Man and His Symbols.

The falling plane in dream books

O Livro dos Sonhos, a Brazilian dream book by L. P. Baçan, has no entry for a plane crash. The entry for airplane (in life, good business; in love, success) says nothing about crashing; for the disaster scene, the closest ones are falling (in life, work without results; in love, anguish) and explosion (in life, disorder; in love, impulsiveness). For those who follow the tradition, the two together speak of effort that does not pay off and of decisions made in the heat of the moment.

Freud called this way of reading the decoding method: each image turns into another through a fixed code, without asking the dreamer anything. The plane that falls in a flight attendant's dream and the one that falls in the dream of someone who has never flown do not tell the same story.

Sources: Freud, Die Traumdeutung, 1900; L. P. Baçan, O Livro dos Sonhos, 2014.

What folk belief says about a falling plane

In Brazilian folk reading, a falling plane is usually associated with plans that never take off or with expectations set too high. Crashing into the sea would be emotions running high; exploding in the air, a sudden fight; crashing near home, news that shakes the family; walking out of the wreckage unharmed, getting past a bad stretch. These are beliefs from tradition, which vary from region to region, and not predictions. See what dream meanings look like according to science and culture.