Flight Radar obsessed, tell me flight stories.

[sendwineandastraw]

Since last week when we were all following TUI’s flight with the engine issues, I have discovered the Flight Radar app and have become really in invested at looking at all the planes and journeys that are passing also the different sqauks they send out the decisions the pilots make off the back of them...

I’ve always had a bit of a geeky interest in planes since I was little and still can’t quite get my head round the logistics of keeping something so big and heavy up in the sky.

Though never had a particularly bad flight (other than a bit of turbulence) does anyone else have a flight story where things felt a bit hairy?

Shamelessly following

I landed into JFK during a thunderstorm. Seeing the Statue of Liberty lit up in a flash of lightning was amazing. The plane being hit was a bit more nerve-wracking, but I was 19 and fearless.

I've also been on a plane that swerved off the runway after landing. (Actually the day after the lightning one...). Again, being 19 and fearless probably helped!

I fly a lot. One particularly memorable flight was a tiny plane coming back from Eindhoven where we had 3 failed takeoffs due to a dodgy engine. By the time they were coming back round for a crack at take off 4 people were breaking down. We never did take off.
Another time I was coming back from the US, and in my usual seat right at the back I could hear the crew chatting in the galley as to how it was going to be really rough and the captain had told them that all service had to be done within the first hour and then everything locked down tight. They weren't joking. For the 11 hours after that it was the worst prolonged turbulence I've ever experienced and there was a lot of screaming, vomiting and crying going on.
I've done a few aborted landings, one where we had to circle for a bit as the landing gear needed persuading down, but nothing more exciting really. A colleague had the full emergency landing where they make you take your shoes off, practice the brace position, runway with foam on it having been diverted to the Boeing facility in Seattle from another US airport, and she said people were calmer during that than turbulence as they had to focus.