What's Your Scariest Experience In An Aircraft?

Question

In 2007 i was involved in an air accident. Me and a few friends were in a cessna when the pilot flew into a weather balloon. This forced us to make an emergency landing in a field 14 miles from the airfield. We lost two wheels on landing and quickly skidded to a halt. I thought I was going to die!

Answer 1

We had a "FWD WASTE SENSOR" EICAS indication and flushing ice wasn't doing any good.  It took almost 20 gallons of ice before EICAS cleared.

Nothing scarier than having to deal with a lav tank sensor.

Answer 2

That's very scary. Once, I was on a plane that ran out of diet coke. i thought there was going to be a riot in First Class!

Answer 3

I took off from Bakersfield in a Super Decathlon at dusk, heading for Palo Alto; while I was in the air the west coast experienced one of the worst blackouts in history (this was in 1995, IIRC). I was monitoring Bay Approach, then San Jose tower for a good part of the way, and I was afraid I was going to have to find Palo Alto, then land there, in a taildragger, in the dark. Luckily, partial power was restored before I got there, and I had runway lights (and that's ALL I had). It turned out to be one of the best landings I ever made!

Answer 4

Every time that I get in an airplane I manage to scare at least half a dozen people.  

Answer 5

I was flying with a student pilot practicing touch & gos & doing pattern work. He had done great the whole way. After the final touchdown, our speed was around 50 knots and he laid down on the left brake hard to turn on a taxiway. The 172 came up on a single wheel. This was my scariest moment.

Answer 6

We were on a flight from JFK to Cinti. We had just climbed out when the pilot leveled off and throttled down. We made a slow 180 back east. I could see that we were returning to the apt. On the turn to final a lady across the aisle screamed out 'we're going down!.' She had a good view of boat traffic in the water. I explained that we were returning to the airport. Every taxiway was occupied by a fire truck. Very exciting.

Only after taxiing back did the pilot choose to explain what was going on. Better late than never. The landing gear gave a 'not fully retracted' indication. We changed planes, and I got to my destination hours late.

Answer 7

The flight attendant told me we were out of Rum on a 14 hour flight to Hong Kong.  37,000 feet above the closest bottle of Bacardi is no place to be.

O.K., seriously;  I don't know if it was particularly scary at the time (maybe I should have been scared?) but I was flying with a friend in his home-built when the throttle stuck at 85% power, necessitating a kind of "get close and kill the engine" landing.  Not that big of a deal if all goes as planned, but any type of wind gust or otherwise that would cause a need to adjust/increase/decrease power on final could have made it VERY interesting.

Anyway, he contacts tower and declares emergency, we land safely, he goes directly to mensroom at FBO...I go have beer at pub across the street.

Answer 8

When the door opened in the C172 I was flying.

I sure I will have something much more scarier in the future.