Bad Airline Experiences

Going to expand on another thread. If you have had a bad experience with any airline, be it delay, or something else, write it down here.

I'll let some other guys go first before I share mine.

An AA flight I took from Martinque to San Juan PR.

The pilots began their takeoff run before the tower gave them permission. They had to abort the takeoff and go back to the gate and explain themselves.

Dumbshits!!!!

Had a pilot roll over his chalks and get them wrapped up in the landing gear at Pristina Airport in Kosovo in 2002. They did not have one qualified at the airport to fix it. We wanted to go home, so we volunteered to go out there and fix it ourselves. They would not let us....

While on an AA flight from Frankfurt, Germany to Dallas, TX in 1994 the 767 quickly and dramatically lose altitude due to a Tornado and T-Storms that came up in the vicinity. Stuardess broke an arm when she hit the ceiling of the aircraft. Pilot had to make an emergency landing in Tulsa, OK. We were taken into underground Tornado Shelters, which then flooded.

While on a Delta Flight from Stuttgart, Germany to Atlanta, GA in 1991, had the nose while collapse on the 767 while taxiing to the runway. A stuardess was slightly hurt.

Coming back off TAD while in the Navy, the geniuses at Personnel booked me a flight on AA (I believe it was) on the same date that the WIDELY PUBLICIZED pilot's strike started. This thing had been in the works for months. I show up, ready to catch a flight, and am confronted by a picket line of pilots complaining that they don't get paid enough. Complaining to an E-5. I nearly decked a guy.

waited 12 hours in Roma's airport for a 727 Royal Jordanian piece of S*** in 1980's. what a bunch of loons and the stupid craft vibrated all the way home, one of the electrical base boxes disconnected and fell on my wife's left foot as she was peering out the window. Not wanting to create an international incident I remained more calm than usual ........

Okay, I'll guess I'll tell mine.

Last summer in '08, Foch and were went on a school trip to Italy. We had sent the check in for EF(company that sponsered the trip). Unfortunately, since we have the same birth date. EF thought we were the same person and cancelled our tickets. By the time we had the problem solved, it was too late to be on the same flight as the rest of the group, so we had to book another flight with one of the chaperones, since we would've gotten lost. On the day of our flight, we were informed that it was cancelled, as their were not enough people for the flight. Our chaperone had to talk to the airline to get another flight for an hour while we drove to Logan. This, of course, wasn't helped by the transmission of the minivan going out.

The only other hassle on the flight to Milan was that it wasn't direct. We had to take a plane to La Guardia, then Dulles, then Frankfurt, then Milan.

The way back went okay until we got to Dulles. There, the flight was delayed for several hours. Then, it was cancelled as we were in the seats. I think everybody on the flight could hear the F-bomb I dropped. We had to stay in a hotel for a night before leaving on a flight to Bradley, where we found out our luggage was sent to Logan.

So for being so long, but it was a pain in the @ss.

I've never even experienced real turbulence on an airline flight...

I was on a ferry that ran aground in the fog, tho.

JL

It didn't happen to me but my brother had a nasty moment leaving Chicago. The plane took off normally and had just reached the cruise altitude when the pilot announced that he apologised but there was a slight technical problem and they would have to return to Chicago. He also asked everyone to return to their seats and fasten their belts. The aircrew checked that this had been done and returned to their seats rather faster than normal and as soon as they were strapped in the 757 went into the steepest diving turn he could imagine, which definately got everyones attention.
On landing the pilot apologised but they had detected a slow depressurisation and he had to get to a safe altitude as quickly as he could.

pWell, here's mine. Had to take a trip for some training for work from Minneapolis to Chicago. Being December you have to keep an eye on the weather in the Midwest.
The evening before the flight the news was constantly going on about a large Winter storm moving into the area. Got up early the morning of the flight and it was snowing quite a bit so I called to verify the flight was still on, it was.
Got in the plane and we were delayed due to a frozen engine. Finally got that cleared up and took off. Came into O'Hare in Chicago and it was snowing like a SOB, looked down at the runway and it was a sheet of snow and ice with snow moving equipement running everywhere. I thought to myself "self, we aren't going to land on that are we"
Well, we landed, but it seemed we were not slowing down at all, even with all the breaking the pilot was doing. Then the engines kicked into high to help slow the plane, still not slowing down much, . Then the plane went into a pretty drastic left turn and started to bouce around, finally we stopped. Everyone was suprisingly calm, but the girl behing me started to rock her seat back and forth as it was loose at the floor. Said she had not said anythign back in Minneapolis about it as she did not want to delay the flight any more.

Well, spent the next hour or so on the plane, they had to gather the Police and Fire Dept. to make tow rows on each side of the stairs as we exited and got into buses to take us to the terminal. I looked at the end of the runway and we were about 100 yards or so from the snow fences at the end of the runway and the plane itself was buried in snow. Pilot came by us a bit later and did not appear to be in a very good mood.

That one made National News back in 2000. Sun Coiuntry Airlines.
Fun trip.

Mine's not really bad, but kinda funny.

We were flying from Flordia into Denver International, which has pretty bad updrafts and winds similar to that. Also there was really bad turbelence shaking up the plane.

When we were making the landing approach the pilot didn't bring his nose high enough to get a good angle of attack on the runway, so we were alot more level than we should have been. Right before the wheels touched the ground a gust of wind or something moved the plane and the pilot slammed it down hard on the runway.

All the soda in the back of the plane exploded because it had been shaken up during the turbulence and everybody in the back rows including me and my brother sitting in the very back row were sprayed with soda that was shaken up and exploded everywhere. So we were pretty sticky, plus I bit my tongue pretty hard. Of course the flight attendents got the worst of it because they were right near all the soda and had to clean up the mess.

Not scary, but funny.

Northwest Airlines flight out of Reagan National, Washington DC headed to Minneapolis. I'm sitting in front class and a guy gets on the plane cussing up a storm and sits in the row right behind me. Looks like he's hot under the collar about his flight connections or somesuch. He's being rude to the flight attendants and they politely ask him to not use profanity. On and on this Ahole goes. About this time, the cockpit door opens and a huge 6'8" black pilot slowly marches to his row and bends down real close to his ear and says in a mocking 'gangsta lingo'.

"Knock it off, Motherf#cker, or I'm gonna cutchya"

And then in perfect english with no inflection, he says "That's what you expected me to say, right?"

Never heard another peep out of that guy.

Thats great Matt, I love it....

I had so many bad moments on airplanes, Ive just about lost count....

Had a front gear collapse on landing into Sigonella, had an engine disintegrate during flight on the way to Orlando, engine ingested an Albatross in Greece, and got shot down in Somolia while strapped into the back of a CH-47...

Matt

I have had a couple of experiences mainly with turbulence and connections and nothing really special. On quite a few long haul flights I've had some pretty bad turbulence including clear air turbulence which is always fun. Also had some interesting experiences including one whilst flying from Aberdeen to Amsterdam on KLM and the pilot kept revving and derevving the engines which was not a comfortable experience as the engines were full power one instance and then seemingly idle the next. Really disconcerting.

Aeroflot was an interesting experience but not really dangerous. The usual seatbelts not working and luggage lockers not locking etc. Also entered the aircraft through a cloakroom in the area under the aircraft were the luggage goes.

There was another experience when I was flying from Kilimanjaro to Zanzibar in a small plane (which couldn't clear the height of Kilimanjaro (~19000ft/5885m). I was seating in the right seat (co pilot) as the plane was full. Pilot came over the intercom saying that you could now see Kilimanjaro over the right wing and it wasn't there it was off the left wing .

Delays I have always had fun with and don't enjoy. The worst was probably one time flying from Edinburgh to Paris and then with a connection to Brittany. First off my connection in Paris was delayed and then cancelled as the pilots had decided they didn't want to fly anywhere that day (typical French). So I spent an hour or two arranging with the airline for a different flight in my relatively limited French. Eventually got it changed when that flight was delayed or cancelled as well (I can't remember which) so went to talk over them again and rearranged my flight again this time it involved me going over to Orly (I was at CDG). So off I went, got on the coach and an hour later arrived at Orly where I found out my flight there was delayed by 2 hours or so. So eventually after around 10 hours at CDG and 2 hours at Orly I arrived at my destination around 13 hours after I should of and haven't flown Air France since...

The final story doesn't involve me but it was a story my dad told from when he was working with down in Jo'burg. One of the contractors had been on a flight to Mozambique when both engines failed on the aircraft. At which point the pilot calmly said (apparently) "The air conditioning units have failed". Not sure what happened after that but that seems pretty hairy.

Since we have started using non airline stories as well, here goes some of my helo experiences...

Injested about 100 different birds on about 100 different flights.

Had about 10 different birds on different flights crash through the front windscreen.

Had 5 rockets (3 on the right, 2 on the left) fired at me at the same time.

Had mortars fired at me in flight...

Lost both engines on take off.

Mortars Adler?

Well certainly never have been shot down, thanks be to God!

I'm lucky I guess in that I really didn't have too many 'scary' moments in all my flying (I've flown a couple of million miles over the years and still have about 750,000 frequent flier miles in my account). Only things that ever occurred that were 'scary' was:

NWA 757 rejected takeoff in SEA. Apparently another plane crossed our runway. We just tried it again.

NWA A320 compressor stall during taxi-in (makes a HUGE bang and flames shoot out from under the wing). I happened to recognize what it was, so once I got over the initial bang it wasn't really scary at all.

Had a TCAS maneuver during landing coming into Dallas during a thunderstorm. Didn't like that one.

Most all my experiences were just either funny or hellish nightmares due to delays. Especially in Minneapolis and Detroit.

Here's another one. Probably my most favorite.

At the old terminal at Reagan National, Washington DC...again. We had been delayed because a thunderstorm had blown through causing us to sit idle for about 3 or 4 hours in the terminal. Once the weather calmed down we started to board. Again, I'm in first class sitting by the window. The passenger sitting in the aisle seat comes and sits down. It's about 11:00 at night, if I recall correctly and it is still raining pretty good outside.

The guy sitting next to me taps me to get my attention. I turn and he points to the ceiling. There is a steady drip (about twice a second) of water coming from a ceiling panel and puddling on the floor. He says "that doesn't look good". I ignore it.

About this time the pilot comes out from the cockpit with a pissed off look on his face. He goes to the overhead bin and begins to grap his luggage. My seatmate says, "Excuse me. Should I be worried about that?" pointing to the water dripping into the puddle on the floor.

The pilot responds, "Not unless it gets above your head".

Needless to say, the pilot grabbed his $hit and walked off the plane. Our flight was canceled.

Never liked Northwest airlines Matt there is just something ,
Any how flying into Toronto on Eastern Provincial B737 at about 1700hr which is abusy time the pilots decides to speak and he says'
"ATC is giving him the gears and we will be landing about 10 minutes late because of traffic , as usual I'm looking out the window and see about 7 heavies all jockying for position so we finally land about 10 minutes late but the landing included 3 bounces. So as I'm disembarking and being a smartass ATC I ask the pilot which bounce was his official downtime ,

Vassili Zaitzev said:

Mortars Adler?

Click to expand...

Yeah I had about a half a dozen mortars fired at our aircraft. They fortunately were terrible at aiming at a moving object!

pbfoot said:

So as I'm disembarking and being a smartass ATC I ask the pilot which bounce was his official downtime ,

Click to expand...

We used to do that as well. If someone was doing a roll on landing and bounced a bunch of times, we would record in the flight log 10 landings for him.

Good thing they missed. Though, I can't understand why they would use mortars to shoot at a heli.

Lotta dumb ass bad guys out there Vassilli...

Must be nice to ride in first class Matt.... I got kinda used to findin a cozy mail bag to sleep on, in no class of course.......