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.