1. My most dramatic was as follows:

In July of 1996 I was working at a remote site in the NorthWest of Iceland; the nearest airport was Ísafjörður. After an unenventful arrival on Landsflug (Air Iceland - the inter-Iceland airline at the time), and a few days work, our departure was delayed due to heavy winds blowing the wrong direction. Eventually, they bused us to an alternate runway. After a somewhat harrowing drive (the plowed snow in some places was higher than the bus, yet the driver seemed to have only two speeds - on and off), we arrived at a dirt strip barely wide enough for the Fokker 50 turboprop to turn around.

Upon takeoff, the pilot had to bank a bit to make it through the terrain. At this point, I told a colleague traveling with me that we did not get paid enough to do this. We had bad weather on the way down the island, so we rocked and rolled our way to Reykjavík.

As we made our approach, we must have hit an area of severe downdraft, as suddenly we were VERY low over houses. The pilot banged the gear up, firewalled the throttles, and brought us out over the bay, presumably because water is at least a bit softer for an emergency landing than houses.

As we skimmed the waves, the crew began to give the "Emergency Landing Procedure" speech to the passengers - in Icelandic! Fortunately, it was easy enough to figure out what they were saying from the motions (my Icelandic was pretty thin at that time, and all but non-existent now). We were seated ahead of an emergency exit, and we planned our exit - we were going to help some women seated ahead of us out of the exit behind us, then go out ourselves.

Just as I was beginning to worry about how cold the bay would be, even in July (pretty darned cold, I imagine), and how long we'd last in the water, the pilot was able to gain altitude. We circled back for a hard (but well received by everyone aboard) landing. When we exited the plane, I did something I'd only read about - I kneeled down and kissed the tarmac!

Friends picked us up at REK and drove us back to KNAS. We went directly to the O-club, where I proceeded to have an all liquid dinner, and drink my companions literally under the table.

2. My second most dramatic was also in Iceland:

On September 30, 1996, a volcano erupted under Vatnajökull, Iceland's largest glacier. A month later, the melted ice broke through to the south, destroying, among other things, a bridge that held the relatively newly installed fiberoptics for our system. As we had done for the original eruption, some colleagues and I charted two light planes to take pictures of the jökulhlaup ("glacial running") - which had hunks of ice the size of greyhound buses churning their way down to the coast.

After buzzing around for a couple of hours, and getting some great shots, we returned to REK. As we came in for a landing, a light plane, which was sitting at the end of the runway we were about to land on, began its takeoff roll as we came right over it. As everyone on our plane shouted a bit, our pilot hauled us up for a go around.

Although not as dramatic as my first flying adventure in Iceland, we really were VERY close to having that other plane as a hood ornament.

After two close calls, I vowed to not fly in Iceland again until I returned to the U.S.

(I did DRIVE around the Island, all in daylight, on June 21st, but that's another story)