Worst Airplane Experiences?

Well here I sit, stuck in Chicago due to a cancelled flight! It won’t be so bad if things work out tomorrow as advertised. But for about 2 hours tonight, it was chaotic. First the OJ through O’Hare to reach my gate only to find they had cancelled my flight. No more flights out tonight. Had to cancel, hotel, car, re-do air, hotel, and car in different cities. Well its not so bad, but as the years add up, so do the stories of airplane and airport fiascos. I’ve landed in Cleveland with the runway lined with emergency vehicles due to our plane having inoperative flaps. The woman next to me squeezing the life out of my arm in fear. I’ve had smoke in the cabin a couple of times, took off in a downpour in Ft. Lauderdale only to drop about 100 feet once airborne. Oversold flights, 3 hour waits on the tarmac in Philly, etc, etc.
What is your worst airport/airplane experience? Mine is below.

My worst experience was about 10 years ago, some union with Northwest was on strike and MSP was reduced to the flights from other carriers. We had a last minute meeting surface in South Bend, IN. 4 of us needed to get there and we had two days to plan. On that short of notice, our best bet was to drive to Des Moines, board a TWA flight to Chicago (O’Hare again), catch a puddle jumper from Chicago to South Bend and return in the same manner. This is what actually happened.

We drove as planned from Minneapolis to Des Moines, caught the TWA flight to Chicago (was actually a 757) and arrived in O’Hare, made our way to the puddle jumper gate and of course, cancelled. But….they had a plan for us. They were going to call a “limo” company and shuttle us to South Bend. This brought my mind to thinking of a sleek black stretch limo with a fully stocked bar. Catering to our every need……nooooooooooooooo…. It turned out to be a coach bus, filled with all 50 people who missed flights to South Bend and about 5 other places in between. Well they must do this often enough it should not be a problem. We’ll still make South Bend with about 3-4 hours to spare for a quick nap before the meeting starts. The bus driver got lost, missed a turn, and ended up backtracking about an hour, after a four hour bus ride we did make the meeting, but had no sleep to show for it. We muddled through the meeting and eventually got back to the South Bend airport…….

wait for it…….you know where this is going. Yes there was a flight out of South Bend that day, but it was very late and we made Chicago O’Hare just in time to miss our connection to Des Moines. There was another flight leaving for Des Moines in about six hours. By now, we’re laughing so hard at all the things going wrong that we proceeded to drown our sorrow at the bar. The sales guy paid and we were definitely the four drunkest people to ever board an airplane. We now are in Des Moines, six hours later than planned, hung over, so we had to get a hotel room in Des Moines. Slept it off and drove back to Mpls the next day. We figured that had we drove to South Bend and back in the van we drove in to Des Moines, we would have saved 8-10 hours with all the airport hassles. Everytime I’m in O’Hare I think of those six hours in that bar on that trip home. You can’t make it up!

The only good part of the trip was that after our meeting in South Bend, we had 2-3 hours to kill before our flight so we toured Notre Dame and saw the Heisman Trophy’s, pictures of the glory days of ND hoops with Kelly Tripucka, Bill Lambeer, Quinn Buckner, and others. Very cool. Took a picture of touchdown Jesus! Other than that, everything else about that trip went wrong including the fact that we did not win the client we were pitching to.

Leaving the ground.

I’ve traveled often for work and have had all the typical delays and cancellations. Sat in the plane on the tarmac in Denver one time for three hours waiting for thunderstorms to pass. I had upgraded to first class though so I just drank them out of beer while waiting.

My favorite was on a vacation to the British Virgin Islands. Flew to San Jaun, Puerto Rico where we were to catch a regional airlines flight. Arrived late in San Jaun and had 40 minutes to catch our flight. We had to wait for our luggage first due to our next flight leaving from a different terminal where the small planes leave from. Got all our stuff and did the O.J. to the other terminal to find out our flight had mechanical difficulties. Come to find out this airline only had two planes and the other one “was down for maintenance” so to speak, which comes up a little later in this story.

The airline person told us they were going to charter a couple planes to get us to Virgin Gorda. I thought it was odd that they needed to charter a couple planes since there were only 10 people but figured maybe some people were going to a different island. The planes they chartered were small twin engine jobs that could only carry 4 and 6 passengers. We ended up on the 4 passenger plane and it turned out to be a pretty cool flight as we stayed pretty low and saw some cool island scenery on the way.

Well, the airstrip on Virgin Gorda was nothing more than a paved section of the beach, with 500 foot “mountains” at each end, so the landing was more like falling out of the sky and pulling up at the last minute. As we touched down, I looked out the window and low and behold, there was a plane from the airlines we were supposed to fly. It was piled up in the trees off the runway with a wing ripped off and the nose gear collapsed. Come to find out, the plane that was “in for maintenance” had run off the runway and basically crashed into the woods the week before.

Trip turned out great but still laugh at what they considered “in for maintenance”.

My worst flight experience was with Northwest Airlines. Flight from Dubuque to Minneapolis and then to Las Vegas. I flew with 3 other people from my office. When we arrived at Minneapolis we had less than a half hour to catch our flight to Vegas. We made it to the flight just as they were closing the door on the plane. I went to find my seat and someone was sitting in it. The flight attendants checked both of our tickets and it seems the airline booked 2 people for the same seat. Nobody else in our group had the same problem. As it turned out there was one seat open due to someone not making the flight so they allowed me to stay on the plane. On the return flight we had a short layover in Minneapolis but our flight to Dubuque was cancelled due to weather in Dubuque. We had to wait until the afternoon flight and hope that was not cancelled as well. I had been up for over 24 hours thanks to Vegas and wanted to get home. When it finally came time to board the afternoon flight some Dutch woman behind the NW/KLM counter insisted that myself and another guy from my office did not have valid tickets for the flight. I was not a happy camper. She kept telling us that we could not board the plane even though we had valid boarding passes and our luggage was already on the plane. She was the rudest person. We waited until the final call for the flight and headed out to the puddlejumper when she was not paying attention. This was pre 9-11 so security was very lax. We boarded the flight and it took off without incident. During the short hour and fifteen minute flight I noticed one of the pilots looking back towards the passengers several times almost to the point of staring us down. There were only about 20 people on the flight. We landed at Dubuque and there were NW people waiting at the door of the plane calling out my name as the passengers disembarked. They requested my boarding pass as the lady in Minneapolis had notified them that we did not have tickets to be on that flight. I gave them my boarding pass and everything checked out. They could not understand what the problem was. I heard apology after apology from the NW staff but nobody offered me a free flight. Needless to say that I was very unhappy with Northwest Airlines and the unprofessional way they treat their passengers.

I’ve never had any bad experiences while flying (thank God) but have had several on the ground due to cancelled flights, etc…

Eyehunter

About 20 years ago September at an outpost camp in nothern Sask. It’s snowing and a different pilot than the one who dropped us off comes to get us.We take off and he has the door open with the map in his lap.He finds a power line and follws it back to town.But hey were still here to tell about it.

Once when I was in the Army The travel bureau arranged a flight for me that went from Petersburg to DC, DC to Atlanta, Atlanta, to Detroit, Detroit to Chicago, Chicago to Madtown with a lengthy lay over in each place. I was bummed but showed up 4 hours early to the airport as I had nowhere else to go. I went up to the counter to check in and the nice lady looked at the itinerary and asked me if I would prefer to fly straight to madison. The flight left 15 minutes later and I was home in no time.

My worst flight:
US Army, 1992……Mojave Desert. Black Hawk helicopter.
Landing in the sand, we got caught in a bad dust storm. The pilot thought we were about 10 feet above ground, too stupid to use his instruments, we were actually about 30 feet. He dropped the bird down fast……really, really fast. Ended up burying the bird to the belly in the sand. By the way, ever take a hard drop in a chair, comparable to about a 15′ free-fall? It hurt……But nobody got “injured”.

2nd worst flight….
US Army, Mojave Desert, another Blackhawk……same pilot 3 days later…..(you think I would have learned my lesson the first time).
As an observation team leader for night time live fire of Apache Helicopters, we were support team for broken birds. The live fire was unreal!!!! Watching the birds shooting hellfires and 2.75″ rockets at dummy tanks, blowing stuff up!
The pilot had us tucked away safely in a canyon, hovering, to watch the show. The dumb pilots got so caught up in the show, that the helicopter started to “drift” to the right. I was sitting at the right side gunner’s door. Just as I happened to glance out the side door as we were facing the fire, I noticed this HUGE ROCK WALL coming at us. I screamed like a little girl…….the pilots screamed, we all screamed harder………The blades of the bird were about 20 feet from hitting some rocks on the canyon wall. Pilot pulled up hard, really hard……we were all placed hard in our seats…..climbing and climbing…….Until they gained composure……

When we landed, that was the last time I flew in a military bird again. I refused to fly for the last 17 months of my active duty career. Always passed on the flights to my subordinates.

Girl!!!

First, let me start of by saying that I hate to fly. I have flown only a handful of times, and have only had 1 flight with “no incidents”

Flight 1…in college, transportation class, HAD to fly, chart a trip with 2 other students….well, to make a long story short, 4 hours after we landed, we got 2+ feet of snow….turbulance whilst flying was unbelieveable….eg. when I was flying my segment, the instructor was turned around talking to the other students when we dropped 500 feet as fast as you can snap your fingers (I was on the altimeter, we only started off at 2000 feet)…Needless to say, instructor turned around real quick and took the copilot reigns

Flight #2. Going to Vegas with wife…looking out the window, and to my astonishment, i see a 747 straight across from us…close enough where I saw the faces on the other plane looking back…30 seconds later, our plane climbed another 5000 feet probably (pucker syndrome)

Flight 3..couple years ago flying to atlanta GA….we circled atlanta for about an hour…after we landed, the pilot thanked us for our patience, they were working to get the flaps working for an hour.

Flight 4…3 days after the Atlanta Incident…was flying back from NC….we were the last flights out of Chicago, and the last one in to Rochester…due to the 60mph winds that day….flight attendants didn’t even hand out peanuts because of the turbulance…they stayed buckeled in

Flight 5, this summer, went without a hitch

Did I mention I HATE flying???

In my previous job I had to travel almost every week for more than 10 years. I’ve had my share of bad experiences. The worst was back in 1994 or 1995 when the Dallas Cowboys were kick’n the crap out of the Packers. I had to fly from MSP to Dallas on a Sunday evening. The Cowboys played the Packers that weekend. I went to the airport quite a bit ahead of my flight so I could watch the game at the airport. I was wearing my Packers sweatshirt and bluejeans. I checked my bag and headed to the bar to drink some and watched the Packers get absolutely smoked. Arrived in Dallas still po’d about the game only to be told my bag didn’t make it. I had a work meeting at 8am Monday morning. No stores were open on Sunday evening. The next morning I had to flip the underwear inside out and wear my Packer sweatshirt into the Dallas office. (I should have been wearing a tie) I’m sure my coworkers in Dallas didn’t think I was playing with a full deck. All I could do was bend over and take it like a man…

Same thing here. The family and I are flying to Florida for a week and I knew I would regret looking at this post. At least we are not taking a helicopter . I am glad to hear everybody made it alright with each of their “incidents”

my worse flight was coming out of Fart Sam Houston, twin engine plane seated 6 plus two pilots. Flying home to Hays Ks. alarms start screeching from the control panel dumb pilots are telling us nothing. We felt the plain drop rapidly then start climbing again. Everyone was panicing,nobody said a word but the look and the clenching of arms said it all. Lady next to me was pratically on my lap. Being military and flying,jumping and self propelling out of helicopters was kind of running threw my mind. No chute, too fast for a rope. Heart beating irregularly. Hard to breath. We landed safely, I went up to the pilots and asked what exactly was going on with all the bells and whistles going off? They said it was a low altitude alarm that would not reset. I then blew up on them and said next time you may want to tell your (BLEEPING)passengers what exactly is going on and that you have it all under control. Never flew thru that airline again!

Worst flight was from Houston to Mpls. stuck in the middle seat between two 300 lb’ers.

I think this lady just had her worst experience
http://www.cnn.com/2006/TRAVEL/12/06/plane.passing.gas.ap/index.html

I quess the hairiest experience I’ve had, that I can remember was in Vietnam, and flying a CH-47 Chinook heavy-lift helicopter into an LZ in the middle of no where, go in okay, left the LZ empty, and after climbing thru a hundred feet, a bunch of VC on the ground behind us, opened fire on us with AK-47’s, I could easily hear them firing on automatic fire above all the load noise in the cockpit. I yelled on the intercom for my crew members to open fire with our M-50 machine guns. I dumped the nose as far as the could to get some airspeed, and went to max military power, as soon as I hit 50 knots, I pulled the cyclic almost full aft, and started screeming for altitude (never moved a 30,000 pound helicopter so fast in my 7 years flying them), and pegged the vertical speed indicator at over 3,500 feet per minute. I keep yelling at the crew to return fire. and heard nothing. I eased back on the power after blowing thru 2,000 feet, and asked why there was no return fire. They said the machine guns were not loaded on either gun. The intercom was almost totally silent, as I turned back to our supply base to check things over. All instruments were in normal operating range, green arcs, and everything was working great. After landing we checked the whole acft over, and found a bunch of holes all along the bottom, am glad the VC waited til we were past them before they starting shooting at us. And I’d have to say we were also a little bit lucky.
Also after we shutdown, I had a heart to heart, face to face, SERIOUS discussion about loaded guns when we were on mission. All the crew, just said, yes sir!!

Got fired up again, and had a great rest of our day.

Got lots of stories, but this one stands out about the most.
Jack..

Thanks for sharing those stories. The military ones are particularly interesting even though I did not serve.

For those reading the post and flying in a few days, don’t panic unless the flight attendants panic. Case in point, my wife and I are on a puddlejumper out of Boston bound for Albany (on our way to see Kirby go into Cooperstown). Our pilot called back that we’d better get airborne soon or would be stranded in Boston. So off we go. Big cumulus clouds coming together with some monstrous thunderheads. After 10 minutes of smooth sailing, that little plane started bouncing like on a rollercoaster. My wife goes white! They set down the flight attendant and we are in row 1 right near her. With several people in the back demanding beers, our flight attendant gets creative and since she cannot stand up, starts rolling beers down the aisle to the folks in back!! The laughter kept my wife from losing it. Years later when we moved to Hudson, we recited this story to a group of people and get this….the people in the back of this plane are now our neighbors in Hudson, also going to Cooperstown that day. True Story!

Today’s flights went ahead on schedule. Yeah!