Two quotes from the captain.

One I've experienced in Russia. "For those of you who have seat belts, now would be a good time to fasten them" And I didn't have one.

Secondly, as seen recently on a TV reconstruction re BA 009.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your Captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them going again. I trust you are not in too much distress."

It would be difficult to top that.

My scariest in-flight experience happened 6 years ago. I was booked in the middle coach seat on a 747 by my former travel agent. Turns out that a VERY obese couple were my bookends. Both fell asleep...on me. Seriously, two heads - one on each of my shoulders - when I woke up from my nap. The FA walked by a few moments later and started laughing. The flight lasted 4 1/2 more hours.

Three light plane crashes. Walked away from all three. Planes broken.

Door opened on an Aztec over the Bering sea, sucked out my work papers and hat. Cold. Driver cussed, grabbed door, yanked closed. Cussed more.

Sat on runway at TAS in non-airconditioned SU Il-62 whilst crazed Uzbek with curved knife ran up and down the aisle, yelling. After takeoff, sudden cooling caused humid cabin air to condense and rain on pax. Yum-o.

This is more of a piloting story. I was a passenger on a C172SP. My friend, an IFR-rated pilot with few IMC (instrument conditions) hours. We are on downwind (opposite direction of landing traffic) and drop into the clouds at 2400 feet on the ILS into MOD with weather down to minimums...200 foot ceilings and 3/4 mile vis (1/2 mile is min for CAT I ILS). The course navigation needles (CDI) better be perfectly centered going down to minimums. We get vectored around and just to make it a shorter, more palpable story, he got the typical approach clearance...."turn left heading XXX, maintain 2200 until established on the localizer, cleared for the Modesto ILS." Well he had us 100 feet below the glide slow, airspeed -5 knots, 45 degree course intercept (20 is normal), 45 degree bank going perpendicular to the localizer (17 is standard in cruise and very large at this stage in IMC) and 20 degrees off our cleared heading. I told him this a few times at which point it was clear he was about 25 minutes behind the plane and completely lost. I told him go missed. He didn't. I say it again and he started to wonder....too late, I say "My plane NOW." I'm not a instrument flight instructor but I'm not about to go inverted in IMC or go into a pole in the middle of nowhere. I level the wings and then start the climb. Airspeed drops off, stall horn chirps right as I'm pushing the nose down. When I asked for control, he had just put in near full power to climb but had pulled the power out for some reason when he gave me control. I add full power and climb into visual conditions where I told Norcal to "standby." Not good. Scared the hell out of me. Fortunately I'm instrument rated, current and proficient otherwise I'd be in an NTSB report. I'm seriously thinking about becoming a CFI and CFII. Oh, that night I had quite a few Belgium beers so all turned out well. :)

I now see how non-instrument rated pilots (or VFR into IMC incidents) last about 40 seconds from entering IMC to the time of impact. Scary. Very scary.

I would have to say, having a chance to hear actual voice calls from a 9/11 flight from the FBI.

TWA, STL-MSY, DC-9, Mid 90's. Had just taken off, plane drops 5 ft, and pilot makes a VERY sharp right turn. Returned to STL, and never found out why:(

In the late 90s, I flew CVG-BRU on a SABENA A340 and I was seating just in front of the wing. About an hour into the flight, this weird vibration was going through the plane. It got pretty loud and it was pretty much nonstop. After a while, the captain walks through the aisle, stops in front of the window and looks at the wing/engine for a couple of minutes. He then disappears back into the cockpit. The noise pretty much continued the entire flight and no announcements were made.

Walked away without a scratch from a C152 crash at a northern New Hampshire grass strip. Plane totaled, me fine.

Had a dramatic aborted takeoff aboard a BA767 at IAD in the early 1990s. It felt like we were just shy of V-1 when the pilot slammed everything into reverse and stood on the brakes. He announced that they'd seen a warning lamp associated with a thrust reverser and we were returning to the terminal for a tech check. It lasted three hours, but as this was shortly after the loss of a Lauda Air 767 due to unwanted inflight deployment of a thrust reverser, i didn't mind.

And my most hellish inflight turbulence was on a 90-mile BOS-PWM flight aboard a DHC-8 on a clear, sunny July day. We were pitched around like a Six Flags attraction for what felt like hours, and the whole cabin smelt of sweat and vomit. I wasn't scared, especially, but it was the closest I've ever come to getting airsick.

Being at 35,000 feet over Syracuse on a flight route I was flying 2x/month, and having the plane do a sudden U-Turn and steep dive as the pilot announced that we had to land at Syracuse due to a "security breach" at Logan. Turns out, it was 9/11 around 9:30am Eastern, and they were grounding the fleet. We landed in less than five minutes, then the cellphones started ringing.

Back when I was in college going to Las Vegas for the weekend, our plane had a possible problem with the landing gear, so we were greeted at LAS by a full cavalcade of fire trucks and ambulances lining the runway, which was more than a little unsettling. We had no problems with the landing, but they wanted to do a full inspection of the plane before we went to the gate. However, while we were sitting on the ground, the cabin started to fill with an acrid smoke; there was a problem with the hydraulic fluid. Passengers started to panic, and they ended up evacuating the plane via the emergency slides -- very scary. (And very annoying when we realized we had to wait at the airport for several hours to get our carry-on bags from off the aircraft.)

When we got to the airport for our trip home, we found out we'd been upgraded to first class. The ticket agent asked us, "I don't mean to be rude... but who are you?" Apparently our reservation had us flagged as super-duper VIPs, which seemed a little strange for two college kids...

We were hit by lightning going into ORD last spring. It was actually really cool looking and totally uneventful. I thought it would be all dramatic and scary, but is was simply a bang on the left side, pilot didn't say or do anything differently, didn't even get on the radio to tower (channel 9 on united). People on other side of plane probably didn't even notice. No drop, nothing. One less thing to fear in life now...

I’ve had my share of turbulence, but nothing really to write home about.

My most excitement came when I was on a school trip to Washington when I was about 13. We were coming in to DCA on a NW flight and shortly before touching down we pulled up hard and went around. I was looking out the window and saw a smaller plane (corporate jet size I think) sitting on the end of the runway. Eventually the pilot came on and told us that a plane had pulled onto the wrong runway and was right in our landing path -- that will get a group of middle school kids talking.

I worked myself into a bit of fear going to France when I was 16. It was a year after TWA 800 and during the flight I couldn’t help thinking about the center fuel tank on our Air France 747 and wondering how the fuel vapors were doing. A silly thing to think about, I suppose, but I was young and had an active imagination.

Though it wasn’t on a plane, one of my other scary air travel moments came later on that trip. I was waiting at ORY to fly to BOD (Bordeaux) on Air Inter to meet a family after the school group left. The airport made no sense to me. I don’t remember all of the details but I was first told I couldn’t check in because I was too early and had to wait in the outer lobby. I waited and kept checking with the check in people as my flight time approached. They were helpful, but I was concerned that I was going to miss my flight. Eventually my flight time came and went and they kept telling me to keep waiting. I did and eventually my flight was called and we boarded. This was really the first time I was on my own at an airport in a major city. I knew some French, but wasn’t great and was quite concerned I was going to screw something up. To this day I want to go back to the domestic terminal at ORY and figure out how it is supposed to work.

About 4-5 yr ago I was on a plane after a relaxing 7 day cruise with my then girlfriend, now fiancee. YVR-SEA was okay and when we arrived at SEA, it was already nighttime. Asked my wife whether or not to take the red-eye to MSP or to ask the GA to fly tomorrow morning. She said lets just get home. We were off and maybe 45 min into the flight, sparks flew out of the engine and we heard awful noises throughout the cabin. Some passengers started freaking out and the FAs had to calm a few people down. The pilot then came over the PA and came forward with the truth. I really hate pilots that BS around, I just want to know. One of the engines on the 757 had totally failed. We were diverted to GTF. Just to let you know how small a city GTF is, people had to be woken up to get the airport open. We sat on the plane for an hour. We sat in the terminal for 2 and then were all sent to hotels. It was 4 AM by then.

Not a big deal but hearing the screams and passengers freaking out had me going for a while.