With the recent crash landing at Heathrow, I was wondering if anyone from here has had any flight stories of plane problems or near crashes?

 

Mine aren't too bad.

 

On a trip to London, somewhere over Greenland I believe, we hit some really severe turbulence. I always leave my seat belt on. Most of the people on the flight were asleep (flights are overnight from Houston to London). By the time the seat belt thingie dinged, it was too late. The plane was bouncing all over the place and anyone not strapped in went bouncing with it. The pilot announced that we couldn't climb over it or get under or around it and would just have to struggle through. The plane was dropping hundreds of feet and the guy sitting next to me was freaking out. I was watching a movie....The Day After Tomorrow... and it was on the part where Jake Gyllenhaal is on a plane at it hits severe turbulence. It was kinda funny because it suddenly became a live action ride film. The poor bastard next to me was not amused with my film selection and asked me to turn it off....like my movie was causing the fookin turbulence. :dozey: Lasted around 15 minutes I guess. When it stopped, the poor guy went off to the toilet , white as a ghost and didn't return for quite some time. :laugh3:

 

 

 

Flying to Indy to see Coldplay with Mary, I land in some semi bad weather. It was a bit windy and rainy, but not too bad. I meet up with Mary and we are heading to the parking garage when her sister calls her and tells her a tornado just touched down at the airport, so stay away from that area. :stunned:

 

 

 

On a return flight from London (different trip than prior story) I get to Gatwick and wait for my gate to be announced. When they announce it, it's not where the plane usually departs from. Oh well, I head over and there is no plane there. :confused: A bus comes up and drives us out onto the tarmac where the plane is parked. They bring out these steps and we all board the plane. Kinda weird, but no biggie. My seat is just one row behind where the wing ends. I'm looking out the window and this guy comes up on this lift thing and gets on top of the wing. OK just some kind of routine maintenance I'm hoping. He starts poking at the flap with a screw driver ...well that doesn't look very "professional"....and pokes and pokes and pokes and then just shakes his head and stands up and leaves. :stunned: WTF! The entire trip I keep looking out the window to see if the fookin thing is still there. When we get to Houston, the weather is windy and we circle for quite a long time. The pilot announces it will most likely be a semi rough landing. We start the decent and I can feel the landing gear open and I just keep watching the flap thing because those are rather important during take off and landing. The landing takes forever. We bounced all over the place, some people screamed. The flap held up but I decided to never watch the ground crew before a flight ever again. :P

thankfully not

^^ me neither. But i think i'd be quite freaked out..

planes scare the hell out of me. i sometimes feel like i don't ever wanna leave this island again and i'm not even joking.

I was a on a plane when I was 10 and a engine caught fire. I was not personally aware of this and neither was most of the passengers at the time.

 

I thought it was great as it was my first time on a plane, and it meant I got the whole experince of flying taking of and landing all in the space of a hour.

 

Also it happend to be the opening day of Terminal 4 at Heathrow, and we was in the departure lounge for around 8 hours. We got loads of freebies of food and drink, plus I was allowed to go to the shops and play those handheld games without being told by a store owner to do one.

 

My mum also went on to get some compestation due to the delay in the flight as well.

I have since had a couple of heart stoping moments with turburlance, but I fly pretty often now and I am used to it.. Some Airlines are better than others at handaling it though.

luckily i do not...

 

but you know that movie snakes on a plane? my uncle was on a plane with snakes!:uhoh2:

Nope :(

 

Although this gives me an idea to plug this site:

http://www.flightmemory.com/

 

It allows you to put on a map the flights you have taken, so you can show off and make my map look crapper than it is

 

Although I'm not really supposed to talk about it as it was "covered up" by the MOD, an army helicopter crashed in the field opposed our house a few years back.

when i was 13 i took a flight to london with a bunch of my friends, and we just so happened to leave on a day where there was a blizzard. we were delayed at JFK for 4 hours (think about 16 thirteen-year-olds running around a terminal :thinking:), which was fine because we were all so excited and together, but then we finally got on the plane and were sitting on the runway aaaaaand...the plane in front of us caught fire, so we were delayed for TWO MORE HOURS while on the plane. my friend next to me had never flown before and he was practically wetting himself because of the plane fire ahead of us. and because we were on the runway, for some reason we couldnt be fed or given water or watch movies or anything. it was horrible.

 

and then on that same trip, on the way back, one of my friends had bought a keychain made out of an old bullet in some gift shop on our trip and stupidly PUT IT IN HIS CARRYON BAG. keep in mind that this was about... 6 months after 9/11. he was immediately arrested and we were all detained a little bit. he finally got home MUCH later than the rest of us and all his luggage was confiscated. what a moron. but it's a great story to tell.

 

and i went to minnesota once when i was like 10, and because we were only briefly stopping at an airport in ohio, my dad was under the impression that we would be taking the same plane back to connecticut and told us to leave all our carryons ON THE PLANE. i was 10 and didnt know better, so i did. and then i bawled my eyes out when we got "back" on board and none of our stuff was there. we got it back though.

^thats a good story

I've been on probably 100 plane flights in my life but I dont have any really scary stories... however my housekeeper once was flying with her boyfriend and at security he made a joke and said to the guy "she has a bomb in her bag!" This was just a few months after 9/11 and they got into a load of crap :tongue:

OOPS! Definite not the best timing!!:laugh3:

Once I had been down to the airport just south of here, and I walked though the metal detector with loaded bullets in my front shirt pocket! The thing went off, and they asked me to take the change and keys out of my pockets. I did, walked through a second time, and the detector said I was clear to go! It was only after I sat down on a bench and bent over, that I noticed the bullets in my pocket!! :stunned:(I had been target practicing the day before, and forgot they were even in there!). This was wayy before 9/11 though - I can only imagine what might have happened otherwise!

Other than that, about the only scary flight story was flying over the Allegheny mountains - the plane felt like a tennis ball that someone was bouncing on the court - up and down, up and down.. (turbulence from air over the mountains)

Mann the bullets thing is crazy!! :stunned:

Mann the bullets thing is crazy!! :stunned:

Well, I was just target shooting on the farm in the summer, and forgot some .22 shells in my pocket.. I didn't know they were there until I got past the metal detector, and sat on the bench waiting for a plane to arrive!:P

(I suppose today I would have been sent off to some secret undisclosed location, and water-boarded!):shocked2:

Hey, I meant no harm, and it was just an honest mistake!:)

I'm mostly normal:wacky:

Haha yeah I know, it's just a scary story. You're right, today you would have been in big trouble!!

Yea! They would have put me in a dungeon :lipsrsealed2::whip:somewhere... Guantanamo Bay, or maybe a secret prison in Poland? I dunno. Some of the stuff the US has done in the past decade really scares the **** out of me!:stunned:

Just pulling my chain, eh?:laugh3:

 

Haha yeah :P

 

You know I was watching the movie Sicko and turns out Guantanamo Bay has amazing free healthcare :tongue:

We once had really bad turbulence where luggage fell out of the overhead compartment but I was so young that I was laughing. :dozey:

 

But the only flight landing that was slightly unnerving was coming back into Detroit, I guess the landing strip wasn't clear yet and as we descending we jerked back up. The pilot told us that we had to circle back around two or three times to give it more time. Not scary just annoying. I was sick of being on the plane!

Well, I was just target shooting on the farm in the summer, and forgot some .22 shells in my pocket.. I didn't know they were there until I got past the metal detector, and sat on the bench waiting for a plane to arrive!:P

(I suppose today I would have been sent off to some secret undisclosed location, and water-boarded!):shocked2:

Hey, I meant no harm, and it was just an honest mistake!:)

I'm mostly normal:wacky:

 

yeahhh, that's a good thing that was before 9/11!! because my friend had them in his CARRYON and he was arrested and spent a loooooong time in the british police office and the rest of our group was held up and questioned as well. and he was thirteen freaking years old!!

not that i have a hell of a lot of faith in airport security even today...

^^ me neither. But i think i'd be quite freaked out..

 

Grrr... me too! my flights have been fast/normal/quiet, as supossed to be.

loaded or unloaded carry-ons?

 

yeahhh, that's a good thing that was before 9/11!! because my friend had them in his CARRYON and he was arrested and spent a loooooong time in the british police office and the rest of our group was held up and questioned as well. and he was thirteen freaking years old!!

not that i have a hell of a lot of faith in airport security even today...

 

Yes, I would have guessed as much in today's climate. These were empty shells on the key chain, right? That must have been a bit of a harrowing experience! I suppose they had to question him as a requirement of the law, and to show the system was working..:dozey:

What gets me is that the 95% is taking care of the matter before it reaches the airport. The 9/11 hijackers were being tracked by our FBI (as well as the CIA, I would imagine), and because of internal personality conflicts and turf battles, the ball was dropped on the investigations. Twice! (it happened when the trade centers were bombed the first time as well).

Then there's the matter of bad foreign policy that almost guarantees more attacks - having a smarter policy would save many, many more lives.

I'm glad the security is tighter, but it need not be draconian for minor mistakes. Maybe they could employ more dogs to sniff for explosives instead, and look more for the real problems (like plastic glocks and such), instead of opening every tube of toothpaste or tossing the hand lotions. Technologies like back-scatter X-rays and other scans would help see better the items without having to open every case, etc.

I wonder - all the pockets of poverty, and all the disaffected people dealing with bad governments supported by inane US policy, that's where unhappiness can lead a few to go to the extreme, especially when some extreme elements get a hold on these vulnerable few individuals, and convince them to become kamakazies. Then there's the issue of not integrating new citizens into countries; If these ethnic minorities are treated fairly and welcomed, there's usually no problem. But unfortunately, this has not always been the case.

Kinda long-winded I am today! Anyhow, fly naked - there's less security problems!:P

nope... nothing bad happened when i was flying ... everything was ok :)

 

 

though someone i know was speaking to his youth team (while on the plane) about air coming into the plane. the story was funny but then the air in that plane started to come in! the airplane then turned around and returned on the airport, got fixed and they started their journey again.

No-one else doing that flight memory thing?