Your scariest moments while flying

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Forget monsters and B-movie slashers; let’s talk some REALLY scary stuff.

My four scariest moments as a flyer:

  1. For the first time ever, I was seated at the farthest back seats on a jet. This particular jet was one of those that has engines in its tail. I’m always most nervous on take-off. As the jet climbed, all of a sudden the loud noise from those tail jets very close to me cut out. Silence. I was sure I was going to die. I guess on this type of jet, those engines aren’t used all the time.

This was when I learned that when you’re nervous on a flight, look at the faces of the flight attendants. They looked calm as can be. They’ve flown a million times. So it was then I knew everything was fine. (It will be a scary day when I look at them and THEY are freaking out.)

  1. Because of where I live, I often have to fly in the dead of winter. This can mean, upon taking off and landing, that your jet is going through driving snow, high winds, and a lot of turbulence.
    I remember one specific time coming in to land, where the jet was experiencing turbulence VERY close to the ground. Turbulence normally doesn’t bother me, but when you’re only a few hundred feet above the treetops bouncing around like that, I get nervous.

The pilot was fighting against a cross-wind (I think. What do I know about flying?), so as we were almost touching down on the runway, the plane was significantly SIDEWAYS. I think he was doing this on purpose. Moments before the wheels touched down, he straightened it out.

  1. I’m seated near the door that the skyway connects to the jet. There’s a long delay before we take off. The pilot or co-pilot comes back to the door, and is talking to the staff who had earlier worked the desk in the terminal. I can hear their conversation.

*Desk lady: They did your weight calculations upstairs. The plane is overweight. Some freight needs to come off.

Pilot: No it isn’t. I did the calculations up front myself. We’re fine.

Desk lady: They say you’re not.

Pilot: We’re fine! C’mon! Let’s get going!

Pilot shuts door to the protests of the desk lady.*

I was sweating that flight out, let me tell ya. That was the closest I’ve ever come to unbuckling, walking off and refusing to go on a flight.

  1. I’m flying on a 767 or 777 out of Brazil. We’ve been flying for awhile, and are near the country’s northern coast. Regular flyers know that turbulence typically manifests itself in a series of bumps, some more pronounced than others.

Well, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, comes one big … whatever it was. The jet seemed to lose thousands of feet in altitude, in just that moment or two.

EVERYBODY gasped. I mean, even the people who look like they fly daily.

Then, everything was fine again. That was a scary, scary moment.

Anybody else got any?

2

Well, it was after the fact. Flying from Honolulu to SF in a Super Connie in 1956 or '57, we lost an engine over the Pacific. It burst into flame as I watched from a window seat just over the wing root.

I was a kid, and I’d asked the stew about the flames coming out of the engine’s exhaust before takeoff. She’d assured me that was normal, so when it blew, I just thought the pilot had given it the gas or something.

I was surprised when we landed back in Hawaii again.

3

re: overweight plane…

I definitely would have gotten off.

No, scratch that, I would’ve announced it loudly, and when enough people got off, I’d sit comfortably and arrive at my destination on time.

4

Don’t they call those “air bags” or something? A sudden drop in pressure, causing the plane to lose a lot of altitude really fast. Yup, scary - had one of those over Saudi Arabia once, on board a Singapore Airlines 747 to Amsterdam. Felt like a rollercoaster ride downhill. :eek:

Also, landing in Cape Town, South Africa, is pretty intense. Unbeknownst to me and my friend, SA Airlines pilots have the policy of stabilising the plance anywhere between 5 and 10 meters over the runway, and then they push it down. You’re flying towards sea, and in a valley, causing all sorts of turbulence, and apparently dropping the plane from 10 meters is safer than risking a gust of wind even closer to the ground. I’ve never come down so hard in a plane, I was amazed the landing gear held. But it’s standard policy, so I’m sure a 747 can take it.

Oh, and a couple of months ago, coming into Charles de Gaules (Paris), the 737 I was in suddenly tipped the right wing I was staring at about 30 degrees downward - this was at an altitude of 6, 7 meters, tops. Very frightening, and the pilot managed to level it just in time. I swear, that wingtip was inches away from striking. Then, the pilot came over the PA with some lame apology about his co-pilot fucking up the landing.

Air France, you gotta love them. :rolleyes:

5

Yep; flying into Amsterdam, a few years ago. Smallish plane (maybe 40/50 pax). Pilot informs us that we shouldn’t be alarmed to see hordes of firetrucks and ambulances ready at the side of the runway (for us!). Apparently he didn’t get a green light to indicate that the undercarriage had locked and so didn’t know if we were going to do a belly landing.

In the event, all was ok, but we did clap. Unashamedly. Even the stewardesses.

Actually that reminds me of another one, flying from Heathrow to Toronto about a year ago. We’d just cleared the coast and the pilot (in his oh-so-calm-nothing-can-ruffle-my-feathers voice) said we were turning back because of a warning light on one of the engines. He advised us not to be worried that we were dumping fuel from the ends of the wings. Boy did that look scary.

The worst thing was, when we landed a small truck pulled up under the offending engine and a grizzled old mechanic - looking not unlike Yoda (odd bits of hair randomly sticking out of his head ) - got out, opened a flap on the engine cowling and fiddled for about 5 seconds with a screwdriver. That was it! We refuelled and took off again. I’d have paid good money to have deplaned and caught a later flight.

6

1.) I had kind of a similiar experience with engines (seemingly) cutting out the first time I flew in a 767. Before that I had only ever flown ancient 747’s or DC-10’s (that’s right, not even an MD-11, and definitely none of thise fancy shmancy 747-400’s)

Well, right after takeoff the pilot throttled down, and those new engines were so damned quiet, for about two seconds I thought they had all shut down and we were in serious trouble. I got some seerious heebie-jeebies until I saw the flight attendants just as calm as could be, and then I kind of heard those engines purring along (plus I was kind of curious how we could still be climbing and hadn’t stalled yet).

2.) Well, I was kind of young to remember all the details now, but one time when flying from New York to Frankfurt (with good old PanAm) on what must have been a seriously old 747 by the looks (PanAm had some real wrecks flying in those days), we lost the usage of an engine somewhere over the North Atlantic (I remember it was due to lack of oil pressure or something like that).

Well, this is not really a big deal in a four engine 747, but the pilot said he wanted to land and have it checked out anyway. At this point we had a choice between landing at Shannon, Ireland or Gander, Newfoundland. The pilot decided to turn back and land in Gander. This again is no problem because Gander has a reaaaaalllllllyyyyyyy long runway (heck, it’s in the middle of nowhere, so why not).
I do remember it was pretty damn cold (even though this was in June). I also remember the small terminal was packed (about 500 PAX from our flight and about 500 Canadian Forces soldiers who were there for some reason or another). We ended up waiting for a replacement 747 they had to fly up from somewhere like Florida, and I remember I sank a whole lot of quarters in the PONG machine (this should tell you approximately how long ago this was) they had in the Terminal. We finally arrived in Frankfurt about 16 hours late.

3.) The other experience was flying from Recife (Brazil) to Frankfurt. We were flying with VASP which was like a Brazilian version of Southwest (only worse) and has since gone bankrupt due to the owner lining his own pockets a little too much.

Our jet was either a rented MD-11 or it was bought second hand (And to make things worse it was either rented or bought from some Eastern European airline, because all the signs were in Cyrillic!!)

Anyway we’re all ready to go, and the jet is taxiing out to the runway, when we suddenly stop and the engines are turned off. The pilot says there is some kind of problem with one of the restrooms, and we’re just going to have to sit tight for a little while 'til things are all fixed up.

It turns out we had to sit there on the tarmac with the engines turned off (so no Airco) in ***ing Recife in the middle of the night (scheduled departure time was 11 PM) for about 5 hours. Yeah, now tell me that was just a backed up bidet!!!

The heat and humidity were horrible (Recife is in Northeastern Brazil) and after about two hours they were all out of drinkable liquids on the plane (unless you wanted to keep drinking those little Whiskey bottles. Not a good idea when everyone is close to dehydration.) so they had to reload everything.

Alot of people were seriously angry and said they wanted to wait out the time in the Terminal. Well, at the bottom of the stairs leading to the door there were a couple of guys from the Brazilian ‘Policia Federal’ (with machine guns) saying that anyone who gets off the plane will be entering Brazilian Territory illegaly and will not be allowed back on the plane.

We had our son along for this horror trip (he was about 14 months old at the time), so this inreased our pleasure exponentially.

7

The most terrifying moment I’ve ever had on a plane was inflicted intentionally by the pilot, my father, in a cessna 150. Apparently while learning to fly, prospective pilots are required to learn what is called a full-engine stall. This is where the pilot shuts the engine off mid-flight and then starts it again. Dad said, “Want to see something?” I never wanted to “see something” ever again.

8

  1. Landing at the old Hong Kong airport, looking out the window from the top deck of a 747 into some Chinese lady’s living room as she ironed clothes while we were still on approach. Surreal.

  2. We circled Buffalo for about 45 minutes because the winds were too high to land (over 55mph, IIRC). We were about to divert to Canada when they dropped to 54.9 mph, apparently, and the Delta (prolly former Navy Carrier Qual-ed) pilot was gonna take her in. As we came in with the nose at about a 25 degree angle to the runway, I was hoping it wasn’t cold out. Because I knew it was raining, and I knew the plane was going to split open on the runway and spill me out among the wreckage, I just did not want to be bleeding, wet AND cold all at the same time.

  3. In the back of a CH-53D Marine Corps helicopter hovering over the deck of a moving, rolling ship, as we prepared to fastrope out the back. I knew the pilot from Quantico, we were in the same platoon. Real prankster. Scary. (P.S., it went fine.)

I have flown a certified boatload of times, and have had pretty good experiences, overall.

9

About 1980 or so, in a twin engine puddle jumper (about 15 person capacity) from Chicago to Bloomington Ill. My brother and I sat right behind the pilot and co-pilot. The whole way the pilot was letting the co-pilot do about everything. It seemed as though he was being instructed.

As we descended to land we flew into a terrible rain storm. The co-pilot was concentrating on turning on the windshield wipers.

Then it happened, maybe a tail wind, maybe just a bad combo of attitude and speed. The plane stalled. Stall buzzer, flashing lights - falling airplane. At night, in a rainstorm, only a few thousand feet up. I don’t know our exact altitude, but we were on approach.

We made it, obviously, but I will never forget.

10

I think the phrase you’re looking for is air pockets–sharply delineated areas with lower air pressure, so the airplane descends suddenly.

Air bags are what they put in the dashboards of newer cars as a safety feature–they inflate on impact to protect passengers in a crash.

11

Not to be confused with air sickness bags, placed on planes in case the air gets sick.

Seriously, people should be encouraged to take flying lessons or at least a ground school to learn at least a little about aerodynamics and flying. Not to diminish the posters’ fears, but half of the things people mentioned are normal occurances. For example, stall is just an aerodynamic condition. The plane is not going to suddenly drop out of the sky. However, quick recovery is the order of the day.

Now back to your regularly scheduled fears.

12

Air pockets, that’s it. I was translating from Dutch, and a bit too literally. Trust me, I know what airbags are, my car even has a couple of them. :slight_smile:

13

My three scariest flights weren’t near as bad as some of yours but they were bad enough that each time I promised myself if I just landed safely that I’d never fly again :slight_smile:

  1. Flying Sabena from New York to Brussels- everything was fine until landing where the fog was so thick it was impossible to see the landing strip. This was also the flight where a GI couple slept practically the whole time but their baby didn’t. The father would wake up periodically and shake the baby, telling it to shut up or he’d slap it silly.

  2. During a flight from London to Dusseldorf on KLM, we experienced our worst turbulence ever. A few people fell out of their seats because they weren’t buckled in. The most frightening aspect was that the stewardess near us was white-knuckling her seat and throwing terrified glances around the cabin.

  3. While attempting to land in Hawaii, the oxygen masks all came down. We were told just to disregard them as the problem with the plane had something to do with the wing flaps. We were circling for what seemed like forever. The pilot would start to make a landing and then pull up because the plane was going to fast. This happened several times. Finally he told us to get in the bracing position that we would be landing at speed higher than normal. The braking lifted my butt out of the seat.

14

The third-scariest - not because of anything the plane or pilots did but because of the situation - was coming home from NYC after 9/11. Otherwise, it was a perfectly delightful flight - I had an entire exit row to myself, they played the movie free, and gave everyone free drinks (since they had banned the food).

The second-scariest was on a flight from Phoenix to San Fran. We’re heading down the runway, picking up speed, getting to a point where we can take off when all of a sudden…screech! Aborted takeoff. Apparently an indicator light went on that shouldn’t have. Two hours later, we were off again. Turned out the the light itself was defective.

And the #1 scariest in-flight moment came in March of 2001. I was flying Southwest Airlines from Phoenix to Vegas with a friend. The flight was two hours late leaving (meaning it left Phoenix at nearly midnight). Southwest has some seats that face backward - my friend was in one of them, across from me. Since we were so late leaving, the flight attendants gave us free drinks. We should have known what we were getting into when we received them: STRONG! :stuck_out_tongue: Fifteen minutes later, we flew into a ferocious thunderstorm that battered the plane like crazy. That was the first time I ever prayed on a plane. My friend and I held hands and just…held on. The flight attendants were fine, and said they’d seen much worse…but that doesn’t always mean anything.

15

Oh, I forgot one! I was flying from Beaver Island, Michigan, out in the middle of Lake Michigan, to the small municipal airport on the mainland in Charlevoix. A tiny little passenger prop plane, maybe room for a dozen or so flyers.

We’re about 50 feet above the landing strip and there is a herd of deer in the runway! I thought for sure it was going to be gruesome for them and/or us, but they scattered at the last possible moment.

File that under “Things that probably don’t happen at LAX.”

16

My scariest moment while flying came on a flight from San Pedro Sula, Honduras to Miami on TACA (Take A Chance Airlines).

I’m seated toward the back of the plane. We left SPS and they told us it’d be about two hours to Miami. An hour and a half later, they said we had been cleared for final landing. Ok…look out the window, there’s no land, but I’ve never landed in Miami before. We go in to for the landing, and we are, in fact, near the airport. Everything seems normal, if a little fast for the landing. From my point of view in a window seat, we seem to be about to land, so that I’m bracing for the braking because we’re a little fast, when all of a sudden the plane seems to shimmy and slide a little sideways and the pilot takes off again. Fast and steep. Way back up to where we were before.

We circle the airport and land again. No one on the plane ever apologized or mentioned it at all, but the flight attendants looked a little freaked as we were getting off the plane. I think there was another plane on the runway.

17

My scariest moment actually had nothing to do with the plane itself. I was flying to Germany this past April, and it was an overnight flight. I was sleeping peacefully, when suddenly I heard a loud THUMP, and I awoke. Initially I thought something had happened to the plane – the gear had accidentally deployed, the baggage hold had come open, or something along those lines. Then I see everyone leaning out and looking up the aisle.

Another passenger had had a seizure of some kind. Maybe diabetic, maybe epileptic, maybe a heart attack, I don’t know; but he was lying in the aisle on his back, his heels thumping on the floor. Someone had already rung for a flight attendant, and one came tearing up the aisle, knelt down over him, and administered first aid. I couldn’t see the particulars, but eventually he was back in good shape and in his seat.

Scared the living hell out of me. For one thing, I thought, “Are we going to spend the rest of this flight with a dead body??” Then I thought about his poor seatmate, who I believe was a relative, and how scared she must have been. It was very freaky.

18

I had a flight with a very local carrier in asia that was fairly scary. To set the scene, while waiting at Phnom Pehn airport for a flight to Bangkok, we watched a plane on fire, circling above the airport. I guess it was either burning off fuel (hehehe, literally) or waiting for emergency crews to arrive, before attempting to land. Everything was o.k, but it did make everyone a little more nervous than usual. (the airport was evacuated, and we all watched the plane circle and circle and circle)

Mid-flight we hit an air pocket. I’ve hit air pockets before, but this should’ve been called an air suitcase. I’d love to know exactly how far we dropped. Two women had to be taken off in wheelchairs (one was in the toilet, the other’s seat belt was broken) Mr Goo hit the roof with his head (his seat belt was on, but too loose), one of the stewardesses was bleeding profusely from her arm (I don’t know what she hit) and I (a person who rarely bruises) had a line of bruises across my lap where I lifted off the seat and hit my loosened belt, a black knee from hitting the seat in front, and a huge bleeding gash from that knee. Mr Goo had a large lump on his head, and one of our cameras were ruined.
Our landing was fun, too, everyone already shaken up, and into heavy crosswinds at night, swinging (left wing up, left wing down, left wing up) as we landed.

I used to laugh at the seat belts, and joke about exactly what are they going to do in the event of a plane crash. Now I keep them buckled fairly snug the whole flight, even when trying to sleep, and even on long flights (like the Bangkok-London flight we took the following week… that belt was real snug)

19

I’ve only flown three times in my sixteen years, and only one of them was a commercial flight, which I took when I was about two years old. Can’t remember if anything happened, obviously. Ten years later, for my twelfth birthday, I was taken up in a little old biplane. Emphasis on the old - cloth-covered wings, open cockpit; after the flight, I found out that it was one of those pre-Depression-era planes. Scary. We took off, and the pilot (who was in the back seat, no less - that didn’t comfort me) flew fairly gently around the area at what I guess was several hundred feet. I was already scared pantsless, when the engine apparently shut off - the pilot was coming in for a landing, I was grabbing the bar, and suddenly the engine’s noise diminishes very signifigantly. Not fun.

20

It wasn’t scary, exactly, but it was a really weird feeling.

I was in one of those small commuter jets from BWI to Winston-Salem when the pilot announced landing would be delayed some because of fog. We circled a bit, and the plane started descending. Everything outside was white so there was no frame of reference, and the plane kept descending. And descending. And descending. And descending. I looked at my seatmate and asked if we were EVer going to come out of the clouds, and at that moment wecameoutofthecloudsandhitthegroundjustlikeTHAT.

Seatmate and I just kinda looked at each other with “Whoa. THAT was freaky” written all over our faces.