What's your worst flying experience?

Flying with BA.

Tried to change a flight a week before, after 4 phone calls and multiple assurances that it would be done and then still confirming this at the airport at a BA check-in counter they still managed to just not do anything which resulted in my ticket being invalid at the boarding gate.

I've never been so pissed at a company before in my life. I've just completely boycotted them now and will refuse any BA flight as they also never responded to my complaint and refund request for this and just silently closed my ticket after a few months.

🖕 BA I still hate you.
 
Lupus said:
Flight back from Durban. Coming into JHB international still at the time, massive storm over Edenvale, weather is intensely bad, as we start descending the plane just hits an air pocket and starts dropping like a stone. I'm looking out at the wing and it's flexing in ways you'd expect a yoga instructor to know how but never actually try.
The plane makes a sudden bump as if it's hit something and in doing so the whole fuselage sways left and right to the extent that the pilots door burst open and the noise of all the warning alarms and stuff was the only other noise we heard throughout the plane.
The air masks dropped, the pilot seemed to wrangle us out of whatever we were in and we steadied out, the stewardess ran to go close the door between, we all made a sigh of relief until the plane veered sharply to the right and swung back the other way almost as quickly, looking out the window I just saw dark thick black cloud. We recovered, eventually we are stable and continue to circle around the airport and than the news from the pilot we have to divert back to Durban as they cannot take us.
So we fly back to Durban, pilot never takes us above 15 000 feet, as we come into Durban what do we see a massive storm blowing in from the ocean, pilot goes over the intercom and just tells us to brace cause he has to land, we're out of fuel and we have no choice.
He comes in from the ocean somehow managing to keep the plane straight, I am peaking up now instead of bracing, looking out the window, we hit the tarmac, in the window there are just rainy reflections of emergency vehicles chasing the plane as we start aquaplaning on the runway, at one point it felt like the plane was facing the airport instead of the end of the runway. You could hear tyres trying to grip, pilot was trying to slow us down with reverse thrusters by the sounds of it as the engines were screaming.
Plane swings back to normal direction I don't see the terminals anymore and the water does seem to have subsided a bit, the plane comes too a sudden halt as if it got grip again and we started slowing down nicely. We stop finally, outside there are all the emergency vehicles waiting and they've got the stairs to come to the door. We file out, upon checking we were very very close to the end of the runway, just a few meters more and the plane would've hit the end of it.
Quickest I've ever seen pilot and crew go to the bar :), but come to think of it a lot of us did too. Airline arranged a flight back, a lot of the passengers didn't want to fly straight afterwards. I was like hey what's the worst that can happen, I rallied some of the people to get on the new plane, for that I was bumped to business class, sadly for only like a 15 minute flight. But on the way back second time mild turbulence was all we had.
Oddly enough the plane was dead quiet through it all, besides the plane noises and the groans and creaks, maybe some muffled prayers here or there, but not like the movies, no screaming at all.
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😵‍💫
Honestly, you've just made my mind up, no more flying for me unless I have to.

Not even going to post my weak-in-comparison nightmare
 
Brian_G said:
😵‍💫
Honestly, you've just made my mind up, no more flying for me unless I have to.

Not even going to post my weak-in-comparison nightmare
Click to expand...
I flew a few times after that still.
Flying is still far safer than driving, waaaay more horror stories of close shaves while driving.
 
A flight on Air France from Johannesburg to Paris (ten hours) where I was stuck between two insanely fat and stinking women, who turned out to be a mother and her daughter. Their blubber spilt over everywhere, and onto me. Since the flight was full, there was nowhere for me to go and another seat was out of the question.

I maintain that passengers should be forced to pass through a gate the width of the seat they will occupy. If your body touches the sides of the gate, you pay for an extra seat.
 
Lupus said:
I flew a few times after that still.
Flying is still far safer than driving, waaaay more horror stories of close shaves while driving.
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Sure, safer until you win the air-accident lotto...

And these days aircraft designs are too complex
 
goslowjoe said:
A flight on Air France from Johannesburg to Paris (ten hours) where I was stuck between two insanely fat and stinking women, who turned out to be a mother and her daughter. Their blubber spilt over everywhere, and onto me. Since the flight was full, there was nowhere for me to go and another seat was out of the question.

I maintain that passengers should be forced to pass through a gate the width of the seat they will occupy. If your body touches the sides of the gate, you pay for an extra seat.
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100% agreed. Fat asses must pay for the extra space they take up.
 
I have had a few

The worst was coming in for landing in a small Piper with windshear throwing us to the ground from a height of about 60 meters. We lost a wing and I had to get clean underwear.

The second worst was on the Angolan border in a DC4 where half the tail was blown off by a missile. We landed safely.

The third was being in a military helicopter with both engines flaming out. The landing was rather hairy but we all walked away.

Amongst the others were sitting on the jump seat of a Dakota when lightning struck a hole in the windscreen, looking after a stranger's baby while she slept all the way from Frankfurt to Jhb, landing in a thunderstorm at Jhb and getting on a plane with Dheli Belly in India and having to wait for a toilet to open every 20 minutes.

I have had many other flying experiences which were not so bad but a bit out of the ordinary. Amongst these was being winched down from a helicopter onto a ship at sea and landing in the bush in Angola at night with Unita soldiers lining the runway with burning paraffin torches to show the way.
 
Brian_G said:
😵‍💫
Honestly, you've just made my mind up, no more flying for me unless I have to.
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Sounds like only @Stonemason here has been in more actual danger than you are in any time you take a 2-hour drive up roughly any road in South Africa that's not in the Western Cape.
 
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Moosedrool said:
Customs in SA was also super confused at what a xbox original is when I landed. This is before the 360 and wasn’t super popular in SA.
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Try Dubai, with a bag full of cellular components, my step dad asked me to take them to a colleague there as they were for an expo on new alarms using 3g or something.
I stupidly packed them in my hand luggage, yeah guys with guns in military uniform, in a nice little room while another guy is asking questions I really didn't know of :-). Luckily I found the manual in one of the bags and they read it, laughed and let me go.
 
One of my first jobs, cheap ass boss, we flew Nationwide (if I remember correctly). Spent about 1 hour in the plane, while they were trying to start the engine, you know when guys tries to start a POS car, that sound.

Anyway, finally get in the air into a JHB thunderstorm. Notwisthanding the worst turbulence I ever experience. The cabin pressure was f@$#! I had a plastic water bottle that was empty, it was flattened by the cabin pressure, think car tyre driving over a water bottle. My ears were in pain.

Upon landing in Cape Town, they gave us a sugar free chocolate bar as an apology, which made it even worse.

Did not fly nationwide again.
 
saor said:
The flip-side is one of the best is when you get a row of seats all to yourself.
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We flew to CDG airport in Paris on 2 December and between the 30 odd passengers each had a row to themselves.

Flew back on the Christmas eve and the plane was packed to the brim. Luckily that was my worst flying experience to date.

*edit. I forgot about the 4+ hours we sat in the plane while the wings were de-iced.
 
Stonemason said:
looking after a stranger's baby while she slept all the way
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giphy.gif
 
worst:
- flying from NYC via Atlanta and Joburg to Cape Town
- Atlanta airport (the busiest in the world) entirely closed when we arrive in the skies, severe thunder storms, everyone goes into a holding pattern
- plane drops every now and then an instant 20 - 100m so you see your drink starting to float and if you had the balls to look out the window you see multiple other planes in close proximity in between all the lightning strikes
- eventually we land, but the onward flight already left, thousands of people queuing to be rebooked, US marine right in front of me shouts at the top of his lungs "I will burn this place to the f-ing ground!!!" ... I try my best not to be associated with him and avoid a full cavity search and a holding cell
- get to the front of the queue and having Cape Town as my final destination seems to put me on a different alternate route, at least another 1hr delay while computer says no and multiple supervisors need to override the new route to book it for me
- head to the hotel on a dodgy shuttle bus, get woken up way too early for my next flight out of Atlanta and end up waiting forever to board the flight
- again multiple supervisors need to override to allow me to board
- get to Amsterdam for the onward flight to Cape Town ... at least here things take a turn for the better, turns out the multiple supervisors needed to get involved because the only free seats were in first class 😈
 
Heading to Egypt for a couple of weeks work. My company had booked me the most ridiculous route, so I'm sitting at a full and noisy Jeddah departures at 2 in the morning waiting for a fight to Alexandria. The board is flashing 'Gate announced at 2.30" in Arabic and English every few seconds. Time passes, I'm getting antsy, all announcements are in Arabic and I understand none of it.

Then after 3 o'clock the board changes to "flight departed at 2.50"

Fsck, they'd announced the gate on the speaker in Arabic and not updated the board.

It was early morning, no-one was about and those I could find were not understanding or were not interested. Long story short, next flight was in the evening on Egypt Air, I managed to get on it and hung out in the lounge until departure. I arrived in Alexandria without luggage for 4 days. It as roasting and I was stinking.

Also, another time I had to fly from Copenhagen to London becuase they wouldn't let me board a plane from Copenhagen to Jeddah because the woman at the desk misunderstood the rules about Muslims flying during Hajj. She thought only people with a pass could fly to Jeddah when it was only Muslims with a pass. So I had to hot tail it to Heathrow and wait 8 hours there for the flight that night.
 
They once ran out of Lattes on my Q-suite flight on Qatar. Never again...

lol J/k

since i don't like turbulence despite flying so much, my worst was Montreal to Paris on an A350 in 2022. This thing was getting shoved about like we were a rubber dingy in a hurricane lol.. I was in Business Class and i still hated every moment. For like 3 hours of a 7 hour flight you had to hold on to your drinks or they went walking... With small batches of smoothness in between.

Was really uncomfortable. I finally got up and went to talk to the crew in the galley, who said i should really be in my seat and I think they saw the sadness on my face and were like you can sit on the crew chair here. We talked for about an hour or so about their routes, stop overs etc. Was very interesting and helped get my mind off the fact that everything in the galley's storage were making banging noises lol.

At some point the FO came out the cockpit to use the bathroom, and also talked a bit to the crew in the galley. So when he caught my eye i said do you know how long this is going to be for, i'm surprised this plane has any parts left on it. He laughed and said no no don't worry, this is nothing, the wings will flap, the body will move around but the plane is fine - its like a bit of fun for the aircraft otherwise it just does boring flights all the time.... Not sure if i felt better or not lol.
 
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