Have you ever been on a scary turbulent flight?

[AbsentmindedWoman]

I'm curious what it was like? I've been on quite bumpy flights before, but the flight attendants always looked fine/ bored, so I wasn't worried and just kept watching whatever film. But I'm lucky as have no fear of flying in general, so perhaps easy for me to dismiss it.

Has anyone been on a really frightening flight where you were worried things might deteriorate? Did you get on a plane again after?

Yes - for lunches in the teeth by the empty seat lap belt.

Also experienced a fly by at Gatwick not turbulence but the most terrified I've ever been.

Yes- not like on that news report where stuff was flying around everywhere.

Staff and passengers all strapped in. Rollercoaster feeling sudden drops. I understood what white knuckle meant! Was about 20 mins. Not good.

I don't think anyone thought that we were in actual trouble but it was not pleasant.

Another time can't remember where overshot the runway and had to pull up sharply at the last second. Circled round and tried again. Yikes.

I still fly yes. I've never been that keen. I know the stats etc but it's just so unnatural you know? And I'm a science background!

@idontlikealdi

Yes - for lunches in the teeth by the empty seat lap belt.

Also experienced a fly by at Gatwick not turbulence but the most terrified I've ever been.

Punched in the teeth...

Yes many times as used to travel globally for work. The worst experience was coming into land in Edinburgh and the pilot aborted very late. Found out upon landing that an Easyjet plane had 'pulled' out in front of us. I was very thankful for a brilliant pilot that day.

Funnily enough I now hate flying but still do it, well did, pre-Covid.

I can’t help feeling that cabin crew could have done a bit more to inform us about what was happening, instead of letting us all think we were about to meet our maker

They were busy trying to save you from suffocating. But you bemoan them for not providing updates?

Fuck me.

OTOH I love going in helicopters and have had goes at flying them.

So none of it is logical.

But in the end although humans like to think we're rational actually we're not at all.

Another trans Atlantic night flight from New York to Heathrow with Virgin. Up to that point, I enjoyed flying, I have been nervous ever since. The turbulence lasted the whole flight, the cabin crew looked anxious and kept coming round to push our seat backs up if we reclined them the 20cm or so you get in economy. (Not really sure why). It was pretty much the only flight we've ever taken without our kids and I was convinced we wouldn't see them again (perhaps a little melodramatic).

I have some pills from my GP but now I just tuck into a few alcoholic drinks before I board which takes the edge off (and we've been fortunate enough to use airmiles and vouchers to upgrade to more spacious cabins). I'm probably one of the few passengers who dislikes the pilot being too honest about the likely weather conditions when they do the pre take-off announcement. I'd rather not know until it's imminent otherwise I spend the flight worrying about it!

Yes I flew back from South Africa on my own and we flew through an electrical storm. Never been so scared

Longest was a west coast transatlantic night flight when the captain had said it might be a bit bumpy, and I heard the cabin crew discussing that they had to do service really fast as the captain needed everything locked down and them in their seats by 90 minutes after takeoff. I went to sleep after takeoff (as usual) and then woke up at intervals as it was really, really turbulent all the way back to Heathrow. They didn't do breakfast, but I did sleep well as I quite like turbulence, but lots of random screaming was what woke me up.
Scariest turbulence though was on a quick hop from Dusseldorf to Birmingham which I've done a squillion times, beautiful clear day, all fine - and then we dropped like a stone. Never known anything like it, and there were some minor injuries. Clear air turbulence I think it was

Circling Heathrow coming back from a school trip (I was the teacher) The turbulence was insane, some of the students were terrified and asking if the plane was going down. They were genuinely petrified. I forced myself to look calm and nonchalantly told them it was perfectly normal when flying low/in a holding pattern. Clueless is this is true, but they were reassured. I’ll never forget their little horrified faces.

Going round and round in circles above birmingham airport in a big storm in the middle of the night - then 2 attempted landings. Second time we did make it down - sideways! I swear we nearly came to a stop tail first! Lots of swearing in different languages

Massive cheering though and clapping at the end. Sheer joy to be alive! And the captain coming on to say thank you

Coming in to land at Heathrow after a long haul flight one November, typical shit UK November weather, as the landing gear touched down for that first bump there was a huge gust that tipped the wing I was sat over down towards the tarmac. The pilot obviously decided we weren’t safe to land so we started to ascend again, but it wasn’t a nice steady climb like you get at takeoff. This was vertical, straight up like a rocket at a 90 degree angle. I’m terrified of flying anyway so this was my idea of hell. We had to circle in a holding pattern for an hour, the plane was completely silent, no one uttered a word until we landed. Even the pilot over the tannoy sounded relieved 😅

I was on a flight from Heathrow to Spain which shuddered as we climbed due to a faulty engine which the pilot then SWITCHED OFF. We
spent 90 minutes burning up fuel over the Channel before returning to London for an emergency landing. There was no announcement for the first 30 mins even though it was apparent that something had gone wrong. The air stewards looked terrified and never left their seats.

Lots of turbulent flights over the Atlantic in particular but that one took the biscuit.

5 years ago, Easter, family trip to Amsterdam from Southampton. A Named Storm howled around our house all night; you know, where the timbers in the attic creak. I was awake pretty much all night, checking the flight info to see, and pray, that our early flight had been postponed.

Nope.

So we get to the airport as it's still windy and blustery, but not as bad as it had been 2 hours earlier.

Off we go, and 5 minutes into the flight the captain tells us that it's great that the storm had passed through- but we're chasing it and are about to overtake it...

It's a short flight, 1hr 20? So you're barely up before you start to descend.

And, yes, we were being thrown all over the sky. Across the aisle from me was a young woman with her boyfriend; she was almost hysterical. He was grinning like a fool while gripping the armrests. I hate flying with a vengeance (tho in my past I have flown Aeroflot, China Airways, Indian Airways, and tiny planes in Africa) but I could see that a) we were in no danger, b) our progress was linear, and c) the cabin crew were calm, though buckled in. So I reached across and held her hand, which she gripped. And thus made me have to pretend to be Not Scared.

My ultra calm, non phased DH for the first time ever was throwing up, so not a huge help to me 😂

We landed, bouncing left and right down the runway.

We got to our Airbnb in central Amsterdam, and the DSs immediately turned on the TV- to see footage of our plane bouncing its way into land, on the local news!

It is quite common in some parts of the world, particularly on the old prop planes we used to fly on regularly. There were often flights with no cabin service at all due to turbulence. To be honest although I found the turbulence uncomfortable, it was some of the landings in high winds that put me off flying. A couple of times I have been in planes that ended up on the grass rather than the runway. Needless to say, I don't like flying anymore!

Took ages for them to announce that there was another plane on the runway so had to get back up quickly.....

I had a similar experience landing into Stansted once, except they never officially told us it was because of a plane. We were about to touch down when we almost vertically went back into the air but suddenly started to turn around so you could clearly see there was another plane on the runway about to take off.

I’ve watched every single episode of Air Crash Investigation (aka Mayday) and while not an expert on the matter, I was completely at ease knowing it wasn’t something terrible. I did not buy their version of ‘a small hazard on the runway’ though. You could clearly see the plane there. There is a fair amount of close calls due to a small ATC error. They almost never end up causing an incident, but we were lucky the pilot spotted the plane as soon as we got out of the clouds - seconds before touching down.

Every time I land in bad weather or poor visibility I am thankful to those amazing pilots who are able to control the plane and bring it to the ground safely in such bad conditions.

Landing in Amsterdam - weather had been awful and lots of flights were cancelled. We were one of the first flights to be allowed and as we landed we basically bounced due to the cross winds. I HATE flying and it was a work trip so I was alone. I was in bits and the whole plane including the crew clapped when we stopped.

My brother coming to Bristol (from Amsterdam again). Came in sideways. My dad had gone to pick him up and had got there early so had parked up and gone to the viewing area. He was a dreadful flyer and was watching as dbs plane came in. He was shaken up more than dbro.

Yes. Flying from Washington DC to London, the cabin crew were serving tea and coffee and we felt a little turbulence starting. The seat belt signs went on (luckily everyone around us seemed to obey straight away) and then we dropped very suddenly. Felt like a really long way down. The hot drink trolley near us hit the ceiling of the plane and we saw all the cabin crew squat down in a brace position with their hands upwards, protecting their heads. It was over as quickly as it happened and the crew got up and carried on as usual, but was a very scary few minutes. I was very happy when we eventually landed safely with no more trouble!

Landing in a thunderstorm into JFK in New York. Plane struck by lightning. Honestly... Seeing the whole city like that, including the Statue of Liberty, was amazing. The plane was all over the place but the view was amazing.

Flight from Greek islands to U.K. that lost an engine, had to turn back and the landing was bloody eerie as all power switched off (no idea why!), so it was pitch black apart from the floor running emergency lights and silent, I’m still fairly convinced they lost both and glided the thing in! I drank a lot that night.

At least mine had no smoke or fire and finished with as many engines working as it started.

I’ve just realised exactly how long ago that flight was as I remember lighting up on it in fear. Fuck me I am old if I remember smoking on a plane

Yep - the main one flying from London to Belfast, MASSIVE bang as we were coming into NI. Nervous looking crew. I don’t know what it was but I know they put out some rescue service into the bay near Hollywood so they must have been worried - but anyway we did land.

Other than that some hilariously air buffeted landings into Cork on little those little fat planes with propellers that used to run from Heathrow. Always seemed to take 3 attempts to land, which was always accompanied by mass clapping.

Had an emergency landing because they thought there was a bomb on board, this was maybe 20-25 years ago. So they made 3 or 4 announcements asking if anyone had lost their Walkman, followed by the captain saying we were landing at the nearest airport so if any hadn’t wanted to say before they HAD so now. Then we landed surrounded by fire engines and 4 soldiers in bomb gear came on board and we weren’t allowed off until they had left. Then we were practically thrown out of the plain and into a massive locked room. The whole time my dad was saying a cleaner must have left it, this is so annoying, they’ll not being to get the cleaner on thr phone to check cause they’ll have been working night shift and they’ll be asleep. Over and over. Once we got into the room he went white as a sheet and lay on the floor! Half the plain was trusting of this clearly military man who was cool
Calm and collected. Turns out he didn’t want me to die scared.

Wasn’t a bomb! I hasten add