scariest moments while flying
 

Mine was on a flight between Luang Prabang and Vientiane in Laos. It was mid-way through the flight with nothng below but jungle...and, possibly, unexploded bombs left over from the Vietnam conflict. The plane began to fill with an acrid fog. It started at the front of the small plane and for once I was grateful to be crammed into a rear seat. It developed that the air conditioning had malfunctioned and was spewing chemicals into the body of the plane.... eye burning, cough inducing.
Since then I have travelled with a folding survival hood...which I have never again needed.

Only mildly frightening, but taking off from Puerto Vallarta it because obvious there was no cabin pressure, and they were discussing if we should land in Mazatlan or back to PV... who had the best ground crews to attempt repairs!

My worst experience was flying from Portland to Chicago. There were storms in the area - suddenly our plane dropped - the stewardess in the aisle fell down. Very scary.

When we landed in Chicago there were ambulances there and 4 people were removed before the rest could leave the plane.

And the other instance was when a man passed away 7 rows ahead of us on a flight from Detroit to London. We made an emergency landing in Halifax so the police could investigate etc.

Maybe we need to post the times we had to wait for a flight while the plane was being repaired!!!! Leaving Paris one time, the plane was taxiing on the runway to take off and a plane landing called to say that our plane was missing a part. So 2 hours later the missing part was installed and we were up in the air.

Maybe this isn't a good idea to recall the scary things - I am due to fly to Prague in 4 weeks!!!!

Hovering over a runway, waiting to touch down when someone in the control tower noticed the wheels weren't down. We must have been seconds from landing--I remember wondering why we were hovering for so long and won't we run out of runway when suddenly the plane took off again.

The pilot told us their light indicated the gear was down when it wasn't. One of the pilots came back into the main cabin, opened a trap door concealed by the carpet in the aisle and cranked the wheels down by hand. That was about 10-12 years ago and to this day I wonder if the gear is down and if not will someone catch it in time.

AnnMarie Have watched this very thing on TV. A plane can't land because the landing gear is either not down or crooked. So far all the planes landed safely.

I'm an Air Force veteran. I've survived numerous on board fires, bird strikes, explosive electrical discharges, lost hydraulic pressure, Red Flag, being threatened by North Korean air traffic controllers and flying on an Air Show Team.

The scariest? Hooking up with a KC-135 tanker while in a bank, less than 100 feet off the ground with the sun in my eyes (all for an impressive air show). We lost a plane and crew a few days later and stopped doing it.

My flights start the same way they did then, with a prayer, "Lord get me home safe. If not, take care of my family."

At takeoff I listen for good engines, gear up, and flaps retracting properly. At landing I listen for flaps down and gear down and locked. Not much I could do if it didn't sound right.

I DIDN'T HAVE A SINGLE ONE and i hope it stays that way!

except papua new guinea...........taking off into the blue from a 3.500m mountain ....in a 5 seater - gosh

div

bdjtbenson - Thank you for your service to our country. Your experience is awesome.

bd
that's what i think ALWAYS: the pilot wants to get down safely as well;-)

div

The scariest thing was an emergency landing of a BA flight enroute to NYC, 30 minutes after take-off from Heathrow airport in London. We had lost our ~entire hydraulic system~, & we had to turn around, dump all the fuel & land back at Heathrow. The emergency foam was put on the runway, and police & ambulances were standing by. Somehow, the plane landed on its belly without the wheels & we all got off safely.
You can be sure I said all kinds of prayers that day.

I was flying from Las Vegas to San Francisco once, still a little tipsy from all the Vegas antics, I get on the plane and immediately fall asleep. I awake to a garbled address from the pilot about the weather in San Diego. San Diego? It wasn't so much scary as embarrassing when I had to ask the passenger next to me: Where is this plane going?

My heart sank a little when I realized I was on the wrong plane. How they let me on board I will never know.

Flying from Bahrain to Singapore - we noticed flames coming out of one of the port engines!! It was like the engine was backfiring and we could feel the reverberation at our feet even.

Nobody said anything, not the pilot - nobody! We believe the pilot must have turned the engine off perhaps, as it did stop but there was a repair crew waiting for the plane when we landed and they were working on it even as we were disembarking.

Oh Divine you are so brave to be flying around PNG like that in a 5 seater!!! I hated flying from Bougainville to Moresby on a biggish jet!!!

A lot of small planes often found their way into the sides of mountains in New Guinea didn't they?

I was on a Pan Am flight from Frankfurt to Berlin when flights still had to fly thru a specific air tunnel no matter what the weather. It was incredibly rough & an older Jewish psgr completely lost his marbles and went nuts screaming & running thinking we would crash & he would be taken prisoner again. V. bad scene. I met a guy in Bali who was caught in the Garuda bankruptcy & had to fly home to the U.S. on KAL years ago when they were the worst airline known. They were 1:45 mins. out over the Pacific on a 747 at max altitude when all 4 engines shut down. He said there was absolute silence & everybody knew they would die. The time a 747 can glide bfr crashing is quite long & (38 mins??)at the end of it, the 747 did a straight down dive & the engines restarted & they climbed up & acted as if nothing had happened. Apparently "Finger problems," the pilots accidentally shut down all 4 engines, and used the only re-srart option available and it actually worked. He never wanted to hear the letters KAL again in his life.

anatoleschadenfreude, that made my heart drop just reading about it.

Butlerette - Did this happen before 2001? I can't imagine that it could happen now with all the extra security.

Mine was on (I think), a Vietnam air flight, from Hong Kong to Saigon back in the 80s, not long after Vietnam opened up to the west.
I was a little concerned when walking across the tarmac tp notice that the unmarked plane had clearly been welded in several places. I got on and sat in my allocated seat only to fall backwards into the lap of the passenger behind me! Closer inspection revealed that the seat had not been bolted to the floor. The steward conducted some running repairs to teh seat and we took off.

An hour or so into the flight, the in-flight meal was served and not liking the look of the cold grey rice and meat of indeterminate origin i decided to give it a miss.
A while later, there was a delicious smell of food wafting through the cabin, surely this could not be the same meal I thought? I got up from my seat and walked towards the rear of the cabin only to see a guy crouching down by teh galley cooking a stir fry on some sort of stove with an open flame!! I spent the rest of the flight crossing my fingers that no one would swith on the oxygen masks.

We eventually began our descent at night) into Ton San Nhut and was watching the lines of lights from the bicycles streaming along teh streets 9there where no street lights back then). we got lower and lower, but no sign of the airport lights and then, just seconds before we hit the runway, they were switched on! a few seconds after we landed, they were switched off again. We walked to the terminal and waited for the luggage for a couple of hours as the plane was unloaded by hand by a few porters who ran back and forwards between the plane and terminal carrying the cases on their backs!

This was the first of many visits to this great country and thankfully air travel in the country has improved out of all recognition.

Puddle jumper between DIA and Gillette, Wyoming. The plane was covered in ice, and we could hear the ice breaking off the fuselage and hitting the wings and tail.

The plane literally flipped about 90 degrees to the side as we began the descent into the airport, which somehow had some heavy cross winds that forced the plane to fishtail like crazy until we eventually came to a peaceful stop next to the snow-covered terminal.

DoUTravel
http://www.mapdango.com

...An aborted landing upon arrival in Cleveland from Chicago.

Just a second from touching down, we shot straight up after realizing that there was an aircraft on the runway directly before us.

One of the passengers was Mayor/Governor/Senator George Voinovich of Cleveland/Ohio. I've always thought that I'd probably be quite forgotten with all the news committed to his passing had the aborted landing not been successful. (I mean absolutely no disrespect to him)

The crew seemed unnerved when announcing the situation. I'd guess they probably still wake up thinking about it.

One night in a single-engine Piper 2-seater with lightening flashing all around.

bdjtbenson - I don't know how you military pilots do it.

I don't have any scariest moment other than extreme turbulence, but I do know someone who was on a plane that split open in half on landing and *walked away*. Don't recall how many were killed, it had to be in the dozens.

1. Upon takeoff on a flight from Houston to New Orleans, an engine blew out literally 30 seconds into it, and the pilot did an abrupt turnaround and emergency landing. I was just a kid, but I remember my parents had to go to the airport bar for a couple of drinks before they'd get on the later flight they rescheduled us on.

2. Back when my family would fly either Eastern, Braniff or Pan Am from Panama to the States for our annual leave - I don't remember which airline we were on, but we were flying from Panama City to Miami, and were over Cuba at the time. We hit an air pocket and the plane dropped around 10,000 feet. Breakfast had just been served and I remember the trays floating in the air. A flight attendent as well as someone in the bathroom hit the ceiling and then the ground when we caught air again - both spent the rest of the flight laying in the aisle and had to be taken out on stretchers with back/neck injuries. Very scary.

3. As an adult, my scariest was a flight from Toronto to Washington DC. We hit severe turbulence (thunderstorm) that lasted about 20 minutes and the pilot couldn't seem to get around it (maybe didn't get permission to change path), so I did a lot of praying while the plane bounced around and rattled and rolled around so much that it felt like I was on a rowboat in the ocean during a storm.

I hope I never have another bad flight again, although surviving any flight makes me so happy.

On a flight from Cape Town to Maputo, MOX 3 weeks ago we were flying along and all of a sudden the oxygen masks dropped.


Nothing was going on at the time on the airplane, the pilot did not come on and make any announcements (presumably he was in his mask too).

After a few minutes, pilot came on and told us to take off the masks, we had just dropped about 15,000 feet in altitude (we never even noticed) and all was well. The End.

Not really scary since everything felt normal, I was seated in front of 2 Catholic Priests and was glad of that for some strange reason (not Catholic).

On an Air France-Vietnamese Air Lines flight out of Paris a couple of years ago, en route to Saigon, a "mechanical " problem developed after an hour. All around me were Vietnamese Nationals looking worried, but no-one spoke much English and it was a while before I realised from the Flight Route TV, that the plane was actually going around in circles. It was really weird to see a spiral flight plan! The plane had started dumping fuel, which I could see from my seat, pouring out from the engine as a whitish trail, and this continued for over an hour as we headed back to Paris.
I wasn't really scared, being an optimist, but I did decide to write what was happening in my diary - just in case..
Foregoing my Saigon stopover, I opted to catch a Cathay Pacific plane straight back to Australia, via HongKong, after a very very long wait at Charles de Gaulle, instead of catching the same plane the next day.

Your experience, Jackie, must have been really scary!

On a Southwest flight to Phoenix, two weeks after 9/11. A man was extremely drunk and beat his girlfriend. The flight attendants and a Sky Marshall could not get him to stop until he passed out. I was sitting across the aisle from him and at one point he turned to me and started to get up with his fist extended. Thank goodness a member of the flight crew came up to stop him. I moved to a seat at the end of the cabin while they quieted him down. Upon landing all passengers were told to stay in their seats while security agents handcuffed him and took him off of the plane.