The worst flight I ever had

[Stillwater]

... was Eastern Airways from Aberdeen to Stornoway in early spring. Plane was an ATR 72, less than 20 % full. We had to take seats as per the loadsheet so that trimming was easy. No doubt the visibility in the air was nearly zero due to the clouds. Heavy turbulences did the rest. On approach the plane was bumping some +- 2 metres, when we suddenly fell out of the clouds and I saw water only a few meters below us. I still felt comfortable, because I thought these pilots do that trick every day...

[Matthew Kane]

Sounds like a regular flight in and out of Wellington, that is very normal here in the South Pacific Winds 

[BradB]

The year was 1979 , I was flying a Metroliner with Cascade Airways ( Horizon Airlines now ) from Spokane (KGEG) to Yakima (KYKM) as we approached the Yakima area the pilot could not extend the landing gear . The Co-pilot tried to crank down manually, , no luck . 

So belly landing done with no issues other than a bit noisy . 

 

John

[Chunk]

Our honeymoon, August 2011. US Air flight plan was San Francisco to Philadelphia, then to St. Maarten, and on to St. Barth. First leg was perfectly fine, I slept through it. When we were getting ready to board the Philadelphia flight, I observed extreme weather, and some nasty lightning. We boarded anyway, and I figured they had to compensate for the weight of the flight crews brass balls.

 

We climb right into the thick of it, and it’s  bumpy as all hell. Then a very bright flash, followed by the 757 rolling hard left, and into a shallow dive. Flight attendants screaming their heads off, and I’m wondering why I missed going to church recently. The pilot levels out, and gets on the intercom to tell us we’re making a precautionary landing at Baltimore. By precautionary, he meant that tons of emergency equipment was lined up on the taxiways waiting for us. They comped us a night in DC and we made it to St. Barth the next day. Harrowing regardless...

[teecee]

Had one like that in a twin Banderanti cargo Aircraft way back when..I was in the jump seat, and I swear that as we approached Essendon airport, I impressed the shape of my fingers  in the steel seat frame. when we got on the ground I told the crew they were crazy to do that for a living.Terry.

[bvdboomen]

A crying child for eight hours!

[Byron Farrow]

A 2.00am flight in the year 2000 from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan to Moscow. Actually departed in the Aeroflot Tu-154 (which was cool) at 4.00am. I was on the back row .... where the smokers congregated as soon as reached altitude. A couple of hours later a guy a few seats ahead of me, travelling with wife and child, stops moving. Heart attack. Emergency divert to Samara, but too late for this chap (RIP). Sat on the ground in Samara for a couple of hours. Miss my connection to Budapest. I don't have a Russian visa so they will lock me in an airport hotel until the next morning, but my travelling companion manages to blag us seats on a Maglev (RIP) flight back home. Luggage arrives a week later. Well, half of it ....

[Mickel]

NZHN-NZTT-NZNP in a 152 Aerobat, 7 August 1999.  Sole occupant.  Second solo navex.  Had flown up from NP earlier and grabbed gas for the return.  Got out of TT ok. A south easterly was blowing up, funnelling past The Mountain. The locals will know what I mean.  Got boucey.  My 6' frame was tight but manageable when smooth.  Not so much when bumpy.  Hit head numerous times on the roof.  It was a loooong trip.  Verged on hurling in the right seat foot well...  Then the extrordinarily relieving 'click' "New Plymouth tower, November Papa...".  But still... It was bumpy.  Final was going to beating into the teeth of the wind on to 14.  Despite my meagre experience, training set in. I focused on flying the plane.  Wasn't like I had a choice.  Crossed the coast, settled into ground effect and felt the tension ebb away as the speed bled off, wheels rolling down the grass.  Parked up.  Tied down.  Went and sat in the club house and said nothing for 20 minutes.  Did not feel well.  Training had been suspended two hours before my return.

 

Some years later I was flying in rough weather with an instructor.  He suggested I knocked a couple of hundred rpm off.  It smoothed out the ride no end.  Wished I'd known that on the day in 1999.

 

Sadly, ~10 years after my trip, a young NPAC instructor flew in far worse conditions than I, at night, over that same country in a 152 and was not as lucky.  The worst that could have happened to me was a plane to clean up inside or a bent prop...

[Captain Lars]

A true cabinet of horrors here!

 

My worst flight was with Eurowings from Cologne to Berlin. The last flight of the day. Suddenly, some passengers started to rush away from the gate. Then more and more. I got an SMS. "Sorry your flight was cancelled". I hurried after the other passengers to the counter, where I obtained a ticket for a flight next day and two taxi vouchers back home (40min. drive each).

[tttocs]

OK, I'll play.  An evening British Airways flight from London Heathrow to Milan in early Feb.  Milan was completely fogged in as it often is that time of year so after three nail-biting aborted approach attempts, the crew finally decided we needed to divert to Bergamo.  By the time we landed there, the relatively small airport was completely shut down, and here's where I became a complete pariah to the some of the other passengers. 

 

I was hauling a bunch of equipment for tech presentations I was doing all over Europe.  This was pre-EU, and all the equipment was traveling under a Carnet (basically a temporary import/export document) which absolutely REQUIRES sign-offs for both departure and arrival at every entry and exit.  However, the customs officer who needed to sign these had long since gone home.  I don't speak Italian, my high school French wasn't working either and none of the late-night staff spoke English, so picture a lot of hand-waving and pointing to documents.

 

Eventually, the airport had to call the requisite customs guy, roust him out of bed and get him down to the field to sign off on the Carnet.  Meanwhile, a group of very tired and increasingly cranky passengers were stuck on one of the buses they had called to haul us to Milan as they were holding this one for ME, pending the sign-off.

 

We arrived at Milan airport in the wee hours of the morning.  But wait!  There's more!  All of this was capped off by one of the most frightening taxi rides I've ever taken, from the airport to my hotel.  In the pea-soup fog, the cabbie would repeatedly accelerate to insane speeds only to realize that she couldn't see a thing in the thick fog causing her to slam on the brakes just before crashing into something, all the while swearing (I assume) up a storm in colorful Italian.  Rinse and repeat.

 

Ah, the romance of international travel!

 

Scott

[Stillwater]

Great responses or more or less fearful experiences, mates. Some of these really surprised me...

[Doc_Z]

OK.  Late summer, 1966, Central Highlands of Vietnam to the west of Pleiku. I wanted to hitch a ride out of an LZ to get back to base camp in An Ke.  A Huey crew offered me a ride and told me I had to sit on top of some boxes, I said OK.  When I climbed in  realized the boxes were C4.  The crew chief handed me a bunch of blasting caps and told me to keep them in my shuirtr pocket.   I was not happy at this point.

 

The pilot backed the chopped to the tree line on one side of the LZ, gunned the thing and headed for the other tree line.  At some point he realized it was going to be close (the density altitude was very high) and tried to pop the chopper over the trees.  Not sure how he did that.  In any event, the skids caught the trees and we dropped down on the other side from I guessed about 60 feet.

 

By the time we hit the ground, the crew chief, the gunner and the co-pilot (how he got between the armored seats, I don't know) were all holding me so I didn't spill the caps. 

 

I thanked them and said I would wait for someone else. 

[bernd1151]

Ok, maybe now it's my time to chime in too. Papua Newguinea a few years back: my wife and I were supposed to fly out of Goroka up in the highlands down to Medang. My wife is afraid of flying in small planes, we have done that too often in Taiwan and the Philippines. When we left the small terminal building and went to the waiting planes, we saw a Fokker 50. My wife was relieved and said "oh, that's fine, I can handle that" (we had flown into Goroka in a Fokker 50 from Port Moresby four days earlier). I told her "dear, that's unfortunately not our plane, our plane is behind the Fokker." It was an Britten Norman Islander, which my wife refused to board on closer inspection (the ceiling was pretty dilapidated and the seats...oh well). When I told her about the alternative ( a two-day bus ride together with a bus load full of locals), she looked at me in slight horror and boarded the plane with me and two missionary couples and their kids. I sat next to the pilot, a 26 years old Kiwi, my wife sat right behind me. After take off, the pilot asked me, where we were supposed to go. I looked at him slightly startled and told him: "to Medang". "Oh", he said, "I have never been there". Unfortunately my wife had listened to our conversation, it didn't help to comfort her. So I told the pilot to give me the maps, so I can do the navigating. To cut a long story short, the flight was actually enjoyable (at least for me). The weather was perfect, which was good because due to our weight we could not fly above the mountains, we had to fly around them. Quite spectacular, even my wife admitted this later. And yes, I am still married to her, but I rarely mention the word PNG in her presence 

 

    

[YAMBA1]

Well I  had my share too : Landing at the Bathurst Island (Aus) air strip surrounded  by estuary crocodiles  seems somehow more pleasureful that the  rough and bumpy  airstrips in Africa, where I am nearly sure,  some  pilots must had their licence out of a cornflakes box . I am still shivering at the memory of  it ! But all that  was a long time ago .

[Stillwater]

On 12/14/2018 at 1:08 AM, bernd1151 said:

Ok, maybe now it's my time to chime in too. Papua Newguinea a few years back: my wife and I were supposed to fly out of Goroka up in the highlands down to Medang. My wife is afraid of flying in small planes, we have done that too often in Taiwan and the Philippines. When we left the small terminal building and went to the waiting planes, we saw a Fokker 50. My wife was relieved and said "oh, that's fine, I can handle that" (we had flown into Goroka in a Fokker 50 from Port Moresby four days earlier). I told her "dear, that's unfortunately not our plane, our plane is behind the Fokker." It was an Britten Norman Islander, which my wife refused to board on closer inspection (the ceiling was pretty dilapidated and the seats...oh well). When I told her about the alternative ( a two-day bus ride together with a bus load full of locals), she looked at me in slight horror and boarded the plane with me and two missionary couples and their kids. I sat next to the pilot, a 26 years old Kiwi, my wife sat right behind me. After take off, the pilot asked me, where we were supposed to go. I looked at him slightly startled and told him: "to Medang". "Oh", he said, "I have never been there". Unfortunately my wife had listened to our conversation, it didn't help to comfort her. So I told the pilot to give me the maps, so I can do the navigating. To cut a long story short, the flight was actually enjoyable (at least for me). The weather was perfect, which was good because due to our weight we could not fly above the mountains, we had to fly around them. Quite spectacular, even my wife admitted this later. And yes, I am still married to her, but I rarely mention the word PNG in her presence 

... and now you have the chance to repeat this flight with Orbx PNG experience package!

[carlosqr]

Interesting stories. I don't have one to tell