Watching a crashed airplane floating down the Hudson River last week was sobering. Who knew geese could be a travelers worst enemy? I wonder if this means we can start wearing shoes through the metal detectors since clearly, the threat is elsewhere.

Anyway...

My scariest airplane moment was in Costa Rica. Captain Corkey must have been knocking back a little Captain Morgan in the cockpit. When we landed, we fishtailed down the runway and came to rest at an angle. "Sorry, folks" was all he muttered, after the ordeal passed. At that point, I needed a stiff drink myself.

What's your scariest airplane moment?

Just to clarify; It wasn't a 'crashed' plane floating down the river, it was a water landing.

Flying is sooo stupidly safe these days it's rediculous. In '07 and '08 there were no deaths associated with US commercial flights and there were a whooping 1.5 billion people transported! That's amazing! It's more dangerous to go shopping at WalMart than to fly on a commercial airliner.

All that being said. My scariest moment wasn't all that scary (but I don't really get scared) but I was on an old plane flying in the Himalaya and we were flying on instruments and in clouds at an elevation lower than the highest surounding peaks. The plane had an open cockpit and while in the clouds I watched th co-pilot adjust two instruments and then the Pilot looked over at him and shook his head in a disgusted manner and set them back to there original position. Moments later we broke the cloud cover and we were very very close to the side of the mountain. While hiking in the mountains for 3 weeks, two of that companies planes crashed in the mountains and I still had to fly them back out.

Ryanair - STN-SUF. On takeoff maybe ten seconds into the flight we hear a loud repeating alarm/buzzer and we stop climbing for a few seconds, which seemed like an eternity. Then the alarm stops and we continue on to Italy. No explanation was ever given.

Once, while flying into my home airport, the indicator light showed that the landing gear wasn't down. WE had to fly past the tower a few time to get visual confirmation they were down. Nice.

During landing on another flight 3 ceiling tiles fell off and landed on the head of a strapped in flight attendant. She looked concerned so all of us who could see her did too. Nothing could be done and we landed with no problems.

I was at Heathrow during a bomb threat. Hadn't made it onto the plane yet, but we had a full evacuation of the airport and that was scary itself. That was back inh 1989

When we boarded the inter-island plane in Tahiti, we noticed a whole section of seats on the right side of the plane were roped off. We wondered why. After we took off, we began to see clouds of fog come from the right side of the plane over those seats. Soon, we saw water gushing from the overhead bins on that side. Very interesting we thought.

When we landed in Bora Bora, a fire truck came screaming out onto the runway.

We were told that there was nothing out of the ordinary.

I'm not one who's easily frightened by flying. I actual get a laugh out of the reactions that people around me have. I try to keep the laughs inside, 'cause I know that's not nice.

I suppose the most classically frightening moment was on a CDG-LHR hop a couple years ago. Basically just severe turbulence - probably the worst I'd ever felt - on our final approach into Heathrow. No real problem from that though.

The most I've been frightened was in September on a flight home from YVR. It was actually a really smooth flight, but the engines didn't sound right, and almost 30 minutes into the flight, the entertainment system was still off, and out the window it looked like we were more or less level with the peaks around us. The Rockies are not tall mountains, so we can't have been higher than maybe 10,000 feet - way too low for an A320 to be flying after 30 minutes in the air. But then the engines powered up and we climbed to a more normal height, so no harm done. Never got an explanation, but it seemed like odd flying.

Really, I'm a confident flyer. I loves planes and I love the sensation of flying. And when a plane lands in the Hudson River and nobody dies, the lesson I take from that isn't that flying is dangerous. It's that a plane can have catastrophic power loss at a critical point in the flight and its passengers can still walk away. In other words - flying is safe.

Mine was probably on a flight from Frankfurt to Paris. We were coming in for a landing and touched down as normal ... for about two seconds. Then, instead of slowing down, we started picking up speed. Before I know it, the engines just start blasting and we're taking off again. But it feels like a really belabored take-off. Engines are roaring, our speed is picking up, and everyone around me has horrified looks on their faces.

When we're finally a few thousand feet up, the pilot announced there had been some sort of miscalculation on our landing clearance. There was another plane in dangerous range, and he had to bring us back up ... otherwise we might have hit that plane.

So we did a u-turn and landed, this time quite innocuously. Phew.

I dont have a normal reaction to flying. Every single noise is suspicious and every peice of turbulance is horrible.
So instead of giving my emotions any gravity I pay attention to the faces of the people around me.

On an AirVietnam flight from Saigon to Hanoi I was with my dad. And right after takeoff he muttered to his friend "That wasn't good". My dad, who is not known for overreacting to situations stayed tense throughout the flight. After a very bumpy and very scary landing he let out a big breath and said something like "Wow, I really didnt think we where gonna make that landing".
That was pretty terrifying.

Other then that I've actually had very little in the way of bad experiences.
And yet it still scares the bejebus out of me...

I've had lots of adventures in small planes, most of the guys i used to fly with have cracked up their planes, and themselves, but my most fun was when i was flying S.E. Alaska and we landed on the Dean River in my friends 182, acltually that's in BC about an hour out of Bella Coola, and he desides to taxi up the River about a mile and then takes the plane to the shore. It's then he realizes, he can't turn it around cause the river is too narrow, swift and, lets not overloook the bends in the river, that since he wouldn't have enough speed to overtake the current he would lose control.

SOOO, the solution was for me and my friend Harry to get on each side of the pontooons, hang on for dear life as we floated backwards down the river, with just enough power to maintain control as harry and i pushed it off the banks and kept it in the deep water.

his next magical trick on this trip was to land in the fiord of the LeConte Glacier, filled with icebergs and motor on over to this big berg, get out and take pictures. Then we take off, the channel having pretty much stayed the same, but a few bergs had move closer to our lane of escape, we missing one by maybe 20' on the way out, he not having even notice it. We would have been dead ducks for sure as no oone was anywhere close to our location and radio wasn't operational that low.

There were several other shenanigans he pulled on this trip, and when I got back I put him on my "do not fly list"

After some 200+ flights and maybe 800,000 miles, about the scariest thing ever to happen me was back in the late '90s...the cabin crew ran out of Heineken, leaving me to suffer in flight with a Budweiser. I guess I really shouldn't complain.

Stoo wrote:After some 200+ flights and maybe 800,000 miles, about the scariest thing ever to happen me was back in the late '90s...the cabin crew ran out of Heineken, leaving me to suffer in flight with a Budweiser. I guess I really shouldn't complain.

HAHA nice, Stoo. I've been pretty darn lucky I would say. I think the scariest moment I've had was when somebody on our plane had a stroke and we had to make an emergency landing in Canada. It wasn't a technical problem with the plane of course, but it did make me think about that whole blood clot thing...

Mine was on a short flight from Houston to Dallas. There were a lot of thunderheads and the plane couldn't miss them all. We'd drop about a thousand feet then struggle back up to only do it again. I was really glad that flight is only about 45 minutes.

Struck by lightning on approach to MSP. Sounded like an explosion. I was flying united and listening to the tower radio (as a true nerd would) at the time so I knew what it was right away as the pilot instantly informed the tower of what happened and that nothing was damaged.

Bad turbulence on approach to Wellington during a terribly windy day was bad as well (the ferries were shut down that day), but I knew it wasn't unusual so I just held on to my seat. We hit the runway at what had to be 150% of normal speed.

Flying through a thunderstorm. Stuff was getting thrown around the cabin and some dude a few rows ahead of me got his head whacked into the ceiling. I have a deep appreciation for seat belts now.

I was also on a flight once where a bird got sucked into one of the engines, but that wasn't really scary. We just started noticing a horrible smell in the cabin, something akin to a badly overcooked Thanksgiving turkey, and then we got diverted for an early landing. We found out what happened after we'd landed. We waited around for an hour for a new plane, and then continued on our way. No biggie.

This one time, back in 1972, I was flying across the Andes with my rugby buddies from Uruguay and our plane crashed on a desolate glacier. We were stuck there for 10 weeks and had to resort to cannibalism. It was pretty scary... Oh, wait. That wasn't me. It was the story on which the thrilling Hollywood blockbuster "Alive" was based! I wasn't even BORN in 1972... Geez! I get confused when I've been off my malaria meds for too long...

But seriously... aside from a few bouts of bad turbulence, I haven't had any abnormally scary flight experiences so far...