Dreaming about
a plane crash

A plane crash is one of the most vivid nightmares a person can have, and the first thing to know about it is that it isn't a premonition. Dreaming about a plane crash usually points to a fear of failure, or of losing control over something you've set high hopes on. A plan that has taken off, a career that's flying high and a relationship you've boarded together can all feel, at night, like a plane that could come down at once.

The details of the dream tell you which, starting with where you were. Being on board isn't the same as watching from the ground, and walking away from the wreck is very different from waking at the moment of impact. But your waking life counts just as much, because a flight booked for next week, a crash in the news, or a fear of flying you've had for years can each be enough to bring the dream on.

What dreaming about a plane crash means

Flying is the one form of travel where we hand our lives over completely, to a pilot we never see and a machine we don't understand, so a crash in a dream is less about planes than about trust, height and the distance there is to fall. Most of these dreams fit one of four readings.

High hopes, and the fear of losing them

Planes climb, and we use the same words for success. A career takes off, a business soars, someone is a high-flyer. So a crash often comes when you've put a lot into something that's going well, and part of you is afraid it can't last. It can also come when a plan has grown faster than you can keep up with, and you sense it may have got ahead of itself.

Someone else at the controls

On a plane you can't do anything except sit still and trust. A crash dream often follows a period where your fate is in other people's hands (a boss deciding on a restructure, a test result you're waiting on, a partner's big decision). The fear isn't so much of falling as of having no say in whether you fall.

A fear of flying, plain and simple

Sometimes the dream really is about the airplane itself, and nothing more. If you're a nervous flyer, have a trip coming up, or have just seen coverage of a real crash, a plane crash dream is often your mind going over that worry at night. Dreams reliably pick up what we've been anxious about during the day,^[1] and flying is a fear lots of people carry quietly. In that case the dream doesn't need decoding, and it isn't a sign about the trip.

An ending that comes all at once

A plane crash is sudden, normal one moment and over the next, and dreams use that for endings that come without warning, or that you fear could, such as a breakup, a layoff or a death in the family. If something in your life ended abruptly recently, the dream may be your mind replaying the shock.

Dreaming about being in a plane crash

Being on board as the plane goes down is the most common version, and the most frightening. It usually means you feel caught up in something that's out of your control and heading the wrong way. What did you do as it fell? Bracing, praying or holding someone's hand tends to come with a sense of helplessness, while trying to reach the cockpit is about wanting to take charge of a situation that someone else is running. Who was sitting next to you can point to who the dream is about.

Dreaming about watching a plane crash

Watching a plane crash from the ground puts you at a distance. The dream is often about something going wrong for someone else, or for a group you're part of (a company, a family, a team), while you stand and watch. And it can be about your own ambitions seen from the outside, a plan of yours that you've already given up on, coming down in the distance. If you ran toward the crash to help, the dream is about wanting to fix things for people you care about.

Dreaming about surviving a plane crash

Surviving a plane crash is a dream about resilience. Walking away from the wreck, or swimming to shore, tends to come after a hard time you got through. Or it comes as you start to believe you will. But it can also be about the guilt and strangeness of coming out of something better than others did. If you helped other survivors, the dream is often about the role you play in keeping people going.

Dreaming about a plane about to crash

Many plane crash dreams stop just before the crash itself. The engines cut out, the plane drops, and you wake with your heart pounding. These dreams are close cousins of falling and flying dreams, and falling dreams are among the most common of all (73.8% of the Canadian students in one survey had had one).^[2] Waking just before impact is about a fear that hasn't happened, one you're bracing for but haven't faced. One theory of dreaming suggests that's partly the point, with the brain rehearsing danger at night so we're readier for it awake.^[3]

Dreaming about a plane crashing into your house

A plane crashing into your home, or into the street where you live, is a dream about something from outside breaking into your private life. It might be news that changes everything, a family crisis, or a problem at work that has followed you home. Because a house often stands for you and your family in dreams, the damage it took can show what you feel is at risk. If you and your family got out, the dream may be saying you'll cope with the disruption.

Dreaming about a plane crashing into water

When a plane comes down in the sea or a lake, two images meet. The crash is the sudden failure, and the water is feeling, so this version is often about a setback that has left you emotionally overwhelmed. Sinking with the plane is about being dragged under by what happened. Floating or swimming away is about staying afloat, which is, after all, how the expression goes.

Dreaming about a loved one in a plane crash

Dreaming that a partner, a child or a parent is on a plane that crashes is very upsetting, and it's almost always about how much you care. These dreams tend to come when that person is far away, traveling, ill, or going through something you can't protect them from. They reflect the fear of losing them, not a forecast. And if you couldn't reach them in the dream, think about whether you've been feeling cut off from them lately.

Is a plane crash dream a premonition?

No, a plane crash dream is not a warning that you'll be in one, and it says nothing about any particular flight. Plenty of people dream of crashes before trips that go perfectly well, and those dreams are forgotten, while the rare coincidence gets remembered and retold. Why do some dreams feel prophetic, then? Our article on premonition dreams looks at that. And if crash nightmares come back night after night, a doctor is a good person to tell, and these nightmare tips are a place to start.

Dreaming about a plane crash according to Jung and Freud

What follows applies their ideas to a plane crash, and says so where it does.

Jung: the pilot and the one-sided climb

Jung's principle was that dreams balance out the lopsided attitude you hold awake,^[4] and a plane crash tests it well. If everything has been going up (a promotion, a plan, a run of luck you've started to take for granted), the dream that brings the plane down is the missing counterweight, and the question is what you've been leaving out of the climb. The pilot is the other figure to look at. Jung described the wise old man as turning up in dreams as any authority figure, from a priest to a professor,^[5] so a pilot you trusted, or one who lost control, is a likely stand-in for whoever you've handed your direction to. He also distrusted fixed meanings, so what the plane meant to you comes first.

Freud: flying and falling in one dream

Flying and falling both sit on Freud's list of typical dreams, the kind almost everyone has,^[6] and a plane crash puts the two together. His idea of the day residue, that a dream builds its pictures partly from yesterday's material, fits here as well. Had you seen a crash on the news, booked a flight or watched a disaster film?

Other readings

Antti Revonsuo, the Finnish researcher behind the idea above that dreams rehearse danger, tested it on 592 dream reports from 52 Finnish university students. Two in three reports held a threat, and 79% of the students had at least one life-threatening dream, yet in none of the reports did the dreamer die, though some threats were very serious.^[7] That fits how so many plane crash dreams stop on the way down, with you waking before the impact.

The spiritual meaning of a plane crash in dreams

There are no planes in the old texts, but the Ramayana has a flying chariot that falls.

Falling from a flying chariot in the Hindu texts

The Ramayana, Valmiki's Sanskrit epic of Rama, has a flying chariot in a dream. The demoness Trijata dreams of Rama, Sita and Lakshmana flying north in the Pushpaka, a good sign, while Ravana falls from it, a bad one, and the dream is read as foretelling his fall.^[8] The Agni Purana and the Matsya Purana, which each give a chapter to good and bad dreams, mark a fall from a great height as a bad sign.^[9][10] These are omens in the texts' own world, and they say nothing about a flight booked for next week.

Questions to ask about your plane crash dream

The same crash can be about work for one person and about a relationship for another, so before you settle on a meaning, think back over the dream.

• Were you on the plane, watching it, or waiting for someone on board?
• Who was flying, and did you trust them?
• Did you survive, and how did you feel afterwards?
• Do you have a trip coming up, or have you seen a crash on the news?
• What in your life feels like it's flying high right now, and what are you afraid of losing?

Oniri runs through a handful of these with you before it reads a dream, so a fear of flying and a fear of failure don't get the same answer.