If you have a fear of flying, stop reading now and run away as far as possible.
A group of pilots opened a thread on Reddit to discuss the scariest thing they ever experienced in the air that passengers were completely clueless about while it was going on.
Buckle up. Haha get it?
“All screens went dark…”
Pilot of an Airbus 320 here. Flying into a high elevation port in Asia 23000feet on descent had a TOTAL loss of electrical power. All screens went dark including standby instruments and emergency lighting. To put this into perspective airbus designed this aircraft with three electrical generators in addition to power supplied by batteries and the emergency generator. It is designed NEVER to be without electrical power even if BOTH the engines failed, you ran completely out of fuel and the auxiliary power unit is in operative. It’s a scenario pilots don’t even train for because its never suppose to happen.
After a partial recovery of our screens it was followed by 12 consecutive warnings associated with different onboard systems. We landed safely. Passengers didn’t notice a thing apart from the lights temporarily going out in the cabin.
The car analogy would be you driving at 100 km/hr on a highway and suddenly all your windows are covered up, you lose your speedometer and all electrical systems, there’s no response from the brake or accelerator. But you can still feel the car going.
“Not today. Think happy thoughts…”
My Dad is a pilot. For years he worked with a first officer known as the crazy guy in the company. He was creepy and often talking nonsense to himself.
One day, the guy seemed increasingly agitated whilst flying with Dad. My dad felt scared that the pilot would attempt to dive the plane into the ground. When the guy snapped out of it, he whispered, “Not today…think happy thoughts…not today…” Rest assured, the pilot no longer has his license.
“Sweat was pouring down my face…”
I was flying from Boston to Columbus Ohio, and in between us was a HUGE line of thunderstorms. In events like that, ATC will, in short, let you draw your own flight path to dodge the intense weather cells.
The plane has weather radar in the nose and gives us a visual map of red “spots” to avoid. The flight was 3 hours long and the Captain and I were spending every second of that time flying up, down, left, and right, dodging lightning and turbulence. Sweat was pouring down my face as I was using my best judgment on which direction to fly.
We must have done a good job because the flight attendant called up to the flight deck to say all the passengers were sound asleep!
“Never took another lesson…”
My mother got me a flight lesson for my birthday one year. It was at a small private airfield, and we were in a cessna skyhawk, don’t remember the number.
It was the instructor and I in front, and my mother in the backseat. We did a few touch-n-gos, some basic skills stuff, and then we were just chatting and enjoying the ride heading back to the home airport. It was very relaxed and I commented how unexpected easy it is to fly a plane.
The instructor had a bag of pretzels, which he then proceeded to start choking on. My mother became a basket case and was trying to Heimlich him from the back, which was ridiculously ineffective. I was basically leaning over and punching him in the back and the plane was descending rapidly.
He got the thing down finally as we were on the verge of stalling. Never took another lesson, and I fly as little as possible now.
“Not my finest moment…”
I was flying a B737NG. During climb, the cabin failed to pressurize. The second I heard the alarm sound I dived for the oxygen mask lightning quick. So quick that I elbowed the control column which disengaged the autopilot. Not my finest moment.
“He may not have been on the right frequency…”
Commercial pilot, not for the airlines, but fly small planes and had passengers with me.
Approached for landing at a familiar airport that was uncontrolled (no ATC). Pilots should announce their positions and intentions, but it isn’t required by law. I started announcing my position 10 miles out, and gave a lot of updates while I was inbound about my direction, position, and intention to land on a particular runway.
No one else was on the radio frequency, so I landed. Just after landing, another airplane takes off over my airplane going the opposite direction. I checked my frequency to verify I had the right frequency tuned. I did, and I chewed the guy out over the radio, and there was no response.
He may not have been on the right frequency.
“I literally expected every engine to cut out…”
Military pilot here. I was on a flight leaving Sigonella, Italy. Mount Etna had been erupting for the past 4 hours but ATC cleared the southern sector to be free of volcanic ash. We flew directly into an ash cloud at 2000 ft remaining in the volcanic ash cloud for over 20 minutes.
We had no luck climbing and punching out of the ash cloud so we ended up doing an emergency descent to 1000 ft to get out of clouds. We started experiencing engine malfunctions and had to secure 2 out of our 4 engines.
Unfortunately in Europe, ATC is not responsible for obstacle clearance and we received a vector that would have flown us straight into a mountain. We caught the error and navigated back to the field to conduct a 2-engine emergency landing without incident.
I literally expected every engine to cut out. I didn’t expect to make it out of that volcanic ash cloud alive; look up what volcanic ash does to jet engines.
“These runways cross one another…”
ATC (air traffic control) gave my plane clearance to take off on runway 35 (north) at airport GFK while simultaneously allowing for a similar aircraft to depart from runway 26 (west). These runways cross one another, we almost collided at 500 AGL (above ground level).
The other aircraft was so close I could make out the expression on the pilot’s face.
“Luckily, they remained calm…”
My mom is a flight attendant and has been since the early 1970’s. She was on a flight home last month, and as they touched down, the entire window on the co-pilot’s side of the flight deck popped out from it’s frame and fell away. Luckily they remained calm and neither pilot was injured.
“I received a bomb threat…”
I received a bomb threat while going on a long stretch over the ocean. Couldn’t do a single thing about it, except to wait it out and hope to god it wouldn’t come to pass. None of the passengers knew.