Has anyone ever had a bad experience on an airplane?

I don’t know if I’d term the following a ‘bad’ experience on an airplane but it was certainly a frightening experience.

When I was growing up in Las Vegas, Nevada, I had grandparents that lived in Salt Lake City, Utah and my family would fly up there a few times a year to visit them.

One year on the trip up and nearing our final descent into the airport at Salt Lake City, there was a brilliant flash of light outside the aircraft windows and the aircraft got a very strong shake like it went through a shock wave or something. It scared the hell out of a lot of people on the jet, myself and my family included.

Once on the ground and as we were exiting the aircraft, the pilot told us that the nose of the plane had sustained a direct hit from a lightning bolt which accounted for the bright light and shaking. In those days, there weren’t jetways to the terminals and we had to exit the plane using airstairs. My brothers and I were able to get a glance at the nose of the aircraft and there were two holes in the nose about the size of softballs that were caused by the lightning. We couldn’t believe it.

We flew Air Namibia with a Boeing 727 and the plane flew into storm and had engine problems and had to land in Windhoek airport. There was a lot of turbulence and I pray like I never prayed before. At one stage the lights went off in the plane and all that you could see was the lightning around us, than the pilot switched on the seat belt sign. The plane’s left engine went dead for a few seconds and we were told that we flown into a air pocket and the pilot tried to get altitude again but due to engine problems we had to land in Windhoek – Namibia.

On a flight from JFK to London I was in a window seat by the left wing. I thought my time was up when the engine on my side burst into flames (it was a 2-engine plane). Cabin crew were panicking which I took to be a bad sign. After about a minute the extinguishers put out the fire and we landed safely – never happier to have been on the ground.

The last time I was on a plane I was sat next to a man that stunk. That was bad.

I was going home from Paris, and this woman in the seat in front of me goes into a “seizure”. She is shaking violently, and the flight attendants come by and suppress the seizure. They called the ambulance, and the whole flight was delayed like 3 hours. My friend, who is a lifeguard, looked at her symptoms and said that she was faking. Despite the crew’s insistance on getting her off the plane, she was saying “just get me a better seat, and I’ll be fine”. The airline didn’t want to take any precautions, and in the end she got off the plane with like 6 paramedics. The husband was silent the entiure time.

That’s one way to get into first class…

@Sparkie510: Or not.

I and my daughter were flying from Boston to Nantucket. We had a connecting flight in, and when we got there, we discovered the connecting flight had been cancelled due to fog. I called my parents (they were already there) and they suggested I try to get onto one of the little planes, like Nantucket Air. I called, and they had two seats, so we raced through the airport to get to the debarkation point.

We’ve already had a tough day, and my daughter, who is four or five, is exhausted and a little bit scared from running through an airport full of lines of people and weird florescent lights. At one point, she notices a jackknife on the floor, and picks it up. We can’t possibly figure out whose it is, so we it in my bag and continue on.

Panting, we make it to the gate, only to find that the plane is delayed again. There is a lot of fog over there, and if the plane doesn’t get clearance to take off in half an hour, we won’t be able to go at all. It’s the last flight out, and it nearly was the last flight we ever took.

At the last minute, we get clearance to take off. We load into the plane. It’s an eight-seater. We have to distribute people and baggage carefully to maintain balance. My daughter is sitting next to me. We take off and the hum of the plane puts my overtired daughter to sleep with her head in my lap.

It’s all clear, as we cross the ocean. The moon is shining brightly. Then, suddenly, we’re in the fog. I think, ‘these are the conditions that one of those Kennedy’s lost the horizon, ditched the plane, and died.’ The plane, like most small planes, is bouncing around a lot. Up and down. Sudden slips to the side. The fog makes things outside invisible. I pray the pilot is good at flying with instruments. You can feel the tension in the plane, as all the passengers grip their armrests tightly.

We descend, and we still see nothing. How far up are we? How much more to go? Will we crash? Land in the ocean? These thoughts run through my head. I am glad my daughter is asleep, so she doesn’t have to be nervous like I am.

Ten feet before we land, we see the lights of the landing strip. I’m not kidding. It was that close. In an instant our wheels are on the ground, and we are taxiing through the fog to the terminal. None of us can see a thing. It’s as if our pilot has magic xray eyes and knows exactly where he’s going. The moment we touched down, the tension dissolved, and, though there wasn’t any clapping, you could just feel the gratitude that we’d made it.

I swore to myself, after that, that I’d never take the last flight to Nantucket again.

@daloon: What was the significance of the jackknife? I was expecting some scene where there was a gremlin on the side of the plane, and you had to stab him in order for the plane to land safely. Now that would have been something.

Oops, sorry about that. It was more like a lucky find. I had that jackknife for years, until I lost it. Every time I used it, my daughter would say that she had given me that knife. I lost it, along with my wallet and a bunch of other things, when my fanny pack bounced out of my bag on the back of my bicycle. So, I guess it became important to both of us, and was a kind of keepsake from that unfortunate adventure.

When I was 9, we were coming back from Maine. On that trip we had gone on a picnic using my backpack, which I was using for a carry on. We put our luggage on the x-ray conveyor belt and everyones got through except mine. They put it through again, and it beeped again. So they took out all the stuff in my bag and found a steak knife that we had been using at the picnic. This was right after that whole no-liquids thing so the security was on code orange (or whatever). Luckily it was just a flight from Maine to Ohio, and we got through OK.

@daloon – I’m surprised you got a knife on the plane at all… Strangely enough, I was watching one of those air crash documentaries yesterday which was about a 19 seater plane that crashed shortly after take off due to it being overweight and also due to the distribution of the weight. That was back in 2003 I think, and as a result there are now regulations in place which measure the weight of passengers and luggage much more exactly – rather than using estimates.

Pardon my ignorance but What is a jackknife?

Is it not a flick knife?

@emdean1: Jackknife

This was pre-9/11. Although, I have forgotten to take the knife out of the fanny-pack, and they never made me throw it away. The only problem I’ve ever had is with the extremely dangerous toothpaste and shampoo I was carrying. But, I put it in a baggie and it was no longer dangerous!

@les Thank you
Learn something new everyday.

well on song airline or whatever, they have a little trivia game on the back of the seats that you can play. and this guy a few rows back beat me every. single. time.

i’ve only been on a plane a few times, so (fortunately) my horror stories don’t get much worse than that.