Scariest In-Flight Experiences
 

In 2003, I was on a flight home after a full month in Vietnam. Great place to visit, but gets tiring after say... a month. I was glad to get home. Our Cathay Pacific A330 from Ho Chi Minh City to Hong Kong started filling with smoke right after take off. It was a very noxious smoke that came from the hydraulic fluid (or so they told us) and we had to return to the airport. We made it back safely, THANK GOD. After three hours of keeping us at the airport, they finally canceled the flight and put us up in a pretty nice hotel for the night. So in the end, I got home safely, two days late.

I had a guy sitting next to me on a plane back from Nevada start chatting with me about how he'd left his home state because he was wanted by the police, but now that the statue of limitations had run out he was finally coming back. He confided that he had indeed thrown the guy off the bridge and killed him. Huge guy, even sitting down he towered over me (and I'm 6'1").

I made a good show of sleeping for the rest of the flight, heh.

Or maybe he thought you were a talker and came up with this story to avoid having you even dare talk to him?

Was flying from LHR-JFK on Concorde (Thanks FT!).

I was watching the machmeter approach mach 2, then slow, the approach mach 2 again. After a few cycles like this the captain came on the PA and explained that we had a problem with the engine intake and would have to return to LHR. Even though we were already halfway across the pond the prevailing winds meant we did not have enough fuel to reach JFK. We limped back home to LHR subsonic.

I found the whole thing kind of exciting, but the poor women sitting behind me was quite upset. The captain had to come over to calm her down.

As one of the few times I thought I was going to die, my very first experience with severe turbulence was pure terror. I imagine most people react the same way. Now I fly with a sense of morbid resignation.

I wasn't scared, but the other passengers were.

We were about three minutes out of HKG bound for Haikou when the plane dropped and everyone sort of floated up out of their seats and started to scream... I saw one person bang his head on the overhead bin because his seat belt was really loose. The weightless sensation lasted about three seconds and then it stopped.

Another time, we were flying TPE-SFO and turbulence hit. I was in the aisle for a stretch and grabbed on to the seatbacks on either side of me to avoid flying up. Once again, pax were screaming their heads off.

Smell of smoke in cabin aboard UA839 LAX/SYD on 02/28/07. Turned out to be nothing, but when the IFE and the aircon and the cabin lights all go off (presumably while the pilots do their checklists), and you're still 3.5 hours out of SYD, it's a little unsettling...

Losing an engine on takeoff, to be avoided if possible...

SAAB 340 departing ACT, breaks ground, begins left clearing turn, loses Port Engine....

Believe me, losing an engine is not much these days, and the SAAB has a decent power/weight ratio, but you do not want to lose a Port engine while already turning left..... We had cleared the dam and its riprap, and were over the lake. All of a sudden it occurs to me that water is not compressible, but SAABs and folks are....

Fortunately, the pilot gets back to wings level, gains a little altitude and reverses to a nice long slow starbard turn with little bank to get us back into the pattern, easy at ACT, 'cuz traffic is slim.

Watching David Cronenberg riveted to "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective II" on a flight from LAX to YYZ a few years back. :p

Still want to know what was going through his mind ...

Seriously though - major turbulence on a UA flight to PHL in 1990. Not quite weightless territory, but white knuckles all the way.

Same here---major turbulence on a return flight from PA to NYC. It's unnerving when PAXs scream, isn't it? (And puke) There were many white knuckled fliers that afternoon. This was years ago when my 22 YO was an infant. He slept through the entire event, but it shook me up a bit. Hasn't happened since, thankfully.

Flying EasyJet to Geneva. Seriously. I still have nightmares.

Maybe you will have the last laugh since there is no statute of limitations on murder in most (or all) states. :)

Turbulence returning from Mexico. Hit a pocket and the plane dropped. That wasn't so much the scary part, but then the plane dipped to the left - felt like it was about 20 degrees, rights itself then dips left again even further. Rights itself (or I should say Pilot righted it!), then dropped again one more time. Turbulence doesn't usually scare me but this scared the heck out of me. Lots of screaming passengers (not me) as well. I was sitting with my son and nephew. Nephew was white as a ghost, son thought it was fun.

A couple hours into a flight from Caracas to Miami, @ 30,000 feet, the power died. !!!!

Five seconds later, we were back okay, but that was probably the scariest five seconds of my life.

On final approach to AMS on a KLM 767 from Nairobi when the plane is stuck by lightening. That wasn't too bad, but it seemed to take ages before one of the pilots came on to let us know what had happened.

Good idea. I may try that if I come across someone I would rather not talk to:p

He probably could have just told the story just to see what his reaction might be.

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.

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...