Author Topic: What was your longest/scariest/funniest flight? (Read 1309 times)

CyranoAH · « **Reply #30 on:** June 17, 2003, 01:51:57 PM »

Longest flight: Paris to Cayenne (French Guiana). Some 14h in a god-knows-how-old Air France 747. I was flying near the tail and the thing creaked like it was going to break apart.

Add the fact that the Cayenne Airport has a pretty short runway for a 747 and you have a long yet interesting flight

Best flight: It has to be the parabolic flight in the Airbus 300 of Novespace. Bourdeaux - Bourdeaux, 3 hour flight with 30 parabolas near Corsica.

Daniel

Habu · « **Reply #31 on:** June 17, 2003, 01:59:31 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by beet1e

Habu - did you own the house in Jakarta? I hate to think how much money you lost if you did. When I was there in 1997, £1 (GBP) = 6,000 rupiah. I was glad to get out of there, and rearranged my trip to spend an extra 2 days in Bali - and 2 fewer days in Jakarta.

No I only rented but my $60,000 USD golf membership to Karawang International Golf Club is probably worth about ten bucks these days. I had an Indonesian "wife" while I was there and I left her quite a bit of US dollars also when I got out.

I was there when Suharto stepped down. That was another storey to tell. I still go there every year or so as I own an import company and have a couple of suppliers there.

Habu · « **Reply #32 on:** June 17, 2003, 02:00:27 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by beet1e

Habu - did you own the house in Jakarta? I hate to think how much money you lost if you did. When I was there in 1997, £1 (GBP) = 6,000 rupiah. I was glad to get out of there, and rearranged my trip to spend an extra 2 days in Bali - and 2 fewer days in Jakarta.

No I only rented but my $60,000 USD golf membership to Karawang International Golf Club is probably worth about ten bucks these days. I had an Indonesian "wife" while I was there and I left her quite a bit of US dollars also when I got out.

I was there when Suharto stepped down. That was another storey to tell. I still go there every year or so as I own an import company and have a couple of suppliers there.

Habu · « **Reply #33 on:** June 17, 2003, 02:00:31 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by beet1e

Habu - did you own the house in Jakarta? I hate to think how much money you lost if you did. When I was there in 1997, £1 (GBP) = 6,000 rupiah. I was glad to get out of there, and rearranged my trip to spend an extra 2 days in Bali - and 2 fewer days in Jakarta.

No I only rented but my $60,000 USD golf membership to Karawang International Golf Club is probably worth about ten bucks these days. I had an Indonesian "wife" while I was there and I left her quite a bit of US dollars also when I got out.

I was there when Suharto stepped down. That was another storey to tell. I still go there every year or so as I own an import company and have a couple of suppliers there.

funkedup · « **Reply #34 on:** June 17, 2003, 02:06:50 PM »

Doublepostorama.

funkedup · « **Reply #35 on:** June 17, 2003, 02:08:02 PM »

Doublepostorama.

gofaster · « **Reply #36 on:** June 17, 2003, 02:31:10 PM »

I'm going for quad.

CMC Airboss · « **Reply #37 on:** June 17, 2003, 02:33:38 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Modas
The more I think about it, the more I hate to fly.....

Spoken like a true Cutthroat!!!

Worst flight here.........

Short final on the active runway, 11, at BED in a Piper Warrior II with two good friends aboard.

Tower "Plan to land past the intersecting runway. Airline traffic landing runway 5"

The "airline" traffic was a Beech 1900 on a long straight in approach to the non-active runway. Increase power, arrest descent, set up for glideslope to far end of runway 11. I end up crossing the threshold at 100-125 feet. The airline traffic is crossing the threshold for runway 5.

Tower "Beech ##, clear to land runway 5. Ummm, Cherokee clear to land. Can you hold short of the runway intersection?"

What???? Knowing the the controller had lost control of the situation and fearing she'd call a go-around for one or both airplanes, there was no way I was going to cross that runway. I was going to merge with it on the ground or in the air right where the runways crossed.

Chop power, stomp on right rudder, full flaps, dump nose, fly to the right side of the 150' wide runway. The Beech 1900 touches down. I touch down. There is no relative motion for the Beech 1900 in relation to its position in the windscreen. Stand on the brakes, raise flaps, full aft on the yoke. Too much speed, I'm going to cross the intersecting runway into the path of the Beech 1900. I ease off on the right brake and turn parallel to the edge of runway 5 using the additional runway width to get the Warrior stopped. The Beech slides by on the right side of the airplane less than 75' away.

My Warrior rocks back after the aircraft plows to a halt. I sit there, ready to storm up to the tower for clearing two aircraft to land on intersecting runways. Scared the hell out of me and my passengers. Close call.

MiG

midnight Target · « **Reply #38 on:** June 17, 2003, 03:05:10 PM »

Was in a Northwest Airlines 767 on approach to O'Hare when the pilot snapped the plane on its wing (ok, relatively snapped it) and pulled a hard left turn.

He then came on the intercom and told us a Continental plane had crossed his path. Thought it was odd that he would give us the name of the airline. I wonder if it might have been a union beef?

Steve · « **Reply #39 on:** June 17, 2003, 04:26:24 PM »

Flew from Waukegan Il. to Phoenix AZ once, in a 182. That's a long flight, baby.

senna · « **Reply #40 on:** June 17, 2003, 04:29:31 PM »

Best flight, Marine CH-53
Longest flight, Guam to Hawaii then Washington.
Scarriest flight, Beechcraft twin turboprop into North Bend Oregon during a bad storm. Plane in front crashed into the lake due to high winds however we made it. Actually that was fun and scary.

Habu · « **Reply #41 on:** June 17, 2003, 05:34:21 PM »

Ok last one.

A few years ago I flew JAL into Indonesia. I like JAL as they are one of the few airlines that still gives you a free hotel room if you have to lay over to make your conection.

Because the flights were long and because I was laying over in Japan I did not watch any TV for a couple of days, so I was a little out of touch with international events.

I got on the flight to Jakarta (747) and it was pretty empty which is very unusal. When we few into Jakarta I looked down from the plane and saw tons of fires and smoke. I thought they were rice fields being burned which is not unusal.

Once on the ground the pilot gets on and says "There seems to be some trouble in Jakarta, we are going to Bali next and advise all passengers to stay on the flight." I was thinking no way I am going to Bali when I had appoinments and meetings schedualed for the next week so I was itching to get off. Besides I had lots of friends in Jakarta and how bad could it be?

Just then a group of 4 guys sitting on the other side of the asile get up and deplane. I think if they are getting off then so am I and follow them.

When we get to immigration I catch up to them and notice absolutely no one else has followed us off. I hear them talking to the immigration officer and the one guys says they are a BBC news crew. Yikes.

I go though customs and enter the main terminal and it is absolutely packed with people everywhere. Turns out the airport is cut off by roveing bands of looters and all those fires I saw on the way in were large blocks of Jakarta on fire. The protestors are all demanding Suharto the President step down.

I get to a phone and call JAL and ask to get back on the plane. They tell me my seat is taken. I am stuck in Jakarta and there are 1000's waiting for flights out.

I sit in the terminal all day and notice that the McDonalds is having a run on its food. I go over and buy 3 Big Macs (who knows how long I will be there?) and shortly after they run out of food. Who has every seen a McDonalds run out of food before? I was getting worried. At about 10 pm a taxi pulls up and some rich guys hire him to take them to a hotel. They pull out and it comes back 15 minutes later with all its windows smashed.

At midnight some more taxis arrive and I get one driven by a women (Ebu Haji) who is dressed in Muslim dress. She only charges me twice the going rate which is totally fair as she is risking the car. I get to the downtown (we were stopped once by a gang of teenages with rocks but once they saw her and me they smiled and waved us on, a chinese guy would have been mugged). All the way down I see fires and wrecked buildings. A huge shopping mall I used to go to was totally gutted.

I go to a very large 5 star hotel and check in. Next day it is totally full of people fleeing their homes. I was lucky to get a room. I looked out of my window and saw the army deploying. There were tanks parked on the road below the hotel which made me feel very safe. I went to bed after calling a supplier who promised to send a car for me the next day. He was not worried at all about any of it.

The next day the supplier calls me and tells me to get to the airport asap! I guess he finally looked out his window. I do and we can't get an international flight so we get a domestic one to Semerang. Once there we find it pretty peaceful so I check into a nice hotel that has a golf course near it. I spent the next week playing golf by myself as the course was totally empty. Suharto stepped down a day later, the expats started to come back after a week and by the end of the second week the place was getting back to normal. Except for the fact that looters had destroyed a huge chunk of many of the downtowns like Jakarta.

My wife spent each night watching the riots on TV and listening to the news while I phoned here and told her it was all eggagerated. Really it wasn't though.

Raubvogel · « **Reply #42 on:** June 17, 2003, 09:16:36 PM »

Coolest flight: Sitting front seat in an AH-1 Cobra in Saudi on a test flight. Almost shat my pants.

Scariest flight: Too many, here's a countdown

4) Flying from the port to our base in the Saudi desert in UH-1. It's getting dark and the visibility is really poor at dusk. We're flying pretty dam low. Feel a big thump. Pilot asks me to lean over the side and look below. Both our skids are gone and the crosstubes are folded up against the belly. We continue flying to base and the pilot radios ahead to have our unit build a sandbag landing platform. He pulls it to a hover and everyone but him jumps out. He lands the gear-less UH-1 flawlessly on the platform. Upon further inspection, the main structural beam that connects the tranny to the fuselage is cracked. Aircraft never flew again as far as I know.

3) Flying from Grafenwoer to Illesheim Germany in UH-1. I'm riding left seat. About 15 minutes into the flight the aircraft picks up a nasty vertical vibration. Pilot asks me if I think it's serious. I figured we had just lost part of one of the rotor blade tip caps, throwing the balance off. We fly on. We land, I hop out. As the blades spin down, I notice that about a foot of skin from one of the blades has peeled itself back. Got really drunk that night.

3) We're flying a medevac hoist missionin UH-1 to pick a mountain climber off Mt. Rainier in Washington state. Visibilty is toejam! It's dark out and fog is rolling in. Even with NVGs, can't see more than 50ft or so. We're flying at treetop level at no more than 20 or 30 knots probably. (Well below a decent autorotational speed if anything went wrong.) I thought for sure we were going to buy it, that pilot had more guts than brains. Finally after a bit of complaining from myself and the medic the pilot sees the light and we turn around.

1) Flying another medevac hoist mission in Washington. We get set to lower the hoist and I have the medic about 50ft down. I lean out farther to get a good look and my harness doesn't catch me. I fall out of the helicopter and stop with a jerk about 10 ft below it. Our life support equipment inspector had inspected my harness and run it out all way without my knowing it. My only thought on the way down was that I had forgotten to secure the harness. Thought for sure I had pissed my pants. Managed to pull myself back inside somehow, but that was enough for me that day. We pulled the medic back up and another crew finished the job

Weavling · « **Reply #43 on:** June 18, 2003, 06:26:52 AM »

Longest, funniest, scaryist flight: 1968 Ben Hoa Viet Nam to McCord AFB in Washington, 17 hours. Had to de-board the flight three times prior to take off due to mortor-rocket attacks on air base. Plane was a DC-9 stretch, 250 GIs on board, took all of the runway and then some to finally lift into the air.

Starting our descent into McCord, the pilot comes on the intercomm: "Gentelmen, we're starting our descent, we expect some mild turbulence so please make sure your seatbelts are fastened." The seat in front of me is occupied by a young black private who declares "yea, set this mother****er down." No sooner had these words left his mouth, when the plane rocked hard and stood on it's nose. My stomach had just come out of my mouth, my hands gripping the armrests in fear, through the pandamodium in the cabin I hear the young private screaming: "Not like that, not like that!"

Btw, the charter line on this flight was Flying Tiger Airlines. Those of you who have done so in the military know that you have to fill out a customs form on the flight returning to the USA. On the line asking which airline was used, most of us wrote: FTA. If you were in the army at that time, you know what that stood for.

Sox62 · « **Reply #44 on:** June 18, 2003, 08:40:20 AM »

Funniest flight-Going to my cousin Patrick's wedding.

MD-80 I believe from Columbus to Houston,where we had to take a twin engine turboprop to Corpus Christi.

About halfway in the flight,we hit some pretty bad turbulence.What's funny is there was my six year old niece screaming "wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!" everytime we would hit some more,while some poor guy seated across the aisle from her was puking his guts out at the same time.