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what's the scariest moment you've had flying?

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I didn't fly much so the scariest would be a touchdown. I'm like, WTF, how does a plane land at 260+mph? But when it touched down I was like WOOT, I go faster than anything from 200 mph car club!
 
I was taking off and the door flew open while I was going down the runway. I had to finish the take off, then open and slam it shut until it finally latched without losing control of the aircraft.
 
Flying, nothing really comes to mind except maybe that take off from Narita ahead of a typhoon.
LANDING ? Now that's another story..:shocked:

We were landing in Rio De Janeiro, I'm ahead of the wing enough to see back along the fuselage, and I swear the pilot ran that right side off the edge of the runway and onto the dirt edge and then back on.
Rio's runway is atop a plateau and there is very little run off at the ends. That airport had claimed a plane earlier that week and I swear I pulled bits of seat cushion out of my ass for a week afterwards.

Flying these Air Embrares into small regional airports will test one's belief in a higher power./*
 
Originally posted by: indamixx99
Originally posted by: BoomerD
I was in 2 Huey helicopters that got shot down. That was...interesting...

Oh, you mean regular commercial flights? By comparison, those have been relatively uneventful. I was on one NWA 707 that skidded on the ice, went about 90 degrees sideways for a ways, and almost went off the runway, but any landing you can walk away from is a good one, so no big deal. (after we all cleaned the crap out of our drawers.)
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:shocked:
I think you win...
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Yes indeedy !! That'll quiet the room down.
Check please !
 
Everytime I hop onto a test flight for work...old planes and crazy maneuvers = teh suck
 
traveling to india (new delhi specifically) and how the pilot said "pah, no turbulence will stop me from landing this plane" and holy mother****ing balls the landing was so effing scary that i almost cried.
 
I was up in a 4 seater plane with my friend flying us and we did a zero G drop, anything on the floor was against the roof and I felt like puking.
 
Originally posted by: marvdmartian
Worst weather I've flown through was a few years ago, what's normally a 45 minute puddle jumper (turboprop limited to 9000 ft elevation)
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Are you sure it only had a service ceiling of 9000 ft? Sure it was not 19k or even 29k?

The single engine 180 HP Cessna that I fly has a service ceiling of 14,000 ft (and its not even a turboprop). I am not aware of any turboprops used by the airlines that are limited to that low of an elevation...


 
Originally posted by: sonambulo
Not really scary but one time during takeoff, 'DO A BARREL ROLL!!' popped into my head and I couldn't stop laughing for about 45 minutes.
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I recently had the chance to "fly" one of the full motion 747 sims at the United Training Center in Denver. After a couple of landings, we practiced barrel rolls about 10,000 feet over the city.

Although not recommended, it IS possible to barrel roll a 747 and maintain structural integrity. (Im sure the cabin would be a bit of a mess though...) Surprised me!
 
Hit an air pocket while the stewardesses were serving drinks. We must of dropped 5000 feet or more in a matter of seconds. The drink cart went flying, and one of the stewardesses screamed because she was serving coffee, and it went all over her. The people behind me started preying, and that freaked my gf out. When we finally landed, everyone went nuts & started cheering.

Another time we were flying along when suddenly a panel fell. The next thing we knew the air masks came down! That sent the plane into a frenzy, but the captain said everything was ok. I couldn't go to sleep after that.
 
Being stuck between two fat guys on a 5 hour flight. Seriously, that's the scariest moment I've had flying...and I've flown at least 100,000 miles over the years.
 
Once while taking off from Midway the pucker factor was about 9.3 out of 10. It was middle of the summer arond 3:00p.m. and taking off with a fully loaded plane. We were rumbling down the runway and hit about 100 knots. Then it just stayed there. Take off speed was like 130 or something.

If you have ever been to Midway you know the runways have a huge wall at the end of the runway. Not like most normal airports that have grass fields.

The captain was just letting it ride (older guy with little flight experience... not enough to be captain IMO).

So I overboosted the engines we hit rotation speed and of course the captain threw a fit. I swear looking back the whole thing took an eternity.. but in reality it happended within seconds.

Two days later that same captain almost crushed the nose gear on landing.. this time it was someone else that got yelled at when they grabbed the controls at the last second. During the first incident the passengers never knew. The second incident they were probably like what the hell are we dead?

LOL... oh another time flying cargo while the airplane was being loaded rainwater was pouring into the cockpit. It was running off the top of the cargo bins like a small river. All the avionics sit right under the cockpit. I tried in vain to alert everyone and to keep the water out. Later in the flight at altitude the captain turned on the autopilot and the airplane almost rolled on its back. Luckily this was an excellent captain who prevented that.

Like a week later in the same plane the front window just cracked. They are electrically heated and it must have sorted and went haywire. It did not crack all the way through but I was expecting glass shards to rip my face off.

Dang the memories are flooding back.
 
OK, I'll tell my story now, Thanks, Rudder🙂
I was out on a search for a missing aircraft, and it was my turn to observe and the other crewman was flying. He took us up a box canyon (a huge and usually fatal error), and when I looked up and realized what was going on, we were running out of altitude, airspeed, and flying room all at the same time.
I took the controls and headed toward the canyon wall on my right then banked hard left, traded what little airspeed I had in a banking pullup to reduce the radius of turn as much as possible. The left canyon wall was a couple of hundred feet away at most. At the apex the plane was effectively stalled, I kicked rudder in the stall recovery and rolled out wings level just above the treetops heading back down canyon. I had spent all the energy I had.
It was very quiet on the flight back, and I never saw that guy again.
 
So we're sitting on the tarmac, waiting our turn, and our plane gets the bloody runway with a treadmill. I swear, I didn't think we'd be able to take off.
 
Flying from Providence to PHL is normally a quick flight...we circled Philly for about 3 hours because there was zero visibility to land...they ended up diverting us to BWI because we were on vapor (or at least low enough we couldn't continue to circle for much longer). Visibility in Baltimore couldn't have been much better. Looking out of the window I saw the fog break and the ground about 2 seconds before we touched down with enough force that I was pretty sure we were going to snap a landing gear. Roughest landing I've ever experienced. I know they're landing basically on instruments but that ground had to have surprised the pilot. I kept thinking of Die Hard 2 where the ground was higher than the pilot was expecting.

My grandfathers brothers entire family was killed in a plane crash out of EWR many years ago (50's or 60's). Plane crashed on take off and his wife/kids were killed. He, unfortunately if you asked him, lived but was in the hospital for months.
 
I was flying out of Chicago (O'Hare, IIRC) to LaGuardia on a Thursday evening. The flight was delayed as usual, and we spent a good deal of time on the tarmac waiting for our turn in the departure queue. The plane finally got to the runway and the engines began to spin up as they usually do right before takeoff. We started to pull forward when all of the sudden the engines abruptly cut off and the pilot turned the plane off of the runway. 30 seconds later, a plane landed on the same runway where we were about to take off.

We weren't told the details of what happened, but it certainly was a bit of a nerve-racking experience at the time.
 
Nothing too bad, just turbulence. When I flew from LA to New Zealand, 14 hour flight and the seatbelt sign was on almost the entire way. There was maybe 5 hours of the flight that wasn't filled with turbulence, it was crazy. Then flying into Cancun once, the turbulence we hit while on landing approach was nuts, the plane was dropping and rising like a roller coaster.
 
Originally posted by: Born2bwire
So we're sitting on the tarmac, waiting our turn, and our plane gets the bloody runway with a treadmill. I swear, I didn't think we'd be able to take off.
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shens! Everybody knows the plane wont take off 😛
 
"is there a doctor on board!"

i think someone was having a seizure. i think there were a couple dr.s or nurses fortunately. i was not nearby or know what happened, just glad someone was able to help.

nothing really flight-related
 
Hit a couple of really bad air pockets on final going into Lambert in a Saab 340. I mean these were "I hope my life insurance is paid up" moments given the proximity of the stuff on the ground.

I looked over at the stewardess and she looked like she had shit her undies.
 
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