Back in the late 80's on a Pan Am shuttle flight from DCA to LGA, as we're on approach over NY harbor, the plane took a sudden dive. Quite a steep dive, with FA's lying on the floor holding onto the seat legs. We eventually pulled out of it, with the FA shouting "We're coming back up." We then landed as normal at LGA. Boy was that a quiet group exiting the plane. Never received any explanation from the pilots. Took several years before I got over a sense of dread at every hint of turbulence.

Scariest flight? Easy choice for me. . . Flying United from DIA to SFO (747) on a summer afternoon (1998?, I believe). Everything at first was fine. We took off and headed over the mountains. Typical turbulence over the mountains which caused some girl to get nauseas. Five minutes later we start to turn around back toward DIA. The pilot said that some light clicked on and we should go back to have it looked at (later to learn it was an engine light). So we pull into the gate and they look at an engine on the left side (note left side, it will come in to play later).

After about 15 minutes and an OK from the mechanic we push back from the gate. After a few minutes we pull back into the gate. The crew informed us that they couldn’t get the engine started and they would have the mechanic come back to take a look. Five minutes later they told us it would be another hour. Several people started to get up to get off the plane when a flight attendant said, “I don’t know where you people think you are going because all flights to San Jose, SFO, Oakland, and Sacramento are full.” Several passengers responded that they wanted off anyways, and the crew relented. Slightly off topic, they started showing the movie Elizabeth and stopped it because people complained of the violence. I still haven’t seen that movie.

About 30 minutes later they call us all back onto the plane and about 2/3 of the people re-boarded (the other 1/3 decided to stay in Denver [smart]). It is now about 4 to 5 hours after we were supposed to take off initially and we push back and take off. Much less turbulence this time around (cooler air) and I start to sleep in my chair located in the middle of the plane right behind the wings.

BOOM!

"Daddy, Daddy . . . The plane is on fire! The plane is on fire!" screams the 7-year old boy next to the window on my aisle. The dad is trying to get him to stop yelling.

I look right to see 20-feet of yellow and orange flames coming from one of the engines. Funny, I said I was too young to die and the guy to my left said he was too old to die. The woman behind me picks up the phone and calls home to tell them she is not going to make it back (really creepy). One of the flight attendants (she looked about 20) started sprinting down the aisle where one of the senior flight attendants met her and told her to go back and sit down and stay calm.

The pilot turns the plane around to Denver and hits the extinguisher, which put the flames out. He gets on the intercom and very calmly states "as some of you may have noticed, we had a little incident. Not to worry, everything is under control and we are returning to Denver."

At this point the only worry I had was weather a piece of the engine may have hit one of the hydraulics. Luckily, that was not the case. Once we landed, the pilot then stated we lost the #4 engine and that the 747 can easily fly with 2 and we had 3, so never in real danger.

To add insult to injury, when we land at DIA the gate agent informs us that they were going to try and get another 747 to fly us out that night. She quickly recanted as the 200 angry and shaken passengers assembled into a rabid mob. Since I lived in Denver, I jumped in my car and drove home. After a 1/2 bottle of Jack Daniels, I called United and got worked into a flight the following day. For all this trouble, I got a $250 voucher and first class seating to my destination of Modesto California. The flight attendants the next day new that I was on the flight and went out of their way to make sure I was ok.

scary flights?
 

The worst for me was when I decided to take a cheap semi-charter airline from DFW to PIE(St. Pete/Clearwater), Sunjet International,later known as Southeast,now out of business.They used at that time ex-EA DC-9's.We waited on the tarmac for storms to clear DFW for a few hours, then took off, Shortly after takeoff the plane began shaking and rumbling. FA's looked scared, someone was screaming!We made a series of turns and lined up for landing from the south,the pilot finally told us the nose gear wouldn't retract.We landed with no further problems. This was fixed and we later took off.Then, due to the delays and weather further east, we had to stop in Gulfport, MS around what was now about midnight for fuel. The fueler had to obviously get out of bed and finally showed .We were overrun by mosquitos as all doors were opened , and of course it was a humid summer Gulf night.Finally landed at PIE about 3 am, and I was never as glad to get off a plane as that. No more "public" charter flights for me, even at 109.00.

KLM flight from London to Amsterdam and there was a smell of burning in the cabin. A few seconds later one of the flight attendants ran up from the back of the plane with a fire extinguisher. It can't have been too serious because they were laughing about it afterwards. :eek:

I've had a couple of go arounds, one at less than 200 feet, the other just as I was expecting us to touch down. They come as a bit of a shock because they climb out quite hard and you are pressed back into your seat.

Also been on a 747 which aborted a takeoff at full throttle. When we stopped the engines were still screaming which was quite odd. The flight attendant in front of me reached forward and put her hand on the emergency door handle.

KRAMER: Isn't there like statue of limitations on that?

JERRY: *Statute*.

KRAMER: What?

JERRY: Statute of limitations. It's not a statue.

KRAMER: No, it's statue.

JERRY: Fine, it's a sculpture of limitations.

KRAMER: Wait a minute, Just wait a minute...Elaine, Elaine! Now you're smart, is it statue or statute of limitations?

ELAINE: Statute.

KRAMER: Oh, I really think you're wrong.

Statute of Limitations on murder?

Probably the Japanese breakfast I had on DL a few years ago coming back from NRT. Eel, soba noodles, and scallops.

Normally I *love* Japanese food, but I have a violent allergic reaction to scallops (vomiting....lots of vomiting). I would've just skipped it, but I was in hour 2 of a 14-hour flight and knew I needed to eat something, so I just ate the noodles and eel, and left the scallops alone.

Apparently I didn't leave them alone well enough, because I spent the next 11 hours positioning myself for a mad dash to the lav and wondering if I'd have to contend with explosive diarrhea, projectile vomiting, or both. Longest flight EVER.

And in the end....nothing ever happened. Go figure.

i'll share my husband's experience as a kid...

on a propeller plane in kenya with his family (1 pilot, no crew, 4 pax) when the pilot suffered a seizure in flight. my father-in-law had to climb up front and take the wheel amidst the pilot's yelling "just hold her steady!" and my mother-in-law's hysterics.

thankfully the pilot eventually recovered after some minutes.

That's a good one! Any stories about passengers taking over the helm of commercial jets in emergencies?

Pretty intense envgeo, I certainly don't have any experiences like that.


It's just the bad turbulence that sometimes gets me thinking "This could be it"

Recently on CY (AZ deal) from LCA-FCO, some really bad turbulence over the Med. Unfamiliar airline + unfamiliar airspace/conditions + back of the plane = a bit sobering.

In Botswana, at an airstrip near Xaxanaxa, some of us decided to take the pilot of a smaller a/c up on an offer for a $ ride over the Okavango Delta, as he had dropped some pax off for a local camp and would be flyhing some others back to Maun later that day. Sure! A chance to see the ellies and other wildlife from above... but a couple of folks got browned off that I moved quicky and took the right seat.

A while later, we are flying low over the Okavango, the pilot is as pale as snow, sweating up a storm and holding onto a bracket with one hand while using the other to hold onto the control wheel, and the aircraft is dropping down below treeline level - as we approach the treeline, we do an upward swerve and drop down again, a la crop duster style but with considerable more slop.

I asked him "Are you all right?" The answer was "Oh, yes, I'm just dealing with a spot of malaria just now. I'll be fine... don't worry!" as we continued to swerve and he failed to convince me. At that point I was 1) glad I had browned people off and took the right seat, 2) I had pilot training and experience, and 3) I had a pretty good sense of where we were, as I was paying attention to the nav as we traveled (everyone else was clueless.)

Yes, we got back on the ground without a problem, and the pilot had perked up a bit some time before the landing, but for a little bit, we were flying nap of the earth with a pilot who looked worse than some folks I have seen in hospital. The other passengers were much more appreciative of my chosen seating, as well - they had felt pretty nervous with the whoop-de-dos we were doing.

As we started up the specially modified and stretched 4WD International Travelall used by the safari company wew were with, a fire took hold of the engine compartment (I was driving.) I had to stop and put the fire out; we waited for the other vehicle to come look for us and bring some materials and tools to fix the fault.

Three must be a magical number: we had been sorted out my a male elephant wandering about in musth when we came across him earlier, and it required some honking, door slamming and slick bush driving to get out of his way judiciously.

I shouldn't be reading these since I'm a white knuckle flyer. My scariest flight was on a MD-88 from CHS to ATL on DL. It was the worst turbulence I've ever experienced and lasted almost the entire flight. We never saw the FA's, and they were white as ghosts when we landed.

My husband's scariest flight was in the 1980's on a 4-passenger Cessna that crashed shortly after it was above the trees. He thought he was going to die, but he and another passenger walked away with compression fractures. A few days later the pilot died from internal injuries. The pilot was a friend of ours and it was his plane. I had declined to go with them. When my husband called me from the emergency room, I thought he was joking when he said he was in a plane crash. He still has back problems, but was very lucky it wasn't worse.

Nothing as exciting as previous posts.....

-I remember a PVG -> Guilin flight in which the plane dropped like 5 feet (or at least it seemed like 5ft). The flight attnd kept serving drinks like nothing happened :cool:

-Most recent was this Jan on a MNL - NRT (then MSP) where half way to NRT the flight attnd said something like "...please have your seat belt on because we are going to experience very extreme and violent turbulence." The pilot came on and repeat the same message with violent in it. The whole flight I was worried going into NRT, but when we get there the turbulence wasn't anything special. I could have slept through it. All that worry for nothing :eek:

DFW -> SDF about 12 years ago.
 

I was flying home from DFW to SDF shortly after thanksgiving about 12 years back. There was a HUGE band of thunderstorms running up and down the middle of the country. We had to fly through the storms and they were high up. I don't know how high we were, but there was no flying above them apparently. Anyway, i see a funnel cloud out my window, only looking down into it.. we were above the tornado. The plane was bucking up and down the whole way. the worst of it was that i saw the engine out my window get hit by lightning. I don't know if we lost it or not, but we dropped like a rock for about 3 seconds. I tried not to panic as i didn't want to scare the kid sitting in front of me. I'm not sure of the model of the plane, but my seat and the one in front of me faced each other. I spent my time writing a children's book (a sequel to The Lorax) but i lost the notepad i wrote it on... oh well... that was back in my environmentalist days...

Actually I was my wife who had the terrifying experience.

We took a sightseeing flight in Norway over the fjords and glaciers, and my wife was in the back with the camcorder while I was up front beside the pilot. After a while she tried to pass the camcorder forward to me.

"Not now, honey, I'm flying the plane."

Poor dear still hasn't gotten over it.