Any good/bad aviation experiences anyone?

[Embraer]

Well, if you dont already know, im a H-U-G-E aviation freak! I love everything about it. And right now, im on vacation in Florida for my uncles wedding. We flew Delta (Delta/Northwest now actually:educate:, lol) into Fort Meyers airport, and it was absolutely beautiful! The scenery was amazing, the beaches, the boats, the waves, its just a whole different perspective 10,000FT in the air. I will be sure to take some pics on the departing flight.

Anyways! (sorry, im rambling) On the way down here I overheard a bunch of old ladies talking about how they had some 'Unbelievably terrible!' experience w/ Delta (The one that was complaining was in a wheel chair, and it involved something about a Delta person leaving them by the runway (wtf?) for like 20 minutes, I couldnt hear it that well:dunno And the poor flight attendant was being yelled out (or at least as much as an 80 some year old can yell) about how this is the, and I quote-"This was horrible! I will never fly this god da*n airline again! How could you fools do something like this to a little old lady like me!?" And yes, this frail old lady was cursing like a sailor! I felt really bad for the poor little flight attendant, who obviously had no control over what happened to these ladies.

So, I guess the point of all this is- Has anyone ever had a remember able experience while flying whether its good/bad?

Anything, like bad turbulence, super long delays on the ground, scary thing, etc. Please, share!

 

[Verscha]

Well, on the flight to Crete, I noticed that there was duct tape on one of the windows and that the plane decor looked awfully... 80s. When we stepped outside the thing when we landed, we noticed that it was in pretty rough shape on the exterior, too.

 

[Valentine]

I was in a plane in Memphis, sitting, waiting for a storm to pass. After a short wait, the pilot came on and said that the tower had reopened the runways, but that he didn't like the way the weather still looked, so he was going to wait a bit longer. A general consensus went through the plane, that if the pilot didn't like the weather we were fine with that, and he could take off when he was happy with the weather.

 

[juriev]

I fly fairly often (five or so times a year.) and I randomly fly different airlines (whichever has the best price to my destination.) I have had good with some and bad with some, almost all are inconsistant, for example I've had good flights on United and bad on United, and in my opinion I have few preferences. The worst by far is US Airways, bad seats, bad service, old planes, the list goes on and on. My favorite so far is Frotier, but I've only flown them once, so I can't give a true review on them.

 

[MysteriousVisitor]

I was on a flight from Istanbul to Izmir when I was in turkey. Oh my god, I thought I was going to die. It was one of those really old model DC-9s. The thing looked like it would fall apart if I sat the wrong way. I was later told that this airline did not have the greatest safety record, and was banned in the EU for a time. But I didn't die, so I'm happy

 

[dprdinky]

One of the most eventful experiences flying was while in Bolivia one summer. We flew out of La Paz - (airport elevation was 13,500 ft) down into the Amazon jungle. Before leaving La Paz the told us the schedule would take us into Trinidad and then on into Riberalta the same day. Well before we landed in Trinidad, several on the flight was saying that we wouldn't be flying on anytime soon when we got there. Sure enough, we waited for most of the day for the plane to even arrive to take us on. We noticed that there were no landing lights or search light even near the airport. So discovered that there was no way we'd fly anywhere after in got dark.

Luckily there were some official businessmen who were from the World Bank down there determining the need to provide a grant to build a better airport in Trinidad. If not for them we wouldn't have had access to our luggage. Then took a taxi - on the back of a Honda Scooter with luggage in between us and the driver to town where we spent the night and then were back out to the airport by 6 am and took off with a full load and a Fairchild airplane - wings and propellers above the body of the plane - 26 passengers.

Come to find out several others had been on this same route before and because it's such an outpost, people have had to wait several days before they had a full plane to continue on their journey. Not much connecting roads between cities and towns out there in the jungle.

 

[Fire2box]

All of my flights have been smooth. Though the last time I flew there was a few rain clouds but nothing bad that could really send the plane down. We also went though them and above them the rest of the way which I guess was a good idea. I would rather fly then any other means of transportation. Its the fastest, the safest and the most fun.

I been on at least 6 different planes and never got turbulence. Yet this past summer at the start of June I was in a rollover car accident on a freeway and thank god I wasn't hurt really asides for the whiplash that got fixed in two visits to the doctors. So yeah I prefer flying.
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This is your captain speaking if for some reason this plane crashes the chances of survival is minimal and the chances of you dying on impact is very high. So sit back and enjoy the crash and take pleasure that you won't feel much pain at all unlike many other ways you can die in this world. It helps if you try and knock yourself out before we crash however. Thank you and have a great afterlife and thanks for flying the crappy ass airline.

Oh and if you got a MP3 I suggest listening to "its the end of the world as we know" it by REM.

 

[Peachy]

I remember waiting for my flight back home at Stansted airport back in 2004. Time went on and on and I watched all the other airplanes getting loaded with passengers and being pushed away from the terminal, just my flight wouldn't be called. A few minutes later, I noticed a dozen fire engines surrounding the only aircraft left at the terminal...and then saw a huge puddle underneath the plane! Now...my flight hadn't borded, only airplane left with huge puddle underneath - didn't take many brains to figure out the plane for my flight had a fuel leak.
Worse yet: Once the fire engines had left, the pilot and a few mechanics tried to fix the plane. I saw one of the guys working on something with a garden hand saw - something you can pick up at home depot for 99 cents! Real professionals there!
Thank God the flight was canceled altogether and everyone was crammed into the next flight 4 hours later. Unfortunately, back then, EU law didn't call for any financial compensation for a delay of 4 hours. Nowadays, I'd get a sizable chunk of money for the delay!

Peachy

 

[Martin]

Worst: 5 hours on a runway waiting (don't ask me why (or where for that matter) because I don't know) (more detailed circumstances)

 

[Embraer]

I remember waiting for my flight back home at Stansted airport back in 2004. Time went on and on and I watched all the other airplanes getting loaded with passengers and being pushed away from the terminal, just my flight wouldn't be called. A few minutes later, I noticed a dozen fire engines surrounding the only aircraft left at the terminal...and then saw a huge puddle underneath the plane! Now...my flight hadn't borded, only airplane left with huge puddle underneath - didn't take many brains to figure out the plane for my flight had a fuel leak.
Worse yet: Once the fire engines had left, the pilot and a few mechanics tried to fix the plane. I saw one of the guys working on something with a garden hand saw - something you can pick up at home depot for 99 cents! Real professionals there!
Thank God the flight was canceled altogether and everyone was crammed into the next flight 4 hours later. Unfortunately, back then, EU law didn't call for any financial compensation for a delay of 4 hours. Nowadays, I'd get a sizable chunk of money for the delay!

Peachy

Wait, you get payed $$$ if you have a delay longer than 4 hours!? Now thats what I call compensationg! Why dont we do that?

 

[Peachy]

Wait, you get payed $$$ if you have a delay longer than 4 hours!? Now thats what I call compensationg! Why dont we do that?

Well, my flight was ultimately canceled and I was rebooked to a flight 4 hours later. According to EU regulation, the airline would be liable to pay for flights canceled for reasons "within the airline's control". Obviously, a broken plane is within the airline's control, so in my case (flight <1,500 km and delays over 2 hours) would have resulted in a compensation of 250 EUR per person plus free drinks/meals.
Unfortunately, the new rules weren't implemented until about 7 months later.
Edit: HerE's the link to the EU press release: http://europa.eu/rapid/pressRelease...&format=PDF&aged=1&language=EN&guiLanguage=en

Peachy

 

[Pojo]

I've never flown :3

 

[Peachy]

I've never flown :3

Cows don't have wings! :tongueout:

 

[Butterfly Mage]

Wheb I was younger and thinner, I dlew a hang glider exactly 100 times over a 4 year period. I had 97 successes and three spectacular failures.

 

[Valentine]

Wait, you get payed $$$ if you have a delay longer than 4 hours!? Now thats what I call compensationg! Why dont we do that?

You want compensation, yet even these minimal "rights" have been overturned.
Appeals court overturns passenger bill of rights - News

 

[ballucanb]

The only places I have ever been on a plane has been on local flights, and the only planes I have ever flown in were prop driven.

The first time was at the local airport for the grand opening of the new terminal bilding, it cost me 5 bucks for a 20 min flight around the valley I live in, I was about 10 and had to borrow money off my younger brother to do it.

I was on cloud nine for weeks after that, I was always airplane happy as a kid.

 

[MrSiltStrider]

Back in 2005, I was flying with my family from Australia to the Netherlands via Japan. When we took off for the Japan-Netherlands leg we were nearing sunset, and since we were flying pretty much due-west, we ended up with a sunset that lasted for about 6 hours. Seeing the glacial landscape bathed in (very) gradually changing shades of gold, orange, pink, and red was utterly amazing. There was also some decent cloud cover from time to time, so we got to see vast fields of fire stretch out beneath us.

The return trip, however, was not quite as pleasant. Bad weather at Tokyo Narita airport meant that instead of going Amsterdam-Tokyo-Cairns, it became Amsterdam Schiphol-London Heathrow-Osaka International-Osaka Kansai-Cairns. Later we learned that other people from our flight just got put into the airport hotel at Schiphol, but for some insane reason our check-in attendant had decided that we would be flying that night no matter what.

So we arrive at Heathrow with a £10 voucher to spend at any of the restaurants. Only it's 9PM, so the only places still open are priced such that the £10 voucher will fill up roughly 0.8 people. We supplement the frankly foul food with some of our own, then set off for Osaka. After a lengthy bus ride from one terminal to another, we reach the hotel at about 23:40, 10 minutes after the restaurant has closed, meaning we don't get our free dinner, and the vending machines only cell cigarettes and booze. Fortunately we've still got our Kellogg's K-Time Muffin Bars (carried all the way from Australia and back), and some "health bars" we got from an aunt, so we don't go completely hungry.

We ask the receptionist if she speaks english, to which she replies "Yes". We emphatically (and repeatedly) ask for none-smoking rooms, to which she replies "yes", and she hands us our keys. We arrive at our rooms, only to find that they absolutely reek of cigarette smoke. We head back to the receptionist, and tell her she's given us smoking rooms instead of none-smoking, to which she replies "yes, yes, smoking, yes". Roughly 4 people later, we finally speak to someone that has a rudimentary grasp of the english language, and we get the rooms we'd asked for (which, incidentally, were located pretty much adjacent to a runway. We were not aware of that fact until the next morning, when we opened a curtain to see a plane landing about 50 metres away. Talk about double glazing!).

The next day it's a short domestic flight to Kansai (we got some great views of Osaka city), followed by a 10 hour wait in the terminal. When we finally get home, the end result is that we took roughly two hours longer than the people that had just stayed in Amsterdam for an extra night.

 

[Embraer]

You want compensation, yet even these minimal "rights" have been overturned.
Appeals court overturns passenger bill of rights - News

Yea, I definately think that passengers deserve more protection. Did anyone hear about the whole JetBlue incident? I mean, wow! Something needs to be done on a federal level, so that it doesnt become commonplace for the passengers to be waiting for 3+ hours.

 

[BromeTeks]

Well, two (or maybe three, Not entirely sure) summers ago, I had a rather sucky experience.

My original flight plan was a three leg journey from San Louis Obispo (where My Grandparents live) to LAX, from LAX to Chicago O'Hare, and From O'Hare to Madison, Home by 6 PM.

Here's what actually happened. The flight to LAX was Cancelled (weather I think), So we sit in SLO's tiny terminal for an extra hour or two waiting for a redirect. After the wait, We get a new plan: SLO to San Francisco to Minneapolis to Madison.

We board the plane on SLO's Run Way, then sit for another half hour because of Foggy weather in San Francisco meant that they could only handle two or three planes in the air at a time. Then we finally get on our way to San Francisco, where we have to enter a holding patern for another half hour because of some problem on the ground. Then when we finally land, we get to our gate in San Francisco International Airport and wait another two and a half hours (but we were luckily right next to a good sandwhich vendor, which made for a tasty lunch)

Then on the longest leg of the journey, there was a kid two rows up crying almost the entire trip. We arrived in Minneapolis without incident, but had to wait another hour in their terminal for our flight.

The last leg wasn't so bad, we got the frontmost row in the buisness class, which meant extra leg room = good good. We finally arrived in Madison around midnight, picked up our baggage, and drove home.

Could've been worse, but it still sucked.

 

[RedApple]

I was on a flight from Istanbul to Izmir when I was in turkey. Oh my god, I thought I was going to die. It was one of those really old model DC-9s. The thing looked like it would fall apart if I sat the wrong way. I was later told that this airline did not have the greatest safety record, and was banned in the EU for a time. But I didn't die, so I'm happy

Hmm.. Wouldn't be Onur Air by any chance would it?

As a GA pilot, what others class as bad I class as good ha.. For example, severe turbulence is what I would class as a fantastic flight when others would class it as a horrible experience they never want to repeat! - A bad flight for me is when everything runs like clockwork and theres not one slight bump of turbulence.

Coming back from Orlando 2 years ago, severe turbulence pretty much from takeoff to landing, 150 knot tailwind though so it got us home in record time, 6 hours 20 minutes - Should have taken about 8 hours. Thunder and lightening, constant airpockets and unsteady climbs going on - I think there was only me and the pilots that actually enjoyed that flight!

I shouldn't admit to this, but as a pilot I've had a few bad experiences which have been caused by me.. Just today, it was fairly windy for a PA28 and I got a huge gust of strong wind about 200ft above the ground, which instantly caused the right wing to drop significantly - A sloppy reaction from me resulted in a total mishandled approach and a poorly executed go around. Safe, but not in any way good! - But as my instructor said when I got back on the ground, if I managed to sort it out and climb out without a problem then it's a job well done.. Shame I don't share the same opinion haha.

I'm a mega avation geek

If anyone has any questions, please please please ask. I like sharing my geeky knowledge haha!