I recently experienced a fairly shaky flight - whole lotta turbulence and bouncing around, then an iffy landing on a snow-covered runway.
It wasn’t exactly terrifying, but I did hear a few folks let out a ‘whoa!’.
Tell me about your most unpleasant/scary flights. Stories need not be limited to fear of crashing; tales of crying babies, difficult seatmates, etc. are all welcome.
mmm
On the way from Islamabad to Heathrow. Flying over the Black Sea. Was asleep. When I woke, I dimly realised that i) my seatbelt was not open, ii)that for some reason my nose was about 0.25 inches from the “no smoking sign” and iii) my butt was not on the seat. Moments later I fell down again and was thrown up, and I saw the overhead bins opening. I managed to rengage the seatbelt during a small lull in proceedings and pilot came on to say “we are experiencing <technical mumbo jumbo>) and are trying to climb up” and then land in the Ukraine.
Saw Flight Attendants looked scared shitless.
Minutes later it ended and we continued on.
About twenty years ago, flying on a little turbo-prop from Kansas City to Cedar Rapids. Landing in a snowstorm in CR, the plane was bouncing and bucking and swerving all over the place until we finally hit the runway. I never really thought we were in any danger of crashing, but holy crap that was a wild ride.
Sent on a work trip at the last minute across the country, and it was last minute, so I ended up with the middle seat between two guys that were pretty big (I’m 6’, 210 lbs). Guy in the aisle seat orders and quickly downs some vodka and tonics, then gets a bottle of water. He tries to sleep, as do I, but he his making all kinds of huffing and puffing and moaning noises while he dozes, that makes it impossible for me to sleep (I forgot earplugs, which I ALWAYS have on flights).
I had taken my shoes off to get comfortable, and when I tried to put them back on to walk to the bathroom, I realize that aisle guy had accidently spilled half his bottle of water into one of my shoes. I tell him and he just shrugs, but doesn’t apologize. I use the head and come back and it’s 4 more hours of him puffing and moaning while he tries to doze.
So I got no sleep (it was a red-eye), a sodden loafer and I ended up forgetting my lower back cushion and leaving it in my sleep.
I hate flying anyway so even mild turbulence is a white knuckle ride for me. However I’ve had a few where everyone else was yelling, bursting into spontaneous prayer and generally sharing my angst so I feel justified in saying they were bad.
One involved landing in Tirana on an Illyushin that had been built the same year as I and had much less maintenance. When we touched down and brakes were applied we went into a sideways skid before the pilot let off the brakes and got us back on line. Once we came to a halt there was much rejoicing.
Another came when flying in a Beechcraft into Kabul in a late summer afternoon. If you’ve done this you know the crosswinds are really designed to make light aircraft flight a tricky physics question. I think I left marks on the arm rests. I know the seat cushion was somehow stuck to the back of my lap when I stood to exit.
The latest was a flight from West Africa that encountered severe turbulence shortly after take off. The crew returned to their seats, strapped in and looked a bit worried. We had a revival meeting in the passenger compartment which must have worked as we got clear of the area within an hour. I sat wide eyed and alert for the rest of the ten hour flight, anxiously awaiting my plunge into eternity.
Yet somehow, despite knowing they are statistically less safe that fixed wings, I love rotary wing aircraft and have never been seriously scared in one. I should have been, many times, but I turn into a nine year old around them and am too happy to be flying to get worried.
Go figure.
Back when I used to work for Eastern Airlines, my travel buddy, Dennis, and I were in Quito trying to get back to the states (MIA then to BOS)on standby. We got bumped off that flight, so in order to get home the same day, we took a flight Quito to Lima. We had a several hour layover in Lima (in which we got mugged, but that’s anther story), then made it onto a flight from Lima to Miami.
We took off in terrible weather and the plane was bouncing and jumping from the turbulence. At one point the plane took a dive for what seemed like an eternity. The flight attendants were terrified, and strapping themselves into their jump seats, people were screaming, and shouting out prayers, Dennis and I were holding hands.
Then the plane leveled off. No explanation was ever given by the attendants or the pilot. I always wondered what people in plane crashes felt before going down, I found out on that flight. I was terrified for about 30 seconds, then I was just completely peaceful. Like, not a care in the world. Weird huh?
We kissed the ground when we arrived in MIA.
I really do not understand people that do not keep their seat belt fastened while they are sitting in a plane.
It would really anger me to be injured by an unbelted passenger that is bouncing around the cabin.
I was on a night flight from Moscow to Atyrau. The plane was a very old Tupolev that reeked of jet fuel and was tremendously loud. About halfway there, somewhere over the Ukraine, the pilot announced that they were having problems with the hydraulic system and they would be looking for a place to land. A short while later the flight attendants came through the aisles looking for any liquids since the pilots believed it was a slow leak. After collecting several items we watched as they handed them in to one of the flight crew standing in the lower part of the plane. Evidently they were trying to keep the pressure up to keep the flaps working long enough to find a place to land the plane.
After a rapid descent and a bumping landing we found ourselves at what looked to be a little use air base. We took a six hour bus ride to town and waited for another plane.
I was an aircraft mechanic back then in the military, but this was on a civilian flight chartered by the military from the USA to England.
It was an old DC-10. The military often contracts with some airlines that you probably never heard of who wring out the last flight hours from older aircraft.
The flight was delayed due to “catering problems”. Then what were they doing changing out a hydraulic pump on the #1 engine?
The flight was cramped. I was in a seat that would not recline as it up against a bulkhead.
The weather was BAD. The guy sitting next to me was a fighter pilot and he was gripping on the armrest so hard that I thought he was going to crush it. We never did get that in-flight meal that they had so much trouble with at the start of the flight.
Both Heathrow and Gatwick were fogged in. So we had to divert to Stansted Airport to get fuel and wait for the fog to clear. We were not let out of the aircraft.
So a long flight became a VERY long, bumpy flight. It was much worse that a C-130 ride that had a bad bird strike and a hard landing on the same mission.
I’ve never been stone terrified on a flight, but there certainly have been moments of…nervousness; mostly when taking off or landing in poor weather conditions. A flight into Chicago Midway in heavy snow, and several approaches or departures to or from IAH in Houston during thunderstorms, come to mind. I experienced an aborted landing and go-around coming into Paris Orly one time, although I realize those are practiced maneuvers and therefore not that risky. Then there was the time on an Angolan airlines flight from Paris to Luanda where the pilot announced that due to a mechnical fault in our creaky old DC-8, we would be putting down in Lisbon…which was three hours in the opposite direction to our destination. Aside from wondering whether we were going to drop out of the sky before making port, it turned an already tedious 12-hour trip into a nearly 24-hour ordeal. And then at the end, you’re in freakin’ Luanda.
Oh, wait, here’s one. When I was still working on drilling rigs, one memorable location was in the jungle in a remote part of Guatemala. Crew changes to Guatemala City were via a dirt airstip near the rig location, in a DH Twin Otter or Pilatus Porter, depending on passenger load. One time during the rainy season, we took off from the strip in the Twin Otter with eight passengers, and a bunch of downhole gauge tools laying in the aisleway between the seats. We hit a thunderstorm what seemed like a hundred yards past the end of the runway, and the plane dropped like a rock. I watched as the tools levitated about foot off the floor, then clanged back down. The buddy I was traveling with looked at each other, tightened our seat belts a bit further and got out of the downdraft before we really had a chance to get scared.
I’ve never been in an airplane that experienced severe turbulence. But when I went skydiving, it was the slow, steady ascent to altitude that got me really nervous and feeling dread/anticipation. It felt scarier than the actual jump itself.
I was also aboard an airplane once that did a rejected takeoff - something wrong with the engines?
I was once on a flight from Honolulu to LA with an extremely severe and sudden cold coming on - in the day or so before I had to travel, in the space of 30 seconds I went from “sitting happily on the porch eating lunch” to “OMG worst sore throat I have ever experienced is now causing searing pain every time I swallow.”
While on the flight I became progressively more congested and by the time we were approaching LAX I was so stuffed up I could barely swallow without feeling the pressure tugging on my sinuses. I couldn’t wait to get on the ground and grab some Sudafed.
Unfortunately there was excess air traffic and we circled for what felt like forever while waiting to get permission to land. We’d reduce altitude (OUCH! MY EARS!) then be told to go back up to a higher altitude and circle and wait - then come back down again (OUCH!).
We literally went up and down for about an hour and a half - I think we finally got to land because we would have run out of fuel otherwise. However, I have trouble clearing my ears even during routine flights when I’m healthy - in this case the pain of the repeated altitude changes was indescribable.
And I was nearly deaf for two weeks afterward. In fact to this day (that was about 25 years ago) I am grateful I didn’t have permanent damage; I’m sure it’s rare but I’m told it can happen.
I had a migraine strike while I was on a Boston to Orlando flight. Of course, that was the flight with four crying babies. :smack::(
At least it wasn’t transatlantic.
Most flights don’t phase me, though. I don’t do well in crowded situations, so I take an Ativan half an hour before boarding. ISIS could board the plane and I’d make polite conversation about how, yeah, maybe the west is a teeny bit degenerate and that I also sometimes wish people would wear a few more clothes.
My brother didn’t fly until he was 18, when we went to visit my step-grandmother in Arizona. We were flying home to Jacksonville, and it was one long line of thunderstorms and turbulence. My brother is 6’3" and built like an American football player. When the turbulence hit, he turned white and clutched the arms of the seat. Being a kindly sister, I regaled him with tales of turbulence from some of my air travel for work. “And the plane felt like it paused in the air, and then it just DROPPED, it felt like 500 feet!” Brother turned greenish, and my dad told me to knock it off. 
Then I took pity and slipped my brother a drink.
Unpleasant:
Back when smoking was still allowed on flights I took a morning flight from San Diego to Toronto with a VERY bad hangover. I am a nonsmoker, and although I’m not really anti-smoking in general, I cannot put up with second hand smoke when I’m hungover to the max, which I was.
I was in the non-smoking section, and the row behind me was the start of the smoking section. Ughhh. I think the flight was like 5 hours and everyone behind me was blowing smoke forward for the whole flight.
ETA: Another unpleasant flight was Tokyo to Toronto, which is something like 13 hours, and the only personal entertainment screen (on the seatback in front of me) that wasn’t working was mine. Everyone else on the plane watched movies; I read the in-flight magazine 20 times.
Scariest:
Reverse flight on a separate occasion: Toronto to San Diego. We were landing in a thunderstorm. The plane was in turbulence. The lightening was crashing outside our windows. People were gasping and holding hands and praying. Once we got below the storm the landing was fine, but for about 10 minutes it was scary as hell.
My ex screwed up our plane reservations to MSP once. We got to LAX with our two kids and found out that our flight wasn’t until the following day. They got us on a different flight, but it had one layover in Denver. Got on the plane and it sat at the gate for the next four hours while they tried to fix a problem. Flew into Denver, and of course the connecting flight was long gone, so they put us into hotels. This took us to about 0300. The room reeked of stale tobacco and disinfectant. We finally dragged into MSP at about the same time we would have gotten there on our original flight.
The most endless flight ever was my return from deployment in 1975. We left northern Japan and flew to Okinawa to pick up some more military, then on to the Philippines to pick up the detachment there. When we attempted to leave, the tower made us sit on the runway while some local air force types did touch and go operations. The temp in the plane cabin climbed well above 100F as we broiled in the sun. We finally left, but the pilot had to detour back to Japan to top off the fuel tanks. By the time we got to CA, we were a sorry-looking bunch.
I’ve had plenty with some good turbulence, but most of it has been clear air turbulence and the pilots got on the PA to warn us about it.
The single worst flight I’ve had is a DFW-ATL flight in April of 2011. From Dallas to roughly the Georgia border was smooth as glass, but coming in toward Atlanta, our pilots had to thread their way through a band of severe thunderstorms.
So on our descent, we were corkscrewing, bouncing up and down, and occasionally doing what seemed to be sideways yawing that was always arrested rather violently. I white-knuckled it the last 30 minutes of the flight, only really unclenching once we were over the runway and it was smooth.
Other than that, the only other dicey flights I’ve been on were a few with crosswinds on landing- more than one of those had the annoying one wheel, then the other, then back in the air, then both down hard, and finally the nose, style of landing.
I flew in a little Cessna with the owner/pilot and one other passenger from Philly to Pittsburgh. The pilot regretted flying almost immediately after take-off, admitting that the weather was more than he could handle (ice on the wings, etc). We were thrown around horribly. There were little garbage cans on-board and me and the other passenger spent the flight vomiting into them.
When we landed, I could not walk. It was the worst flight ever.
One other time on a commercial flight everything was smooth as silk, but a woman passenger had some kind of panic/vomiting attack. She screamed/moaned/vomited the entire three hour flight.
In a friends small plane when several mechanical systems decided to fail. I was never clear on the specifics but the one thing you never want to hear from your pilot is “Uh-oh ------ O shit” and seeing the sweat break out on his forehead. Followed by a request for an emergency landing.
I’ve been fortunate and never had a flight in any trouble - that I knew about. Or even learned later.
My worst was an emergency flight from Dulles to the West Coast - my flights had been cancelled by Hurricane Frederick(?) and I had to wait two days. I flew 6:15 in a middle seat in an A320, a craft I hate, and I am too big to be comfortable in a middle seat with no legroom. But I was going effin’ home.
Almost as bad was one that hit some weird turbulence - like hitting a hard speed bump, first one… then another… another… and then wham! wham! wham! wham! On about the third wham! people started to lose it, which triggered a larger wave of barfers, and then more… and I have a really tender tummy about the smell and sound of barfing. I held it, though. But it was nassssstyyyy.
The Mrs got on a cross-cross-cross country flight with two tiny ones once, booked by her frugal sister, and still shudders when talking about the combination of 14 hours, five flight legs and two small kids… with the runs.
Pretty mild compared to some stories, I know. Lucky me.
i was flying to Kansas City from Chicago and there were storms all around the area. The captain came on and told us to prepare for some turbulence. He didn’t, however, tell us to prepare for the lightning! As we bounced around in the turbulence, the lightning strikes were just missing the wings by inches. Eventually, the inevitable happened and a bolt struck the right wing. We watched, horrified, as the right wing burned and the engine quit. Although the plane remained stable and able to keep going, we couldn’t help but wonder what would happen when lightning hit the left wing. Luckily it didn’t, but I was never so glad to embrace terra firma in my life as when we got off that plane in KC. I couldn’t bring myself to fly home 2 days later. I rented a car and drove.