Worst Flight Nightmares

A few spring to mind. Landing at Gibraltar airport on the 2nd attempt, I could see the runway out of the window so we werent lined up properly, round the rock we went again! Our flight back had 2 goes as well.
About to land in Rome for the Uefa Cup match and the pilot pulling out saying the previous flight was in the way.
A few dodgy/windy landings at Leeds, no suprise given how high up it is.
Going to Berlin once and we dropped probably no more than 50 feet in air turbulance but it felt a lot more.
Landing in the Faroes is interesting, mountains one side, the sea the other.
All said and done I can't wait to fly again.
 
WAHL: apparently a lot ofUK pilot training for landing takes place at Leeds due to the windy conditions found there.
 
Youngie said:
What's your worst flight nightmares?

I have had three with one that I would call a very close call... I was never a nervous flyer up until about 13 years ago... Now I hate it.


1. The last flight taking off from Jamaica as a Hurricane it... diabolical turbulence and crosswinds during takeoff and for the first hour of the flight until we broke free.

2. Landing at Bristol Airport.... the pilot slammed it down like he was landing on an aircraft carrier

3. (the close call) Coming back from Majorca into Birmingham in 2019 with Jet2.... I could feel the plane getting lower and slower as we came into land.. the pilot announced we were 10 mins out.... for me to look out the window and be looking at the tops of the trees getting very close and a realization we were too low to be 10 mins out. Que a panic look on my face and a few others I could see.

Next thing you know the pilot pulls up sharp and whacks the power on before we have 8 mins of panic as the plane is moved up and down continuously and the engine power is adjusted more times than i could count. before a heavy landing just inches onto the runway and bouncing the length of the runway.


Turned out it was a rookie pilot on his first approach to the airport and as jet2 informed us "made a slight error of judgement on his approach"

We all got £50 worth of vouchers by way of an apology.

What's your worst flight nightmares?
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Flying from Durban to JoBurg on a chartered 10 seater single engine job.
Magneto failed so we were simply gliding with no sign of civilisation let alone an airport.
Pilot then spotted a road in the distance and headed for it.
No mag so no chance to climb again.
Road turned out to be simply a bit of earth lighter that the surrounding woodland.
He brilliantly got us down on that rough patch of scrub in one piece.
Having not made contact with ATC we simply waited, and waited for rangers to eventually find us.
Thought my time was up !!
 
Lemmy_kilmister said:
Or you get someones rank and stinking trotters through the gap in the seats or above your head 🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮
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Yeah i had guy with very smelly feet next to me on a long haul flight once. One of the KLM pilots came walking through the cabin, went past, then checked back and just said outright "get your shoes on your feet stink" in a very abrupt Dutch fashion. He didn't put his shoes on and went to sleep. The pilot returned with a can of air freshener, sprayed his feet which woke him up and it all kicked off. Thankfully he got moved and forced to put his shoes on.
 
wilkos_perm said:
I'm "only" 6ft2 but totally agree with all of that, it's the people around that make it a nightmare. Coming back in a packed flight from Hong Kong once there was a very heavy woman in the seat in front a she was fidgeting around all over with the chair moving around all over. The bloke next to me said " she's going to knack that seat" and sure enough it gave way and went back further that maximum.
I asked to move seats only to be told there was none spare, so i was wedged in for the next 12 hours.
Also on short flights I always seem to get the one person who tries to put their seat back. I just push against the seat now and don't let them do it.
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Yep, these are the sort of people that I'm talking about. Selfish and inconsiderate.

I hope that for your sake that you didn't actually agree with all that I posted and not also have lost an inch in places
where an inch can ill afforded to be lost. 🙏:D
Yet.;)
 
Go around at London City.

Back end of a typhoon across the Pacific in a 747, overhead lockers bouncing open and a few drops like on a rollercoaster. I loved it.

TBH these are very frequent occurrences and to be expected. I love flying and look forward to it for weeks.

Nothing to be afraid of.
 
2 Spring to mind:

1) Flying from Syracuse to JFK on Jet Blue, night flight. Got thrown all over the sky, nobody moved, not even the stewards and stewardesses, for the whole of the flight, completely silent.

2) Falklands back home. Its a straight run to ASI, and the plane banked left (old tristar). Thought, this is weird (I was there on the flight working, doing a HQ route check), looked both sides and engines looked OK, although obvs couldn't see the one in the tail. Got hold of the loady and he looked a bit shaken. We landed in Rio about 5 hours later, turns out the sealant on the cockpit windows had started to bubble (this was not long after the pilot on the BA plane had been dragged out of his window). Anyway, 3 days in Rio, new windscreen and off on our way again.
 
Just reminded myself of the flight out to Jamaica on our honeymoon. Took off from Gatwick without any issue but that volcano in Iceland had erupted so we had to fly south to avoid it. About and hour in the Captain comes on to do his little update when he broke off mid sentence and a warning bell was going off.

he didn’t come back on for another 10 mins but the the same thing happened again. We all started to wonder what was happening.

he came back in after 30 mins and the flight passed off without incident until after we landed. We tried to get out of our seats to be told by the stewardess we had to stay out until the police boarded.

apparently some nutter had gone for a smoke in the bog and set the alarm off and when he did it the second time he covered himself in vodka and threaten to set himself on fire 🔥

the stewardess saw the horrified look on our faces before smirking and telling us not to worry... it happens three times a week on average
 
three aborted landings all within ~150mtrs of the runway... one at Schipol, two at Bristol. Apparently,Bristol airport was used for training pilots in WWII because of the altitude and notorious side winds. i think the feeling was if you can land there, you can land anywhere
 
John67 said:
About 25 years ago I was chatting to a lass in a pub in London. One of us was moaning about being a bad flyer and was due to fly out on holiday the next day. One of the lasses got very upset which was a bit weird until we were told her Mam and two sisters had died in a plane crash, I think it was the really bad one in Tenerife in the 70’s.
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I know someone who lost their parents in the 1980 Tenerife crash. The Dan Air one that hit the mountains Awful. :cry:
 
I've done crazy amounts of flights in the past so was always going to encounter trouble along the way, in 2014 I took 136 flights in that year alone!!

Worst pre-flight experience was getting robbed at gunpoint at Abidjan airport during a coup. Machine gun to the head really isn't cool.
Other pre-flight issues was a plane taxiing for take off which caught fire and we had to get off pretty quickly.
Flight over shooting the runway upon landing and had to perform an emergency take-off which I thought was amazing but lots of people were crying.
Flight from Miami to New York in which I had the centre seat and the two other seats were occupied by guys who were 25 stone at least. They couldn't lower the armrests as they were too wide and I had to sit between them leaning forward with my back against their two guts which were about 20cms apart.
Taking a tiny plane from Cleveland Ohio to Fort Wayne in a thin metal tube with tiny single seats, it was like a go-cart inside. We were warned in Cleveland that the landing in these things was horrendous and it sure was.

Best flights though:
Sea-plane in Maldives.
Private jet across Australia - drinking beer and playing chess.
Every business class flight with Singapore Airlines was a pleasure.
Flying a plane myself for my birthday two years ago.
 
I was due to fly back from Australia on the Saturday evening so we'd set off from my sister's on Saturday morning to spend the day in Sydney. Got to the airport, checked in and was an hour away from takeoff when they announced an issue that caused an 11 hour delay. To make matters worse the replacement flight needed to make a drop in Adelaide which delayed us further as we sat on the tarmac while people got off. We got to Singapore then faced a four hour wait before setting off to Austria where we ended up having a further 6 hour wait.
I eventually got back to Heathrow on Sunday UK time and got on the train to Darlington only to find out from the Boro fans on there that we'd been humped by Chelsea on the Super Sunday game.
By this point I'd lost all track of time and ended up sleeping through all of Monday as a result.
 
This one didn't worry me, but for nervous flyers like Erimus I can imagine it'd have been terrifying.
I was flying from DTV to Dusseldorf via KLM and we were on one of those little twin engine prop planes where the wings are on the roofline and the engines hang below them.
Anyway, we taxied out ready for takeoff and the pilot fired up the engines and began to accelerate for takeoff, one propeller going full whack, the other just rotating due to the increasing wind speed rather. Just as we approached takeoff speed the second engine sped up and off we went. Judging by the looks on the flight attendants faces and those of some of the passengers, this was quite normal, but you can imagine people sat there watching the difference in propeller speed and bricking it.
 
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dooderooni said:
This one didn't worry me, but for nervous flyers like Erimus I can imagine it's have been terrifying.
I was flying from DTV to Dusseldorf via KLM and we were on one of those little twin engine prop planes where the wings are on the roofline and the engines hang below them.
Anyway, we taxied out ready for takeoff and the pilot fired up the engines and began to accelerate for takeoff, one propeller going full whack, the other just rotating due to the increasing wind speed rather. Just as we approached takeoff speed the second engine speed up and off we went. Judging by the looks on the flight attendants faces and those of some of the passengers, this was uute normal, but you can imagine people sat there watching the difference in propeller speed and bricking it.
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ATR 72’s

the old Flybe fleet were like this... I asked one of the pilots why they did it and he told me it was to save money in maintenance time and fuel.
 
dooderooni said:
This one didn't worry me, but for nervous flyers like Erimus I can imagine it's have been terrifying.
I was flying from DTV to Dusseldorf via KLM and we were on one of those little twin engine prop planes where the wings are on the roofline and the engines hang below them.
Anyway, we taxied out ready for takeoff and the pilot fired up the engines and began to accelerate for takeoff, one propeller going full whack, the other just rotating due to the increasing wind speed rather. Just as we approached takeoff speed the second engine speed up and off we went. Judging by the looks on the flight attendants faces and those of some of the passengers, this was uute normal, but you can imagine people sat there watching the difference in propeller speed and bricking it.
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Yep I've seen that with Flymaybe. One of the engines didn't start until we started off down the runway
 
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