Scariest moment for me was this past January. Left DFW and headed to Omaha knowing it was a snow storm. Pilot did great landing! But my nerves had my heart POUNDING during the landing.
Your Scariest Flying Experience
- Thread starter Acylum
- Start date
Wife and I went to Key West and that is the shortest runway I've ever been on. The flight crew warns you they have to slam on the brakes immediately after touching down. They make a joke of it saying, "anything that ends up here by us we get to keep!" I've been told they give landing a couple tries and if they can't they fly to Miami and land there and you have to bus down to KW. Avoided that, luckily.
Not the scariest but the worst…was on the small prop plane for work and for this trip we had brought along a couple extras who didn’t normally go on the charter. I don’t remember the turbulence being that bad, but all the sudden in front of me was a lot of commotion and then the onion vomit (thanks Subway) smell hits me. All I could do is grip my seat and think don’t puke, don’t puke as the others around me looked pretty green. Thankfully it was only about 40 minutes until we stopped to pick another person up. That fresh air when the I hit the tarmac was about the most wonderful thing ever. My forearm muscles hurt for a solid day from griping that seat so hard and we definitely questioned taking any more non regulars on the charter from then on!
Flying from Cozumel to Cancun to come back to the US after our honeymoon. My (now ex) wife and I board a small, 6-or so passenger plane. Passenger area was open to the cockpit. I believe the pilot was a student and this was doubling as a training flight. Instructor on the right side of the cockpit, student on the left. I don't speak enough Spanish to know for sure. Pilots didn't speak English well enough to explain what was happening (though their English was better than my Spanish, so I give them credit for that.)
Take off and flight is smooth. Plane lands, doesn't slow down and takes off again. Wife and I look at each other wondering what's going on. We circle around and do it again. Each landing and take off and circle is taking about 20 minutes. After 6 of these (2 hours worth) we've decided we're going to miss our connecting flight. I've been getting pilots attention, pointing to my watch, trying to communicate our concerns, but can't understand what he's telling us. We finally land and stop. Door of plan opens, airline employee looks at my wife and I and says, "Mr. and Mrs. JayV, come with me, you need to be on your next flight." She puts us on a golf cart and gets us to the terminal, then escorts us to departures where there are around 300 people in line. She takes us to the front of the line, rushes us through, and gets us on our plane to Dallas. I still don't know if my interpretation of what was going on is correct, but that Mexican airline took care of us! I suspect we were on the departing plane to Dallas before we would have reached the terminal had we walked from the arriving plane from Cozumel. It was anxiety inducing at the time, but looking back on it, I'm super impressed with how we were handled and taken care of once the plane stopped in Cancun. This would have been late 2002, so I'm sure things happen different now.
Take off and flight is smooth. Plane lands, doesn't slow down and takes off again. Wife and I look at each other wondering what's going on. We circle around and do it again. Each landing and take off and circle is taking about 20 minutes. After 6 of these (2 hours worth) we've decided we're going to miss our connecting flight. I've been getting pilots attention, pointing to my watch, trying to communicate our concerns, but can't understand what he's telling us. We finally land and stop. Door of plan opens, airline employee looks at my wife and I and says, "Mr. and Mrs. JayV, come with me, you need to be on your next flight." She puts us on a golf cart and gets us to the terminal, then escorts us to departures where there are around 300 people in line. She takes us to the front of the line, rushes us through, and gets us on our plane to Dallas. I still don't know if my interpretation of what was going on is correct, but that Mexican airline took care of us! I suspect we were on the departing plane to Dallas before we would have reached the terminal had we walked from the arriving plane from Cozumel. It was anxiety inducing at the time, but looking back on it, I'm super impressed with how we were handled and taken care of once the plane stopped in Cancun. This would have been late 2002, so I'm sure things happen different now.
Kind of the opposite. Wasn't a problem, but it was interesting. Landing at Stewart International Airport (SWF) in NY. Longest runway I've seen. I know there are longer in the world but this was the longest I'd seen. 11,817-feet. Airport was an emergency landing location for the space shuttle, so I assume that's part of it. I was on a small-ish passenger jet, maybe 40-50 passenger, so didn't need a lot of the runway. On approach for landing, watching out the window, I see the end of the runway go past, then pavement, and more pavement, and more pavement, and I'm wondering why wheels aren't on the surface. More pavement goes past, are we going to circle around? Fly over more pavement. Finally, plane touches down, wheels on concrete, smooth stop, everything like it should be. It was so much more runway that we needed.
Took the same flight but from Key West to Ft Myers and loved sitting right behind the pilots and watching how they operate. Felt like I was flying the plane myself.
Had to have been maybe somewhere around 97-99, we were flying from Iowa to Montana with a jump to Minneapolis in between. We load the plane from CR on the tarmac onto a a regional dual prop plane that already looked a touch out of date. We get up in the air for maybe 10 minutes and the prop outside of my window stops and smoke starts coming out. We get turned around and land back in Cedar Rapids, welcomed by the FD and a host of emergency vehicles. Didn't think much of it until we got home and watched the news that night and saw we had apparently experienced a pretty major engine malfunction. I think we got to fly first class from Minneapolis to Montana in return.
Slight tangent: One of my favorite memories was watching this movie with friends after we'd been drinking way too long. We rewound the "Brad Pitt getting smacked by a car" scene probably about 20 times and drunk-cackled the entire time.
Ok
the 767 one happened on flight from DFW to San Diego, climbing out of DFW we just reached cruising altitude, when a huge bang and cabin depressurization occured, Masks dropped but by the time we got them on, really didn't need them as captain had done an emergency descent and got it below 15000. Plane was full of styrofoam dust, and the coffee pot in the galley was smoldering. Attendants were hitting it with the fire extinguisher, which stopped the smoke but added to the chaos. I was in front row of main cabin and noticed a guy gasping for air even though we were at about 1500 feet by that time, he was kinda panicking, So cysmiley undid his seat belt and went to him to calm his nerves, got him to look out the port windows and told him plane was totally under control, the copilot had come back to make sure fire was extinguished, noticed my action and asked me to help with deplaning as by that time we making final approach to El Paso, (mayday) had been called but the captain felt an orderly evacuation would be safer that deploying chutes. So we went up fron to exit door, Used a jump seat when landing, and opened exit door, while captain and first officer were explaining to passengers what to do. Problem was they brought a stairway that at maximum height was approx 3 feet below the deck of a 767. so cysmiley had to jump to top platform, and catch passengers as 1st officer handed them down, Fortunately there were no300 pounders on board! While we were deplaning, local TV stationed had noticed our rooftop approach and sent crew to cover the story. Camerman starts up the stair, cysmily and ground crew guy grabbed him and in no uncertain terms let him know his actions were not appreciated. Another ground crew guy found a platform to raise the level to only a foot or so differential and made cysmiley's job much easier!.As the final passengers exited, i noticed how small elPaso airport was at the time (early 80s). Upon interning the terminal, all payphones had long lines, ticket counter for the puddle jumpers (turbo props) had long lines, with people yelling at one another, it was not a cool atmosphere, but fortunately for cysmiley there was a small bar in sight at one end of the terminal. Only one smart thing to do, check it out, after all I was an ISU grad and former serviceman. Well the bar of course was packed, with only the owner tending and she was frazzled. So I said to her, I have bar tending experience, can I help you out. So cysmiley was experiencing a great day, now he was a bartender. She even had to run to store to restock beer! But I was joined by another good Samaritan and we kept the beer flowing, we were as accurate as we could be with accounting and charges, but any doubt went to the house! After about 2-3 hours of most passengers drinking fairly heavily, we see this lear jet land with the AIrlines disaster crew on board, Oh boy now we can find out if the plane is fixed and off to San Diego NOT. The crew chief comes in and wants everone to put their beers on the bar and line up so she can take her flight list and check us against the manifest! Big mistake! One passenger issued her a manifesto, 1 Food, 2. when do we get to SanDiego, 3. All beverages here on out on American Airlines LOL. But a 767 cannot takeoff from El Paso loaded, we get to go back to DFW in three flights of a 727, then they are bringing in a 767 from Seattle to get us there. We finally got to San Diego 14 hours late, without luggage, as our luggage was in El Paso, they had to unload it by hand, as they had to strip the 767 and use test pilots from Boeing to get it out of there, luggage caught up to cysmiley the day before I left San Diego. 6 months later, I did get a cerificate for three flights from AA, as the CEO sent an apology letter and ensured me the "disaster" team was being reprogrammed LOL
just the other day we had one going over our house for about 20 minutes as it sprayed the fields that are next to our property. Was very cool to watch. Ive seen them, usually when driving, so its crazy to be standing there knowing you could throw a baseball up in the air and hit it.
I kept waiting for the part where you MacGyver'd some airplane wings to an old Chevy Silverado with duct tape and flew people to San Diego in the bed of the truck.
I landed in KC this past January on a totally ice/snow covered runway(probably the same storm). Crosswind blew the plane half sideways about 30 ft. above the ground , but he got it down. You could feel the plane sliding as he hit the reverse thrust also. Everyone started clapping when we stopped. It's the only time flying I've ever felt like it might be "the end." It's weird how much went through my mind in just a few seconds. It was a bad storm but it didn't look like a plow had hit the runway in an hour. I was once on a plane that aborted takeoff about the time you would rotate. Talk about hitting the brakes. Not sure what the issue was.
KidSilverhair
Well-Known Member
I’ve never seen thinner TP than I’ve seen in airport bathrooms. It’s like “concepts of toilet paper.”
At DFW at least some of the men’s stalls have lights above them, with green indicating they’re available and red showing they’re in use. Pretty nice. Except for the one I went into a couple of years ago where the only stall with a green light was missing the door …
I was on a flight once where we getting bounced around like I've never experienced while descending. It was one of those flights where people started applauding when the plane landed.
