What Was Your Scariest Experience(s) While in a Aircraft?

[Kagnew]

The first time I flew with my helo pilot friend and he "educated" me on auto-gyration. That was a bit nerve wracking....

Reminds me of my first flight in an OH-58 many moons ago. I made the big mistake of letting the pilot know that it was my first time up in a chopper. He dropped it from about 500 feet down to where we were low enough to have reached out and grabbed a handfull of grass and then put full pitch back on the main rotor and took it straight back up. And he - naturally - was laughing his a.. off.

 

[BE Mike]

After 10,000 hours of accident free flying in small aircraft (fixed wing and rotary wing), I'll only say that there is truth to the line that flying is 99% shear boredom interspersed with 1% stark terror.

 

[cwillour]

Nearly 5000 hours flying professionally for a decade now, and I guess I've never experienced anything really "scary". Or perhaps, familarity means I don't get scared as easy?

It might be a mix of your training and other experiences plus the fact that you are in control of the aircraft vs sitting in a seat in the back without any real control or actual knowledge of what is happening. As a kid, I used to laugh when other passengers would complain following a "huge drop" in altitude only to be told by the crew that what they actually felt was the abrupt end of a bump "up" and (and later finding out that the aircraft had never deviated by more than 500' from the planned altitude.)

Having flown a limited amount and sat as a passenger for quite a bit more time, I would say that it is far more nerve-racking to be the passenger than the pilot. At least as a pilot you get an understanding of how good/bad things actually are, while the passenger is often left to their imagination (which frequently assumes the worst.)

 

[wrnyhuise]

In 98' while still in the Marines i boarded a ch-46 (dual rotor helo) and left the beach in Tunisia, Africa headed back to ship. When we were almost to the ship the hydraulics went out on the rotors and we could not gain altitude to land on the flight deck. So here we were heading straight for a big a@@ ship and had no choice but land in the middle of the Mediterranian sea and wait for a boat with mechanics to come fix the bird. I learned that day why they called those helo's "frogs"
That ranks up with being in a CH-53 and doing an in-flight refueling and looking out the cockpit and seeing the tips of the rotors scary freaking close to the hose from a re-fueler. Yeah bit of sweat going on there.

 

[SEIndSAM]

In about 1975 a friend of the family had a small 4 seat Cessna 172. He took myself and two brothers for a joy ride one Sunday afternoon.

As he climbed for altitude after take off, he reached up to adjust the throttle, it was just a long knob that stuck out from the dash. It wouldn't move, it was completely stuck.

So we are crusing along at full throttle (which he said was a very bad thing), while he contacts ATC. The strip we had taken off from, was just a short grass strip. ATC directs him to some county airport around Versailles, OH. that has a very long, paved runway.

We beat feet towards the directed location, get in the pattern, and line up with the runway going way too fast. At that point he kills the engine and dead sticks the Cessna in. There is nothing like the sound of Silence when that engine shuts off. Good thing it was a long runway because it seemed like it took forever to burn off enough speed to set it down. But he got it down with plenty of runway to spare.

Not a major emergency, but quite thrilling for a 14 year old sitting in the right front seat.

 

[$mooth]

Sitting next to the engine 2 on a 757 mid way to DC from Indy. Heard a loud bang and engine 2 got real wobbly, as in the bulkhead next to me was vibrating 10-12" back and forth. After about 60 seconds, fuel was cut and that engine died. I'm not sure what happened, looked mechanical. Too high for a bird strike. They made no announcements and carried on with the one engine (so I guess it wasn't fuel related).

Reminds me of my first flight in an OH-58 many moons ago. I made the big mistake of letting the pilot know that it was my first time up in a chopper. He dropped it from about 500 feet down to where we were low enough to have reached out and grabbed a handfull of grass and then put full pitch back on the main rotor and took it straight back up. And he - naturally - was laughing his a.. off.

I was riding left seat in a Bell 206L, flying upright, but looking up at the tree line. We later proceeded to weave through groups of trees where I swear I was damn near parallel with the ground.

We had test pilots working with us that would auto-rotate on corporate tours. Surprise! I'm cutting the engine!

 

[xdmdude]

Well I don't have amazing stories like y'all but my second time flying Indy to Miami we had a I'm guessing new or young pilot. I should have known we were gonna have a bumpy landing by the way he took off. Started accelerating in the turn like a car through a corner. Needless to say the speed demon pilot had us going to fast on approach and we slammed into the ground. Bag doors came open and people kinda freaked a bit including my wife who was screaming at the top of her lungs. What a flight.

 

[Vince49]

Yawn.

Waking up from a nap and remembering that I was supposed to be flying this thing (flying canceled checks at night about 45 years and 15,000 hours of flight time ago).


PS: That particular airplane, a "OLD" 1962 Cessna 310, did not have a autopilot either! It did however trim out rather nicely.

 

[Westside]

The first time I flew with my helo pilot friend and he "educated" me on auto-gyration. That was a bit nerve wracking....

^^^^ This except it wasn't planned and we had to ride it all the way to ground. I will now never ride in another helicopter again.

 

[TopDog]

I was on a small military passenger jet over the ocean when we were hit by lighting. The crew chief said it was not a big deal happens all the time the plane was made to deal with it. But the flight got rougher & rougher and when the crew chief pulled out the NATOPS manual we started to become a little concerned. After landing the Major that was in charge of our team took us back out on the flight line to show us the hole in the wing of the plane. I guess lighting can actually blow a hole in a plane.

I have seen a CH46 flip over upside down in the water taking off of a LPH in Turkey, everyone got out. And a navy fighter crash while doing touch and goes at NALF Fentress. It had broken it's landing gear on a previous pass. We were at the LSO shack when it came in and ended up in center field. That was exciting. The pilot was unhurt.

Having been on many many military flights and working around different military aircraft for 20 years I believe that incidents are few and far in between.

 

[avboiler11]

After 10,000 hours of accident free flying in small aircraft (fixed wing and rotary wing), I'll only say that there is truth to the line that flying is 99% shear boredom interspersed with 1% stark terror.

This.

Said many times, many ways...always accurate.

 

[cook4army]

I was flying into BIAP (Baghdad International AirPort) back in '07 coming in from mid-tour leave when our pilot decided to do a combat landing. For those that have never expirienced one, a combat landing is where the pilot flies into the airport of choice at about 10,000 ft. At some point we are damn near on top of the runway, when he banks the aircraft sharply to the left and drops from 10K, down to touchdown in less than 60 seconds, spiraling down as we go....just as we hit a turn, he straightens up and we hit the tarmac. I swear to God, I heard people praying on the aircraft.

Another time, I was stationed up in Fort Drum, northern New York, flying out on a UH-60 at night. We were doing NOE flying, when I noticed out of my open door, that there were red "lasers" coming up to meet us. Knowing that these "lasers" were actually tracer rounds from a near by range, I didnt panic....until the pilot saw the same thing, and realized we were MUCH too close to the night fire range, and promptly took us on a sideways turn out of there.

 

[TopDog]

I was flying into BIAP (Baghdad International AirPort) back in '07 coming in from mid-tour leave when our pilot decided to do a combat landing. For those that have never expirienced one, a combat landing is where the pilot flies into the airport of choice at about 10,000 ft. At some point we are damn near on top of the runway, when he banks the aircraft sharply to the left and drops from 10K, down to touchdown in less than 60 seconds, spiraling down as we go....just as we hit a turn, he straightens up and we hit the tarmac. I swear to God, I heard people praying on the aircraft.

Another time, I was stationed up in Fort Drum, northern New York, flying out on a UH-60 at night. We were doing NOE flying, when I noticed out of my open door, that there were red "lasers" coming up to meet us. Knowing that these "lasers" were actually tracer rounds from a near by range, I didnt panic....until the pilot saw the same thing, and realized we were MUCH too close to the night fire range, and promptly took us on a sideways turn out of there.

I had that experience once when cross decking in the Alantic Ocean. I was in a very small helicopter (don't know the exact model) right before we started dropping the deck of the LPD looked like a postage stamp.

 

[dj-vektor]

Flying into Iraq in a C130. No one explained anything to me about "combat landings" or even mentioned it. I fell asleep and then all of a sudden we bank hard and dive down slamming into the ground! Scared the crap out of me! Yeah, had I known it was a normal operation it might have been kinda fun but being woke up by it, not so much.

 

[Sailor]

Stuck on the runway in Detroit for 3 hours in a small commuter with the toilets frozen. Would not take us back to the terminal, or get up. Old man next to me pissed his seat.

 

[CathyInBlue]

Not really scary in the same way everyone else's stories were scary, but I was damn concerned.

I was flying out to D.C. on Air Trans, which means a lay over in Atlanta regardless of ultimate departure or destination. The climb to altitude from ATL heading to DCA and flight up were fine. It wasn't until we were on approach to DCA that things started to go wrong for me. I suddenly got these really bad cramps, like menstrual, only worse. Then the cramps would go away for the most part. Then, they would come back with a vengence. Then they would abate. I finally correlated my cramping pain with the decent profile of the plane. Every time we would drop to the next lower altitude, the air pressure in the cabin subtly increased, and that set off a new wave of pain, which my body would adjust to. Another drop in altitude, another ****punch. It was to the point that I wasn't sure I could remain conscious all the way to the airport.

Ultimately I did, and nothing unusual happened on the trip back from DCA to IND (again via ATL), and I wasn't even on my period, so I don't know what the deal was.

 

[rockhopper46038]

Finally I get to contribute a decent story.

So there I was...

Having been part owner of an engineering design company earlier in my life with a couple fellows, one of whom owned a Cessna 182 (later crashed at Indy Metro by a guy having a heart attack, but that's another story), we would often fly to our clients' location, but only when the weather forecast was good, as neither of my friends were IFR rated, just VFR.

On this occasion we flew to the Quad cities, to conduct some business with John Deere. Uneventful meeting, loaded up and headed home. Clouds started forming around Peoria or so and started descending, so we did, too. And they kept descending. And kept descending. Eventually, in order to maintain some visibility with the ground, we were flying low enough that I was scanning the charts for radio antennas and towers that might be in our path as we were following the roads home. Looking up and seeing the red blinky lights pass by ABOVE your windshield is of course normal when your driving a car along I-74, but its quite disconcerting when you are traveling in a plane.

When it got that bad we were handed off to Chicago Center and they vectored us to an abandoned airfield Northwest of Indy, where the local sheriff met us at the end of the runway to run us into town where we could get a rental car to get home. Where I went straight to a tavern.

The next day my buddy drive back up to the airfield and brought the plane home.

Other than that experience, while I have horrible travel karma, the closest I've come to any real danger on a plane was when a US Airways flight I was on was struck by lightning and upon deplaning I noticed the tail had what looked to be about a basketball sized hole missing from it. I had always thought that airplanes were pretty immune from lightning strikes, but apparently that's not the case.

 

[CathyInBlue]

"Flying's the second greatest thrill known to man."

"What's the first one?"

"Landing."

 

[downzero]

The first, only, and last time I flew in Blackhawk. I was puking for 3 days straight after that.

 

[sepe]

Some Streisand movie followed by 5 hours of Friends on a flight to Australia. Much worse than the turbulence in a much smaller plane over mountains. At least if I died then, I wouldn't have had to suffer as much as Streisand and 5 hours of Friends.