Just cache it and read it on the plane.....

jonj101 said:

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I used to fly Great Mistakes all the time. There was always a fuel, mechanical or weight issue. Plus every pilot looked like they were about 19 years old.

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I am of the opinion that they all must be expert pilots despite their age. I feel like to be a pilot for Great Mistakes, you have to know how to fly without instruments, fuel, or engines.


Thankfully, it seems United and Delta are no longer contracting them up here for flights to Denver, and instead have brought in their own twin prop planes through express jet and compass (respectively). Though that doesnt make me feel any better. Husband's cousin has flown for both Express Jet and Compass, and his stories make me weary. Now he flies for Fed Ex, lucky ******* gets 2 years basically all expenses paid in Germany (because housing is so expensive, in addition to his salary, they give him an apartment paid for by them, so he's renting his house in Denver out).

Bitter Old Man said:

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Just cache it and read it on the plane.....

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And download copies of some good films about flights like Alive.

Like everyone else here, I have had some bad ones, but the worst was trying to get out of Berlin. First off, their airport is ***** Tegel served West Germany and it is sketchy for so many reasons. They are suppose to close it when they finally stop screwing up and get the new airport done. Anyhow, it was February and we were suppose to take off for the U.S. around 7am. I get on the plane and fall asleep before take off because I am the a**hole that can do things like that.

I am awoken when my head slams into the seat in front of me. I am obviously crazy startled and I look at the woman next to me and her eyes are as big as saucers. Then the flight attendants go running up and down the aisles telling everyone to remain calm. People start yelling the plane is on fire on the opposite side of the plane from me. Then the Berlin fire crew surrounds our plane. The pilot gets on the intercom and says in a really shaky voice that we hit something on take off. Pilot, pull yourself together man! Basically, he stopped the plan right before the end of the runway, where the little fences are.

They get us all off the plane and put us in a outbuilding that is not heated, in February, in Berlin. They feed us rice cakes and water. We are there for a couple of hours. Oh, except for James Franco and Shia LaBeouf who were on our plane and escorted to somewhere more comfortable. After that, I spent the next 12 hours trying to get out of that **** hole. Due to terrible luck, I was the last person who was helped in rebooking their flight. I had to stay another night in Berlin, then to Frankfurt, then to Houston and my last flight to College Station made it over CS and we had to turn back because of landing gear problems. That's when I finally lost my cool and yelled "noooooo!!!"

wapa said:

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Like everyone else here, I have had some bad ones, but the worst was trying to get out of Berlin. First off, their airport is ***** Tegel served West Germany and it is sketchy for so many reasons. They are suppose to close it when they finally stop screwing up and get the new airport done. Anyhow, it was February and we were suppose to take off for the U.S. around 7am. I get on the plane and fall asleep before take off because I am the a**hole that can do things like that.

I am awoken when my head slams into the seat in front of me. I am obviously crazy startled and I look at the woman next to me and her eyes are as big as saucers. Then the flight attendants go running up and down the aisles telling everyone to remain calm. People start yelling the plane is on fire on the opposite side of the plane from me. Then the Berlin fire crew surrounds our plane. The pilot gets on the intercom and says in a really shaky voice that we hit something on take off. Pilot, pull yourself together man! Basically, he stopped the plan right before the end of the runway, where the little fences are.

They get us all off the plane and put us in a outbuilding that is not heated, in February, in Berlin. They feed us rice cakes and water. We are there for a couple of hours. Oh, except for James Franco and Shia LaBeouf who were on our plane and escorted to somewhere more comfortable. After that, I spent the next 12 hours trying to get out of that **** hole. Due to terrible luck, I was the last person who was helped in rebooking their flight. I had to stay another night in Berlin, then to Frankfurt, then to Houston and my last flight to College Station made it over CS and we had to turn back because of landing gear problems. That's when I finally lost my cool and yelled "noooooo!!!"

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Did you get to use the slides?

And what did you hit?

Did not get to use the slides. They brought stairs to the plane and put us in a shuttle to the unheated building, after they foamed one of the wings. Luckily it wasn't one of the huge planes. Part of me wanted to use the slide, but the other part was freezing my ass off and sliding in ice and frigid temperatures doesn't sound like fun. I also just didn't care in general, I just wanted to get off that plane where everyone's butts could have cracked walnuts.

I still don't know what we hit. I know zero about aviation and wouldn't be able to guess. I am just going off what the pilot said, and Lord knows United didn't tell us anything. Just getting them to get me on another flight was hard enough, so I didn't bother asking.

Ft. Lauderdale to Key West. I think they used one of the planes from Air America.

Most nervous was flying on a Q200 prop plane from SLC to DEN in the middle of a blizzard. Could barely see the de-icing machine out the window. Really thought, "That's cool guys, we can wait. We really don't have to try this."

I have sat in the de-icing line many times. I remember our pilot coming on and saying we would be delayed, as there was a 30+ minute wait for de-icing prior to take off. Then learning later that the hold up was one of the planes, while being de-iced, cracked their windshield, and instead of immediately turning back to the gaye, they had people come out to look at it while being de-iced. We waited over an hour to get to the front of that line at DIA

I've flown a ton of miles (certainly north of a million), but been relatively lucky. I have had an aborted takeoff, 2 aborted landings, lost comms in the air and had to land among others.. but my family is another story.
Dad had a manual deplane in milwaukee once that had the stairs hit by lightning. My sister lost 10k feet over texas somewhere (food on the ceiling, the whole nine yards), she also loat hydraulic pressure on a flight once, foam on the runway.

I guess the scariest flight for me though was landing in Cuzco. This is a video of the landing, you are landing in a valley at over 10k feet. You can only land or takeoff in one direction, and you have to bank down over the peaks on the way in with the turbulence they cause. The video here was clear,weather, we did it on a much less ideal day, probabaly less than 300 feet above them on the bank before final. There were people screaming on the plane. Beautiful though.

From your reply, are you saying you and your family were the pilots?

CanyonAg77 said:

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From your reply, are you saying you and your family were the pilots?

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No, didn't mean to give that impression.. but in the airline industry in various capaciites so flew a ton. My mom was a flight attendant and blew an engine on takeoff once. That had to have been scary, got about 5 miles ouf of PIE before turning around for an EL in Tampa. She also had a flight where the emergency slide was activated accidentally when they were on the ground.

Speaking of which, i think my sister also had a flight where they almost ran out of fuel - she heard the pilots and flight attendants talking about it as she was deplaning. Always fun to hear im sure. I forget the aircraft type and fuel left, but they talked about the amount and when she told it to a pilot she knew, he said "whoa!"

Going into Midland two years ago. I was sitting right seat in a saratoga, we had a deck of frozen rain that we had to get through on the approach. I'll never forget the sound of the hail hitting the wings and glass. I was certain we were going to lose the windshield. Now to the scary part, Right before we pop out, the GPS shows ground speed way faster than we should be. Pitot is blocked and there's a nice layer of ice on the wing, ****. We break out in unusual attitude about 2 seconds later. I called for go around but I think both of us knew we were only doing that once. Fortunately we had some altitude to correct and got it down safely.

2nd scariest, had a fuel line clog and engine die in a single engine warrior. I rolled to the other tank and got it restarted in about 20 seconds, but my hands were shaking so bad I turned around and went home.

Back in 2002 was on a 737 CO flight from IAH to MEM. We were coming in on a normal night time landing and had already crossed into the MEM property when all of a sudden we go back full throttle and climb hard and bank right. Pilot comes on and says "sorry folks, a small single engine plane had wandered on to our runway so we will be making another go at landing." A few nervous laughs from the passengers and we leaned safely a few minutes later.

Ok, I'll share this one with you guys. Here's the set up:

I'm on the last row of a 737 from LAX to HOU. Got on an earlier fight back home, lucky me! As fate has it, a huge line of thunderstorms was hitting, right as we are trying to land. Very bad turbulence, then about 200 feet from the runway, it really hits. Aborted landing due to 70 mph crosswinds. The next 30 minutes were the worst ever in my 30 years of flying. Lots of screaming. I turned my head to look behind me, and the flight attendant was in deep, intense prayer. The guy sitting next to me looked like he could have been in a motorcycle gang. He look petrified hanging on the seat in front of him with both hands. Before the aborted landing he had been putting both hands in the air and laughing like we were on a roller-coaster. This was beyond anything I was remotely comfortable with. The sound of wind blowing across the plane, against the side was something you don't forget, plus the engines on full blast as the pilots were trying to gain attitude. Add the pings of hail or just rain, not sure what it was hitting the window. Plus it was at night. I can't describe how bad the turbulence was, but being on the back row made it worse.

So we eventually land, not to cheers, but to the sound of silence, with about 5 people openly crying. Since I'm in the last row, I turn to flight attendant and ask, "So how bad was that?" She said, "Second worst experience in 20 years of flying" Ok, now I know. So I'm last, and walk past the cockpit with it's still closed door. I guess they didn't want any feedback, good or bad, or they were busy changing their pants.

So I deplane and walk into the terminal. You should have seen the folks waiting for this plane next. Their eyes were as big as saucers. We still had a few older ladies crying, one on her knees as she couldn't make it further. They had just seen 120 people deplane from their worst flight ever. Your turn!

So it's over. I go home and make a drink, put it behind me. My next flight in 2 weeks, no problem. We land, no issues. I look down and I had sweated through my dress shirt. I guess I wasn't officially over it yet.

One thing that is clear, you just never know, even on the most routine flight.

I don't know with exact detail how many miles I've flown but I'm confident I'm near a million or above.

Here's a few of my highlights:

1. Singapore to Narita on my way back to the US. The pilot came on after the doors closed and said "some of you may have seen there is a Typhoon due to make landfall in Japan today. Unfortunately, we're going to have to fly over it. The last hour of the flight will be bumpy." Pucker factor was high for at least 6 hours waiting for the turbulence to arrive. I made sure to load up on liquid courage. The turbulence wound up being pretty epic.

2. Singapore to Macau. We hit a huge thunderstorm on approach. The bumps were big enough to have people start screaming. Just like Aggie Data mentioned, when you hear the sound of the wind on the fuselage, it's not a good feeling.

3. Singapore to Bali. Nothing bad on our flight but after we took off, we flew back over Changi and I saw a Qantas flight with the slides out parked on the landing strip. It turned out to be Qantas flight 32.

4. Random flight on approach back into Singapore. The weather was fine but the plane hit a big bump and rolled reaaaalllly hard to one side. Scared the **** out of me as it was completely unexpected. We were pretty close to the ground too.

Kai Tak airport in Hong Kong was a test for most pilots. Great website as the pilot had to negotiate not only very high hills but also banking within Hong Kong high rises.
Once in Shanghai endured 3 touch and goes.

One more I just remembered....

El Nido, Philippines to Manila.

We were cruising down the side of the air strip in a Tuk Tuk type vehicle and a 7 ft cobra slithered across the runway. Our driver was impressed... "Oh... Female cobra... very deadly!"

The "terminal" was not much more than an open air shack. If I remember correctly, the plane was a Dornier 228. We were sitting directly behind the cockpit with the cockpit curtains open, and I saw a sign on the dash saying something along the lines of "strictly no barrel rolls or stunt flying." Slightly sketch...

A couple of times with some moderate turbulence, but nothing too bad. There was this one flight I shared with an overweight man and his travel scrabble...

Last flight into Houston before a hurricane and a flight into Lukla Nepal during a white out.

Has anyone flyed into Reno? I have done it close to 20 times and think I have had maybe a few "good" landings. It's the air or something in the mountains that makes the landings super rough. People literally cry out/yell from the turbulence.

It really can't be good for the aircrafts to take that abuse every landing.

the scariest landing i had was at Narita, flying United from Houston. i remember the pilot warned the landing might be bumpy, but right up until landing i didn't notice much. that is, until we got close enough to the ground that i could tell the plane was at a serious angle i guess due to crosswinds. i puckered up real quick wondering wtf was about to happen but when we got a few feet above the ground the plane kinda snapped straight and landed just fine.

Which is exactly how you land in a crosswind.

maybe, but i'd never experienced that before. caught me off guard to look down a couple hundred feet off the ground and see the plane at an angle to the runway

On our way back from Sydney to San Francisco (19 hour flight) via United, I started hearing strange noises coming from below. It continued happening for a while and other passengers started hearing it. Definitely was mechanical but didn't think much of it. As far as I knew something was just cycling every so often. We informed the flight attendant and the damn pilot came back and sat with us for a couple of hours to monitor it. He was fun to shoot the **** with and he had a feeling it was some sort of hydraulic problem but he wasn't able to really tell. He didn't seem worried so neither was I.

Landed safely and we made our next flight.

V8Aggie said:

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On our way back from Sydney to San Francisco (19 hour flight) via United, I started hearing strange noises coming from below. It continued happening for a while and other passengers started hearing it. Definitely was mechanical but didn't think much of it. As far as I knew something was just cycling every so often. We informed the flight attendant and the damn pilot came back and sat with us for a couple of hours to monitor it. He was fun to shoot the **** with and he had a feeling it was some sort of hydraulic problem but he wasn't able to really tell. He didn't seem worried so neither was I.

Landed safely and we made our next flight.

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Speaking of odd noises from below, what the hell is that God awful sound that Airbus 319's and 320's make when backing away from the gate and once you've stopped at the gate?

No idea. I rarely fly on Airbus so I can't speak to it. I was on a 777.

CanyonAg77 said:

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Which is exactly how you land in a crosswind.

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I come from a family that has multiple private pilots and at one time my dad owned a plane. We were on a commercial flight coming in with a heavy crosswind and the pilot performed a proper cross-control landing. It's astounding how many people were *****ing about the pilot saying he didn't know what he was doing.

People are such morons!

BTW- this is not directed at you STS

Pahdz said:

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V8Aggie said:

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On our way back from Sydney to San Francisco (19 hour flight) via United, I started hearing strange noises coming from below. It continued happening for a while and other passengers started hearing it. Definitely was mechanical but didn't think much of it. As far as I knew something was just cycling every so often. We informed the flight attendant and the damn pilot came back and sat with us for a couple of hours to monitor it. He was fun to shoot the **** with and he had a feeling it was some sort of hydraulic problem but he wasn't able to really tell. He didn't seem worried so neither was I.

Landed safely and we made our next flight.

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Speaking of odd noises from below, what the hell is that God awful sound that Airbus 319's and 320's make when backing away from the gate and once you've stopped at the gate?

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The United 757 with Rolls Royce engines seem to get some funny/concerning looks at full trust during takeoff and the initial climb out. Kind of sounds like they are about to "throw a rod" in layman's auto-speak.

Speaking of funny noises, I boarded my United flight and we were waiting to pull back from the gate. We kept hearing this terrible cranking noise accompanied with sputtering backfire. It sounded terrible.

After a few minutes the pilot comes on and says "The noise you are hearing is the Frontier plane next to us trying to start his engines. Aren't you glad you flew United today?" On that day, yes, I was.

I know the sound you speak of

This Airbus sound is like a creaky bed/floor/door hinge

Here is one my co worker told me.

It was another situation where the plane had a mechanical problem with the landing gear. The passengers were told to prepare for a potential failure and to put your head down between your knees. The flight attendants kept yelling "BRACE" on landing. Very tense moments at the time but all turned out ok.

Upon deplaning, a Continental (at the time) rep was handing out $5 subway gift cards. Really? Some guy is very irate that one moment he thought he was going to die then the next moment he is getting a free sandwich from the very same company that tried to kill him.

My co worker goes up to him and says "Hey pal, don't worry about it cause I got them back. There is no way they are going to be able to clean my seat. Now if you excuse me I need to find the nearest restroom." Make me laugh when I hear the term brace.

I never understood why they warn you to brace for impact. Bracing yourself causes you to be tense and injure yourself possibly worse than normal. Isn't that the reason why people that crash after falling asleep or passing out at the wheel typically aren't hurt too bad vs the car they ran into?

Maybe I am just full of ***** lol

no worries. i was too busy trying not to s*** my pants to worry about cursing the pilots

1. Flying Cairns to Honolulu on Qantas, we were taxing when fire trucks started rolling across the airfield. I thought we were going to see a plane crash, instead they pulled up along side our plane as our engine was on fire.

2. Midland to DFW, boarding a plane you boarded from the rear. They were also putting on luggage. Like normal, they were board rear to front, except in this case, you boarded the rear. About 3 people before me, they stepped on the plane and the nose went up in the air and the tail struck the tarmac.

3. Flying into Diego Garcia (not on MH370) in a storm, we just about landed when the pilot went full power and jerked us back up in the air. We circled around, same thing. Just about landed when the pilot went full power and jerked us back up in the air. Finally landed on the 3rd try. Saw the pilot in the smoke pit afterwards and talked to him. He said he almost lost us into the lagoon as the wind shear alarms went off whenever he got close to landing.

4. Landing in Frankfurt, we were almost on the ground (mere feet. I could see we were below the tops of the hagers) when the pilot went full power and jerked us back up in the air. He came on the speaker and said a plane had crossed onto our runway.

5. Not sketchy, but still amazing we made it. Flying ATL to DFW on Christmas Eve 2009. Bad ice\snow storm across the south. We left ATL 4 hours late as they only had 1 runway and somewhere east of Dallas, DFW completely shut down. We made left turns for an hour when the pilot said we needed to go to Houston for fuel. We were taking on fuel when the pilot came over the speaker and said he was cutting the fuel stop short because DFW reopened 1 runway and we had enough to make it. We flew to Austin and got in the pattern, landing in DFW about 8 hours late. One of only 50 planes to make it that night.