Old topic - however I'm due to fly in 11 days. All my life, i've never had any problems with flying but about 4 months ago, 6 out of the 8 flights I was on I experienced this pain. Half of these flights were seperated by a month. I won't go into the pain since it seems to be covered well enough on here - though I will say the first time I experienced it I thought my head was going to explode.
I want to be a pilot in the future and the fact that I had absolutely no problems at all until a few months ago makes me think something is getting worse. I've had dodgy sinuses for a few years which I think came on around the time I went abroad for a few months (could it be because of sleeping under the air conditioning there?)., although I'm not so sure. Either way, my left nasal passage feels like something is flapping around inside all too often - like a permanent bogey (sorry!) - and one of the passages is completely blocked. I say one because, the weird thing is, it changes throughout the day. Currently as I write, it's the left one that I can't breath in/out.
Anyway, I went to the doctors in the UK as soon as I got back from my trip a few months ago, though I'm still waiting for the ENT appointment to come through the post. Looks like I won't get it in time for flying anyway. No doubt this 'thing' will come to haunt me during descent on all of the flights - though this time it is only 4 flights.
I'm certainly not looking forward to it - and I love flying. I'll try some of the suggestions posted here, though if anyone else has methods that have worked, I'd love to hear them!