Landing at the old Hong Kong airport used to be quite a trip. Unbelievably, they had allowed huge apartment complexes to be built not only alongside the runways but also at both ends.
Depending on the winds, a fully loaded 747 would fly parallel to the runway, bank very sharply, and then dive for the landing area. Once on the ground, they backed off the motors and stood on the brakes. Such fun. That was Kai Tak airport. They called it the Kai Tak Heart Attack.
I think you meant SwedeAir 
If they were seagulls, it would explain why they never put out another single afterwards.
My scariest flight? Sitting next to a born again Christian who felt the need to save me.
Or being in the smoking section of a jammed packed flight to NY. I got off the plane smelling like an ashtray and had a severe migraine. I am so happy there are no more smoking flights on domestic flights.
I’m terrified of planes, but thought maybe I had gotten over it, so went to Atlantic City on a day trip.
On the return trip, as we prepared to get on board, I had a sudden mindflash of a headline about our plane crashing. That was bad enough.
After we took off and were way, way up in the air, the plane’s engines died. I could feel the plane just seem to hang there for a second then start to slide back, then the engines caught again and renewed the ascent.
Then the same thing happened again. The second time, when the engines restarted they kept going. I shook like a leaf all the way back to Indianapolis.
It took 2 tries to land because of extremely thick fog.
After we got back on the ground, the friend I went with admitted that she was scared shitless too. Others must have been too, because several people actually got down and kissed the ground after we landed.
Let’s see. . . my scariest airplane moment came while I was flying on a single-engine plane from Reindeer Lake out to a cabin on Lake Kyaska.
Partway through the flight, we hit an air pocket and dropped like a stone. In just a few seconds, I went from looking at a green carpet to picking out individual trees. We finally levelled out just a few hundred feet above ground.
– Sylence
If a bird doesn’t sing, I’ll wait until it sings.
Sorry, but that’s not true. Take a look at any map of Hong Kong. You can see Kai Tak Airport’s runway. One side juts out to the sea (no apartment complexes), and on the other side the apartment complexes are about 2 miles away. It may have seemed to you that apartment complexes were at both sides, but it’s simply not true.
Sorry I meant to say “It may have seemed to you apartment complexes were at BOTH ENDS”, but it’s simply not true.
At that reminds me, there were no apartment complexes on the sides either. The runway had water on 3 sides.
My father use to fly a little tiny plane so bumpy rides and rough landings dont bother me but guys in chains do. I was on a flight to Orlando a few years back and since the plane was almost empty I moved way in the back to have some peace. Big mistake thats where the guys with chains fly. At the last second they let on this big guy walking funny with another guy behind him. They sit behind me and take the jacket off the big guys hands and I hear the cuffs. So I peek hoping I’m wrong but nope he’s got himself shackled. I just hope he was busted for jaywalking and not for killing some poor woman on her way to visit her fiance in Orlando.
Keep smiling it makes 'em wonder what you’ve been up to.
Well, this one time I had to (try to?) throw my friend OD out of the bar I was working at. Just so you know, he was very drunk and very mad, and was starting to make the place unpleasant. OD’s this big (at least 400lbs), tall (like 6’ 8"), black dude that reminds of that guy in the Green Mile.
I manage to get him outside, but then he decides he doesn’t want to leave. I tell him he can’t come come back in, and he says
“I didn’t want to hurt you, man.”
So he picks me up and chucks me over a four foot wall and into a ditch.
Whilst flying over the earth, that was the most scared I have ever been, because I had never been manhandled like that before.
Sure, I’d been thrown before, but tossed around like a ragdoll?
I almost shit my pants but still had to go back in and get some help to get him out of there. Lucky for us he calmed down when the girl behind the bar asked him to leave on his own or leave in a squad car.
whew
That was most scared I’ve ever been while flying over the Earth.
“Winners never quit and quitters never win, but those who never win and never quit are idiots.”
{{{What’s the most scared you’ve ever been while flying above the earth?}}}–A Girl
–Kalél
Common ¢ for all ages…
“Well, there was that thing with the Cheese-Wiz…but I’m feeling much better now!” – John Astin, Night Court
When I was young, I was flying cross-country(U.S.) in a DC-9. First we had a 2 hour delay for them to fix the air conditioning, then halfway through the flight, above a thunderstorm at night at 28,000 feet the right engine stalls and the plane dips 4,000 feet into the top of the thunderhead, but then the engine starts back up, and everything was ok the rest of the flight, that was scary.
<continuation of above post>
…that was scary. Then I turned off “Walker: Texas Ranger” and went to bed.
“Winners never quit and quitters never win, but those who never win and never quit are idiots.”
Don’t have one myself. But my grandma hasn’t eaten a piece of candy in about 30 years because she promised God she wouldn’t if she survived a really bumpy flight.
The scariest experience I have ever had flying was coming into Heathrow from Hong Kong last year in a 747; we were coming and everything was going fine, then right above the runway, just like Cold described, the plane dropped the last twenty feet out of the sky like a rock and slammed into the tarmac; nothing was broken, but man was I glad that I was wearing my brown trousers that day. Funnily enough, when I was a lot younger, I was in a crash in which the Vickers Vicount we were in ran out of fuel and had to put down over the Kentish country side; everything went quiet, we bounced a few times, hit a tree and lost a wing, and that was it. But because I was younger, it was all a big adventure and there was no fear. I can’t say I’d be quite that calm a second time around though, some of those cows we landed on looked pretty squished, stuck to the underside of the fuselage like that and all.
Not a personal experience but copied from www.wired.com:
Next time you shut the door, pull in all the freakin’ straps, OK? Because some food-service whiz at the Miami airport didn’t do that, the pilot of a Newark-bound American Airlines flight had to descend to 12,000 feet and slow the jet down while his flight engineer opened a cabin door to retrieve the strap. To avoid panic, the passengers were not informed, although most of them figured something was amiss when cold air rushed into the cabin and their ears started popping like champagne corks. The pilot of Wednesday’s flight said the danger of the strap buckle breaking loose and being sucked into the engine made its retrieval necessary.