Your wild plane ride stories, please

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jbhtexas

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Oct 20, 2006
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Arlington, TX
Not a scary flight, but an interesting logistical issue...

Flew into Minneapolis around Christmas time, connecting to Aberdeen, SD on a puddle jumper. This was just before MSP put in the jetways for the puddle jumpers, and passengers were still hauled to the puddle jumpers by bus from this big huge room that some called the "corral".

It was a calm, clear day, but very cold. The corral was filling up. Busses stopped coming to get passengers, and none of the puddle jumpers were taking off. Jets were still coming and going. Someone got on the PA and announced that the regional radar system had failed, so no regional flights were going out, and the ETA on repairs was unknown.

For several flights, including mine, Northwest chartered a bus and gave us the option to take the bus, or wait for however long it would take to fix the radar for flights. Mostly everyone on my flight took the bus. Northwest put a bunch of snacks on the bus and a flight attendant. Got to Aberdeen at 3:00 AM.
 

CarolinaCy

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Apr 18, 2008
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I worked for Diamond Vogel Paints in the early 2000's and they had a small private plane - twin engine turboprop, a Cheyenne I think, I don't really know planes. Anyway, a group of us were flying to visit John Deere HQ, so going to the Quad Cities airport. It was my first time flying on that plane, so the pilot let me ride shotgun in the co-pilot's seat with the headset on.

It was a really windy summer day and we were getting thrown around quite a bit on our approach to the QC airport. As we approached the end of the runway, the pilot had to point the nose of the plane into the wind to avoid being blown off course. We were probably pointed 30 degrees to the left of the runway (or it seemed that way at least), and just before touchdown he straightened it out.

After we touched down I asked if that was one of his more challenging landings, and he told me he used to fly bush planes into the jungles of South America, and that landing was a Sunday stroll compared to most of those flights.
 

VTXCyRyD

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Sep 2, 2010
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I'll just leave this here
[video=youtube;_G2shnZ58h8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_G2shnZ58h8[/video]
 

CyOps

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Jul 12, 2010
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Lincoln
The small plane I was riding in across western Nebraska had electrical problems so we landed at the Grand Island airport. They were going to have the plane for a few days so the pilot and I hitched a ride with a guy in his 4 seat plane who was flying by our destination. He told us when we land, he was just going to taxi up to our hangar and we could get out. He didn't want to shut his engine off because he wasn't sure it would start again.
 

GrindingAway

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Nov 27, 2006
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I already gave my wild/scary ones so I'll add my wild/weird ones.

Flight to Germany on a 777 I have the exit row aisle seat by the bathroom. I love that seat since I'm 6'6 and it's basically infinite legroom. It sucks being by the bathroom due to people bumping you but I can never sleep on a plane anyway. So this particular time bathroom I'm facing directly has an issue with the door latch. It didn't look properly and still showed available. So I spent 8 hours of about every 15-20 minutes someone coming up and opening the bathroom door exposing whoever was inside to me and the people sitting around me.

I don't remember the airport but one of my flights in India. I'm waiting to get off the plane and noticed instead of having tugger vehicles pushing the plane back from the gate they had about 50 guys on the ground pushing on tires, landing gear, or whatever they could reach. The security pat downs were especially "friendly" at that airport as well.

On a trip home from Arizona I got up to use the bathroom. On the way back to my seat there is a guy on the aisle with a portable DVD player watching hard core porn. Thought that was pretty ballsy.
 

CtownCyclone

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Jan 20, 2010
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Where they love the governor
I already gave my wild/scary ones so I'll add my wild/weird ones.

Flight to Germany on a 777 I have the exit row aisle seat by the bathroom. I love that seat since I'm 6'6 and it's basically infinite legroom. It sucks being by the bathroom due to people bumping you but I can never sleep on a plane anyway. So this particular time bathroom I'm facing directly has an issue with the door latch. It didn't look properly and still showed available. So I spent 8 hours of about every 15-20 minutes someone coming up and opening the bathroom door exposing whoever was inside to me and the people sitting around me.

I don't remember the airport but one of my flights in India. I'm waiting to get off the plane and noticed instead of having tugger vehicles pushing the plane back from the gate they had about 50 guys on the ground pushing on tires, landing gear, or whatever they could reach. The security pat downs were especially "friendly" at that airport as well.

On a trip home from Arizona I got up to use the bathroom. On the way back to my seat there is a guy on the aisle with a portable DVD player watching hard core porn. Thought that was pretty ballsy.

I see what you did there.
 

coolerifyoudid

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Feb 8, 2013
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KC
My 630AM flight from Houston to KC following a college friend's wedding was especially painful. The fact that we had stopped drinking in time to make the cab to the airport did not help. I may have had to borrow my wife's barf bag...and possibly another one.

During a different flight, I was in the bathroom taking a leak when the plane hit a really rough patch. I was lifted off my feet and my head and neck slammed the ceiling so hard, I'm about 95% sure I got a concussion.
 

MNCYWX

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Feb 7, 2010
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Med City, MN
How about any landing at St. Maarten? This being one of the extreme low landings I've ever seen there, touching down well before the piano keys.

1252724.jpg


Or stare at this baby coming down the runway at ya.

[video=youtube;eu91oZ2_Vag]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eu91oZ2_Vag[/video]

Or riding the fence as one takes off.
 
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CyFan61

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Oct 25, 2010
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Funny you say that. Direct flight from DSM to DCA. We were coming in from the south and the pilot must have thought the ground was 50 feet lower than it was. There always seems to be a bit of a sway coming into National too. I hate that airport.

DCA is so tiny for the traffic that it has that it causes issues. But I had a long delay there once and it was easy to just sit by a window and watch the planes come and go.

I also enjoyed landing in the river approach from the north sitting on the left side of the plane in a window seat. Great view of the monuments in DC.

Until the Silver Line gets extended to IAD, I will go into DCA whenever possible so I can take the Metro straight from the airport.
 

pourcyne

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Feb 19, 2011
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The secret to landing in St. Martin is to stay on the French side in order to avoid the primary airport during your stay so that you never see a plane landing, or the signs that warn people about the turbulence from landing planes. We never realized how risky it must have been until we rented a car and drove around the island...oops.
 

cyfan4St8

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I've landed both is Key west and st. marteen, and key west was way worse for the size of a plane we were in. The pilot all of a sudden comes on saying if you have never landed in key west to be ready for a hard landing and that they are to hit a certain mark or they have to try again. He did hit it the first try but it was a damn hard it when we did and they slam on the breaks. I heard a day later that one flight ended up landing in Miami and busing people down to key west because the pilot couldn't hit the mark and didn't feel like he could get the plane landed safe.
 

cyrocksmypants

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Dec 29, 2008
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Washington DC
I don't have any particularly awful experiences.

My last flight to Honolulu out of LAX I was sitting with a California surfer guy at the window and a girl from New Orleans that had never flown other than from N.O. to LA in the middle seat. We did hit some turbulence, nothing bad, but enough to really jolt the plane for about 20 seconds, make the electricity flicker on and off and turn off the tvs. The guy started laughing like he was high out of his mind (he probably was) and the girl started crying. But it didn't last long. Actually had the smoothest landing I've ever experienced too. If I didn't know the sound of the landing gear, I would have hardly known we did it.

I will say, though, I was wearing my ISU golf polo and had at least four different people on the plane say "Go Cyclones" to me. I never know what to say in that situation though, so I just replied with "Go State".
 

pourcyne

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Feb 19, 2011
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These have been great. Thanks, everybody, for your wild rides.

:pcool: