I encountered this reaction once in college. I witnessed a pretty bad motorcycle accident, and an Asian student near me was giggling and saying stuff like “Wow! Maybe he’s dead!” I was appalled at his behavior. Only later did I start to suspect that it may have been some kind of coping mechanism. (We were on the 6th floor of a dormitory; too far away to be of any help. I did call 911, however.)
When it got really physical and he was restrained, that all took place towards the back of the plane and I was in the middle, so I wasn’t too close to it. Right after it started, me and the passenger seated next to me decided we should get up and see if we could help, but as soon as we did and saw what was going on, it was clear that we weren’t going to be able to do much. Not that I was thrilled with the prospect anyway - the dude was a big guy (I think it came out later that he was a college football player), and I… am not. But, that said, if I thought I could have helped, I would have.
I WAS one of the people he blessed earlier on when he walking up and down the aisles. So if it turns out he was telling the truth and he really was Jesus Christ, I got that going for me. Which is nice.
A few comments from the other side of the cockpit door …
On every single flight somebody among the 150 passengers has that premonition. On 9,999 out of 10,000 flights nothing happens and they forget it. On 1 in 10,000 they’re right and remember it. Congrats on drawing the winning card once. Means exactly zero for that flight, your previous flights, and all future flights.
“Aborted landings”: They feel pretty abrupt because they are. The perception that we’re climbing at a steep angle is false however. It’s actually only a bit more than a typical takeoff. What’s different is that we change deck angle quickly compared to a normal takeoff and we simultaneously accelerate.
Both of which confuse the balance sensors in your inner ear. That sensation of being pushed back in your seat is 100% real as we accelerate. That also pushes the fluid in your inner ear in a way it wasn’t designed to handle. Your brain misinterprets that as being tilted backwards. So you think we’re climbing at like 45 degrees. Nope; it’s the typical 15-20 degrees.
The process of doing the go-around and getting back in line to land again is real busy. It may be 5 minutes before we can spare 30 seconds to talk to y’all. So don’t attribute anything scary to our silence. We’re just real busy, and first things first is one of our mantras. We’ll make some reassuring noises or update you on our revised destination as soon as we have the time.
Turbulence: We’ve read some stories here of people getting hurt, and people getting pretty darn scared. You’ll notice we haven’t read stories of jets breaking, or even of pieces of jets breaking, such as bins coming down or seats coming loose. IOW, it can get a bunch worse than the worst stories here before anything on the jet breaks. So next time you’re bouncing along a little, and get the urge to think scary thoughts, remember how much worse it can be and still have absolutely nothing significantly bad happen.
And wear your damn seatbelt 100% of the time you’re sitting down. I sure do, whether working up front or riding in back. The broken limb you save will be your own. Sometimes we can predict in a general sense that it’s likely to be bumpy or get worse than it already is. But often enough the first warning we have is the same warning you have. Whump!! & we’re off to the races.
Having said that, I’ve been doing this for over 25 years now and haven’t encountered the kinds of turbulence folks have written about. It’s out there, but it’s not very common.
*My *worst flight you ask?
Well not counting the military it’s like this: For a few months I flew air tours in the Grand Canyon in these: Piper PA-31 Navajo - Wikipedia . There’s one pilot and nine passengers, one of whom rides in the copilot’s seat.
I flew from Feb through May and the heat and turbulence along our route was brutal. If you could see the air flowing around the gorge’s edge and down into the canyon it would look just about like the whitewater rapids down in the river below.
From 9 passengers in a 45 minute tour my personal record is 32 bags of puke. None of which were mine. I have however had the passenger behind me barf on the back of my head and down my neck. It’s unpleasant.
The passengers were mostly Taiwanese folks on package tours who’d stayed up all night in Vegas gambling, drinking, and smoking. They then were taken at 6am to a classic Vegas breakfast buffet and then to our planes. They were very, very polite and always tried to save face by hiding the bags of puke. Part of my job was to find all the bags and clean up any misses. Every damn day.
I am so old I got to fly down in the grand canyon below the rim on tour aircraft & my own company plane. ( well, the company owned it but I was the only pilot so it was MINE… ) There are perks of being old. Bawahahahaa
Was out flying my 145HP Swift at 5500 feet playing fighter pilot with some nice white puff balls, fat, dumb & young.
I come zipping around the edge of a cloud in a near vertical bank and all I see is aluminum & rivets and windows. No time for anything but a freeze frame and “YANK.” As I cleared the top of loose aluminum & several millions badly driven rivets going vertical my brain registered, not fear, not shame for my stupidity, no concern for my life or the people on the C-124 lumbering along because ::::::: Wait for it :::::: There was no one in the cockpit.
No reaction at all from me. I just dropped the window down, patted the side of my sturdy little bird, rolled up right, nose down and lanced through another little cloud and totally surprised the Hun in the WF-190 on the other side which made him history.
Well, the first two paragraphs are true, late 1968 it was. The rest, no comment. Bawahahahaha
Gus, a translation into non-aviator English would be great! (not that I don’t love your poetic style)
If I may (since Gus appears to be off-line), it appears he was out flying in his small personal aircraft (Globe GC-1 Swift - Wikipedia), playing at being the intrepid fighter pilot when emerging from behind a cloud he found himself in very close proximety to this (Douglas C-124 Globemaster II - Wikipedia) and immediately yanked on his controls to prevent death and dismemberment for him and possibly those aboard the Globemaster.
Whereupon (if Gus is to be believed), he went back to fanciful shooting down of harmless clouds masquerading as Nazi warplanes.
More likely, he landed very quickly for an immediate change of underwear…
:eek:
I’ve got two stories.
Back in the 70’s, I had to make several trips from DFW to Hickory, NC. On most of those trips, I flew into Charlotte and rented a car to drive to Hickory, but one time I caught a commuter flight from Charlotte to the Hickory municipal airport.
The connecting flight was in a small aircraft. Before we boarded, the pilot had to put some of the luggage into the passenger compartment, because there was not enough room in the cargo bay. The pilot told the last passenger in the plane, “See those pedals down there? Don’t touch them!”
The pilot boarded the plane and started it up. Soon, we were rolling, pitching, and yawing – and we hadn’t even started taxiing! As we took off, I discovered why the part of the front seatbelt that was within my reach looked like it had been curled in on itself; I added my grip to that part of the strap.
The second was about a week after the Delta crash at DFW (August '85). I had to fly to San Antonio on business. This flight was on Frontier, and the plane had some seats facing the rear, so that small groups (up to six) traveling together could look at one another while the conversed.
That was not the case for me. I was seated across from a woman who was obviously thinking about the recent crash at DFW (we were flying out of Love, though). It was raining, just like it had been when Delta crashed. The lady kept gasping and making worrying sounds. I tried to ignore her, but she was just so agitated that it actually scared me.
Most unpleasant flight?
It was flights, not flight.
Group of 4 workers going from Minneapolis to Fort Wayne, Indiana. Left for the airport about 10am. Everything got worse from then on. We ended up going to St. Louis, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Atlanta, Chicago, Kansas City, Chicago (again), then finally Ft. Wayne Indiana.
Arrived after midnight. Our luggage had seperated from us over the day, but had arrived several hours before us. By the time we arrived, the luggage office at the airport had closed, so we left for the hotel without any. Crowded into a taxi, since the car rental counter was closed. Upon arriving, the hotel had given away our reserved rooms hours before; they did manage to find (poor) rooms for us, but told us we would have to move the next day. And the restaurant was closed; even room service was shut down. We walked a couple blocks to a McDonalds where the drive-thru was still open, then had to argue to get them to sell to us since we were pedestrians without a car. When we got back to the hotel, half the order was wrong. But we ate it anyway, and went to sleep. Got up 6 hours later, got back into our dirty clothes, took another taxi back to the airport for our luggage & rental car (reserved one given away, had to take the only one left, a truck) and went on to the corporate office.
But the company travel specialist saved $47 each by not routing us on the direct Minneapolis-Ft. Wayne flight! Despite the fact that these were 4 professionals being paid $52/hour.
Nothing scary about that trip, but plenty unpleasant.
About half the horror stories I have to listen to at cocktail parties were caused by saving the last dollar buying a ridiculously multi-legged trip. The other half are bad weather.
The two together can produce some epic tails of Doing It Wrong.
Top-hole. Bally Jerry, pranged his kite right in the how’s your father. Hairy blighter, dicky-birdied, feathered back on his Sammy, took a waspy, flipped over on his Betty Harper’s and caught his can in the Bertie.
Eh, wot? Blimey
I once had a similar specialist book my room at the hotel “right next to” the hotel where my conference was happening. “Right next to” meaning only a quarter inch on her map. She thought I could walk, but 1/4 inch was nine miles. So I rented a car (a very, very nice car) for the weekend.
ETA: booking me at the other hotel saved the company $20 a night, which is about what the car cost an hour.
Thanks for the further detail.
Hah! Reminds me of the “farting Hungarian” story from my honeymoon. After about a week each in Prague, Budapest and London, we were leaving Heathrow and heading back to Dallas. All was well and good, and we were even lucky enough to have no people in front of the two of us. Nice! No mashed knees on the trip.
Or so we thought… our flight got delayed for some passengers from Hungary whose flight had arrived a bit late. So they got on, and sat down, and off we went. Unfortunately for my tall long-legged wife (6’2"), the biggest one of the 3 sat directly in front of her. He must have been 6’4", and was portly to say the least. And, I swear to God, he had a head about the size and shape of a regulation basketball. It was strange enough that my wife and I actually commented to each other about it via little written notes.
Anyway, Istvan the Enourmous proceeded to silently fart the entire flight, and once, while he was asleep, not so silently. They were short half-life farts, so they didn’t linger or travel far, but managed to annoy the total piss out of my wife, who was not exactly happy about having some kind of Hungarian colossus (with a giant basketball head) crush her knees by leaning all the way back the second we hit 10,000 feet.
About the only good thing about it is that I felt no compunction to hold my own farts in, as I could and did easily blame them on basketball-head. Didn’t tell my wife that though.