Air-raising stories of flights I didn’t fancy

Jase says:

06:34am | 14/11/11

My most memorable experience was my first commercial flight as the pilot of a rather small 6 seat single engine Cessna full of paying punters on a scenic flight around the Kimberley. I was 19 at the time and I am not sure what the punters were more scared about, the only pilot looking barely old enough to drive a car or that the aircraft that was nearing 40 years old, they sure were nervous getting on board.

The worst experience which I have had was multiple failures in relative short succession in some terrible weather, I will avoid details but it involved a fire, an undercarriage problem and an electrical problem. It is very true when they say that flying is hours of boredom with a moment of sheer terror.

As a passenger I cant say that I would have to say that I have not had many bad experiences, I am probably one of the very few who enjoy spending time on planes, either as passenger or flying it, well unless of course its in economy, that is never really a great experience.

My most memorable passenger experience was hitching a ride a rather large empty business jet as the crew ferry it from location to location. There is nothing like flying in a private aircraft with the entire cabin to yourself and the acceleration on takeoff with minimum weight on board is impressive. I recommend everyone try’s it at least once in your life, just to see the enjoyable side of travelling.

Happy Flying!

Chris_D says:

07:18am | 14/11/11

In 1991, just after the Persian Gulf war had started, I was required to fly to America for some training at one of there military bases on our national carrier. 

While we all know of the repercussions of the American involvement in the Middle East after September 2001, I was acutely aware of the chances of this sort of thing happening 10 years earlier, but more in the form of hostage taking, ransoming and other acts that support “their” cause. 

I was a serving member of the Australian Defence Force, an American Allie and I was traveling on an A-2 visa (Google it) with an Official Passport (the green diplomatic passport) and I was up the point end of the plane.

Whilst the service was impeccable and the flight itself uneventful, suffice to say it was a rather long and concerning flight for me at the time.

ronny jonny says:

07:26am | 14/11/11

Flying from Darwin to Broome through the edge of a cyclone was not fun at all. Plummetting to what felt like my doom every few minutes as the plane was buffeted by storm cells was a pretty awful experience. When we landed I thanked the pilot for getting us down safely, he was very cool,” Ah, that was nuthin, you should see when it’s really bumpy” I was away to change my underwear.
Also, most of the flying I’ve done in PNG rates very high on the scare’o'meter. Grass strips with nowhere to go if things go wrong, water in fuel (and sometimes in aircraft), interesting locals hanging around airstrips, every flight is an adventure.
Once flew through lightning in a chopper near Broome, lightning flashing all around, plunging up and down with the storm and nowhere to land because of all the scrub fires below, dramatic scenery, looked like the world was ending, then we were down and off to the pub. It’s a funny business, flying.

thatmosis says:

07:30am | 14/11/11

acotrel were you born a clown or have to go to Labor Clown school like the rest of them. If you read the story it anmed aircraft from different eras and probably didnt have the benefit of the same rules that are in place now. I have flown with overseas airlines and found them great, in fact a lot better than the QANTAS flights I have been forced to take. Cleaner planes, better food, larger seats and polite and efficient cabin crews whereas on the QANTAS flights the planes have been dirty, the food disgusting, the seating okay if your a midget and the flight crew surly and rude. I know which airlines i would rather fly with and it isnt QANTAS.

iansand says:

08:18am | 14/11/11

I once flew from West Arnhem Land to Darwin in a six seater in the Wet, in the afternoon.  We managed to fly around all the storms, but I couldn’t help wondering what would happen if we hit a wall we couldn’t fly around.

I flew into San Francisco once on a 747.  It was bumpy enough to throw a Jumbo around on approach, and it was 2 1/2 hours before the weather calmed down enough to get our luggage off.

ts says:

08:50am | 14/11/11

flying sydney to perth in a major storm with absolutely no visibility - looked up at that funny little plane picture on the tv screen erroneously telling us our altitude was still 500 feet at the moment we smacked into the tarmac to land.

taking off in norway, full power, hurtling down the runway, just at the moment of take off - and lights out - complete loss of power and the pilots had to brake to stop us because we didnt have reverse thrust. we seemed to skid on forever - it must have been one very long runway.

flying back from europe with aeroflot - a very drunk VIP with a chest full of medals demanded we divert to moscow and then stormed into the cabin to direct the pilots for the remainder of the flight in spite of the fact he could barely stand upright he was so drunk. very happy when we safely landed in moscow.

Lapun says:

09:47am | 14/11/11

RICHARD:  Having spent 37 years (to 2001) flying around PNG I couldn’y identify the strip in the photo (Tapini?), but I could recognise the description of Kundiawa (Chimbu) where from the view of those you have farewelled at the top of the strip, you disappear totally for 2 minutes until you rise up into sight again to face the range in front of you.  It remains the same now, as do Wau and a few others.
STEVE:  What do you reckon - Tapini?  Sorry forgot the new name.

Kate says:

10:16am | 14/11/11

My family once flew in a four-seater light plane from Noosa airport to Great Keppel Island in Queensland. My sister and I were too young to care, but my mum is an extremely nervous flyer and was already freaking out.
The pilot got on, looked at our boarding passes and realised he had the same surname as us. He spent the rest of the (rather bumpy) flight making comments about how “funny” it would be if we crashed and died, and the news reports might think we were related to him. After we landed, my dad’s hand was bleeding thanks to Mum digging her nails into it.

I also had a really turbulent flight from Auckland to Melbourne, we started coming in for a landing and I was so relieved it was almost over - until the pilot overshot the runway, banked up sharply and flew around Melbourne in bumpy circles for roughly half an hour. Half the plane were running back and forth to the toilets or filling their sick bags.

Micky G says:

01:44pm | 14/11/11

I had a fire fighter friend of my Father’s take us up in a Cessna 172 from Archerfield in Brisbane when I was younger. He planned the flight for weeks, then the night before the flight he was up all night fighting a blaze at the local industrial complex. He didnt want to let us down so he decides to take us up anyway, despite having no sleep. I was in the front right seat with him and enjoying the ride. After 45 minutes he brings us back and tells me to look out for traffic. As we are approaching the airfield I point out a plane nearby and he tells me not to bother him. I look over and he’s looking awfully tired and tense. We cross the threshold of the runway at about 1000 feet instead of 100. He commits regardless and shoves the yoke forward and levels off over the runway going WAY too fast. I hear Dad in the back say “gee that was a smooth landing”. I look out the window and notice the wheels arent turning. Uh oh, we are still 3 feet off the ground. He shoves the yoke forward again and we hammer the runway hard and skid off the right hand side.He throttles back, but dirt and gravel is getting thrown into the window as it gets kicked up by the starboard wheel running in the dirt off the edge. We are still going too fast so he gets us back on the runway and changes his mind and opens the throttle again. I’m in the front thinking “Im pretty sure you arent supposed to change your mind”...we are barrelling down the runway trying to get the nose up and its not coming and the trees are getting closer, so he closes the throttle again and gets on the brakes. We run right to the end of the runway past the last turn off and stop about 10 meters from some trees. I hear the air traffic control in the headphones go “we thought you were doing a touch and go”...the pilot says “so did I for a minute there”...  we havent been back for another ride…

DJ Byrne says:

02:39pm | 14/11/11

In 1989 or 90 my brother and I, together with one of our mates wanted to go to the Cloncurry B&S Ball. We were living in Innisfail at the time. One of us had the bright idea to charter a plane. Being pretty skint and unable to afford to pay for a plane and a real pilot we asked a ‘friend’ who had a private licence, to fly us out and back. He was happy to oblige as he had friends in Mt Isa who he would visit while we were in Cloncurry at the B&S.

On the return journey, the three of us were horribly hung-over. The merciless pilot who enjoyed playing practical jokes on people did a few dive-bombs in the plane as a joke to try to make us throw up. His prank worked on me, and I spewed everywhere. There were no sick bags to vomit into - only a urinal bag with a sponge inside which wasn’t very conducive to being used as a chunderbag. The stench was so bad in the tiny cabin that no-one else could stand it, so we decided to land at an “airstrip” on a cattle station in the middle of nowhere. An extremely rough landing on ground strewn with rocks bigger than a man’s clenched fist). Somehow we managed to stop as the prop was trimming the branches of the shrubs before a very large stand of trees.

After a clean-up operation we were on our way again. Now I don’t know much about flying, but I thought the sensible thing would be to take off toward the clear end of the airstrip - not towards the aforementioned large stand of trees. Perhaps the wind was blowing the wrong way for a sensible take off like that. Either way, we barely, and I mean barely, cleared the trees as we took off, bound for Innisfail.

We were back in the air, homeward bound, and all seemed to be going well until the engine cut out. Thinking that it was another of the pilot’s practical jokes, one of us said words to the effect of “Good one, you’re not going to trick us again”.

He replied with something like “No, I’m not pulling your leg this time. We just ran out of fuel in the right hand tank. No problems” he reassured us, “I’ll just flick over to the left-hand tank”. Well he switched over to the left hand tank, and then realised that it was almost empty too! By this time we were approaching the dense rainforest of the Great Dividing Range. Already I was sh!tting myself, as memories came flooding back of friends who disappeared, never to be found, when their plane presumably crashed into the scrub some years before.

The pilot decided to divert to Tully because he didn’t think we would make it to Innisfail. He radioed Cairns control tower and informed them that we were diverting to Tully because we were low on fuel. I felt like ripping his headset off and saying to the control tower: “Low on fuel?! Bullshit! We ran out 5 minutes ago!”

The pilot had already squeezed the last few drops out of the fuel tanks by making the mix extremely lean. We were gliding along towards Tully, losing altitude all the time, and the densely rainforested mountains got closer and closer. We glided through the valley beside Mt Tyson and finally cleared the scrub. By this time I thought any of the cane paddocks would be a fine place to put down, but the pilot, with more front than Grace Bros (and who was, by now sweating profusely and shaking), decided that it would be worth trying to land at the Tully airstrip.

I could see people on the ground looking up at us and pointing at the silent plane. We didn’t have much altitude left, but we lost what little we had doing a left bank to land on the runway. We just, and I mean just, cleared the barbed wire fence that separated the paddock from the airport, and we did a perfect landing on the grass leading up to the tarmac runway. Only problem now was that we had come to rest on the tarmac and another plane was trying to land! We had to jump out quickly and push the bloody thing up the runway to the hangar so that the other plane could land (and so we could refuel).

Naturally, we kissed the ground as soon as we got out alive. Our mate refused to get back in the refuelled plane for the trip to Innisfail, but my brother and I wore him down. “When have you ever had this much adventure in your life, ‘Berto?”, we pleaded.

On to Innisfail and another perfect landing. Our pilot had really got the hang of landing by now. He covered up the event with the authorities by claiming it was caused by “carby icing”. The three of us passengers were sworn to secrecy about the real cause of the problem, which was the fact that he had either forgotten to refuel in Mt Isa, or had forgotten to include the Cloncurry-Mt Isa-Cloncurry leg in his calculations. Either way, I’m just happy to be alive.

Ken says:

04:39pm | 14/11/11

My first flight was at night, out of Tokio.  Soon after take off, I opened the curtains and saw flames coming from the engine.  A dreadful panic feeling, until the air hostess assured me that it was normal for that type of aircraft.

Utopia Boy says:

05:27pm | 14/11/11

Lima - Cusco on Lan Peru. The landing at Cusco was extremely rough due to turbulence. The airport is located in a narrow valley high in the mountains and funnels the wind through. The plane was being buffeted all over the place and we even had to make a second approach. Finally, we landed with an almighty thump. It was definitely the harshest landing I’ve ever had.
After the landing an older American gent (circa 60 years) leaned over across the aisle and asked me “How do you rate the landing?”
I replied “Six out of ten.”
He looked at me and said dryly “I give it a ten. Any time you land and are still alive, it’s a ten.”
24 hours before I’d been through LAX and was under the impression Americans didn’t have a sense of humor. I cracked up laughing and bought him a beer at our hotel that night.