Over the next decade, she went on more than 40 field missions, meeting with refugees and internally displaced persons in over 30 countries.[93] In 2002, when asked what she hoped to accomplish, she stated, "Awareness of the plight of these people. I think they should be commended for what they have survived, not looked down upon."[89] To that end, her 2001-02 field visits were chronicled in her book Notes from My Travels, which was published in October 2003 in conjunction with the release of her humanitarian drama Beyond Borders.
Jolie aimed to visit what she termed "forgotten emergencies," crises that media attention had shifted away from.[94] She became noted for travelling to war zones,[95] such as Sudan's Darfur region during the Darfur conflict,[96] the Syrian-Iraqi border during the Second Gulf War,[97] where she met privately with U.S. troops and other multi-national forces,[98] and the Afghan capital Kabul during the war in Afghanistan, where three aid workers were murdered in the midst of her first visit.[95] To aid her travels, she began taking flying lessons in 2004 with the aim of ferrying aid workers and food supplies around the world;[14][99] she now holds a private pilot license with instrument rating and owns a Cirrus SR22 and Cessna 208 Caravan single-engine aircraft.[100][101][102]