I don’t know if many people will ACTUALLY believe this, but trust me, it’s true. I was flying TUI from London to Heraklion (btw I loooove Heraklion airport so much, scenery is amazing! I hope it has a Flyout soon!) anyway, the winds on HER were horrible, there was like 29 knots of crosswind. Anyway, my landing was SO hard, that in some parts of the cabin, the oxygen masks came down by accident because of the impact!
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Oh boy! I have a few stories to share!
- This is the most recent of them all, on my Frontier A320NEO flight from LIR-ATL on December 31, 2022. We had just took off from Liberia, and as we neared the Costa Rica - Nicaragua border, we flew right into some towering cumulus clouds. It was pretty bumpy, with some pretty severe drops, to the point where some passengers were screaming and a few people got airsick.
The woman in front of me turns on her call light, and the flight attendant comes on. “Please turn your call light off unless this is an emergency.” She doesn’t turn it off, and the head flight attendant comes down the aisle, and I’m sort of worried about what was happening with the person in front of me. As soon as the FA reaches her, she says “Can you please tell the pilot to turn off the turbulence?” The flight attendant curtly explained that’s not an option, and went back to her jump seat.
- I was flying Sun Country 737-800 from MSP-LAX in 2019, when I had a crazy diversion. We took off and climbed out of MSP like normal, and leveled off about 15 minutes later. Maybe 20 minutes after that, over South Dakota, my ears started to hurt quite a bit more than they usually would. About 5 minutes later, the whole cabin seemed to be feeling this, and I was getting slightly lightheaded.
Then, “whump.” The oxygen masks came down, and we all pulled them on. The entire plane was dead silent. We made a sharp left turn, and began descending fast. The captain came on the PA. “We are having some pressure issues with the aircraft. You do not need the oxygen masks any more, but we will be diverting back to Minneapolis.” They were going really fast down towards Minneapolis, and had the spoilers up almost fully on short final to get down to landing speed. We still hit really hard and fast. There were fire trucks all along the runway, and they escorted us back to the gate. Sun Country got us another plane, and we left about 4 hours later.
- This was back a couple of years before COVID, when I was in 3rd of 4th grade. I was flying out of Cancun with my parents, and we went to go fill our water bottles before getting on the plane. For whatever reason, the nearest water bottle fillers were in the bathrooms, so I went with my dad into the men’s room. I have long hair, and this airport cop with his massive machine gun comes and starts yelling at me in Spanish that I’m going in the wrong bathroom. Neither of us speak Spanish, but a lovely woman on another flight ( I think to Mexico City) came over and helped interpret. That was a pretty scary experience as an 8 or 9 year old.
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I suppose I could regale the community with a few tales of my travels :)
When I was coming home from college last semester to get away from the madness of a highly anticipated football game (for those who care about college football, it was Appalachian State vs North Carolina in Boone, and what a mad game it was.) I flew AVL-CLT by catching an airport charter service that is based at the Hickory Regional Airport in NC from Boone to Hickory, and “connected” if you will, to the vehicle that would take me from Hickory to Asheville.
I get to the Asheville airport, go through security, blah blah blah. I go to get myself a snack + drink post-security, and a TSA security officer approaches me after I had paid for my stuff, asking if I was flying United out of AVL, to which I replied “No, sir.” They said I looked incredibly similar to someone who had accidentally left their ID behind at security 😅.
My second tale comes when I was leaving Nashville to come back home to Charlotte after touring the campus of Middle Tennessee State University. I had forgotten to put my hands up when going through the checkpoint. This triggered the machine, and I got my shoes swabbed down. I also almost walked away from the checkpoint without collecting my wallet, ID, and boarding pass.
My third, and perhaps the most embarrassing event of my recent travels was the morning I left for Alpena, MI from Charlotte via Detroit to see family I hadn’t seen in forever. I was flying out of Gate A11, and I was sitting with my back to the gate door. Just on a whim, I look over my shoulder and see the gate open and I think “Oh sh*t, did I miss boarding?”.
In my state of sheer panic, I head to the gate agent desk and ask when we were boarding. They tell me in a few minutes, and it was right after they said that, the first passengers from the arriving flight emerge from the tunnel, and all is right in the world.
And now for my final tale of travels, personally my favorite as well, when we arrived at the gate at Heathrow from our overnighter from Detroit and deplaned, me and my family absolutely dusted the rest of our tour group. We had been at baggage claim at Heathrow for at least 30-45 minutes and already had our bags back in our possession by the time the rest of the tour group showed up.
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For the pilots (or those well versed in GA planes)
Was teaching a student recently and when we landed I discovered they had accidentally turned on the ELT for almost the entire flight. Switch is in a ridiculous place and I couldnt see it. Anyway, that made for some interesting conversations when we landed.
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Okay well this one isn’t a story but just a funny picture. Pretty self-explanatory. If you’ve seen the original Top Gun movie, you will understand it.
Funny stuff happens. I love how clever people can be
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Kinda funny, I’m waiting for my flight at Salt Lake City, and am watching this Delta A330-900 pull in from Paris. Started pulling in on the wrong line at the gate
And is now currently just sitting in between the lines while trying to correct.
Finally they attached a tug and are pulling the plane in
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