Your most scary flight

Lots of scares over the years, including some close calls in Vietnam. But even before that I had a memorable flight here in the US. We were flying a C-130 from Florida, I think, back to home base in Topeka, Kansas. It was late at night, and there was a line of thunderstorms stretching from Texas up to Lake Michigan. We didn't really want to go home, but the command post said they needed our airplane that night. Orders are orders. I don't remember all the guys I flew with, but on that flight, it was Capt. Neil Curley.

As we approached the storms, we could see lots of lightning. I asked Center if there were any pireps, and the controller said no airliner had even attempted to get through or over the storms. We knew we couldn't fly as high as those guys, so into the fray we went. Orders are orders.

The turbulence started immediately, and it took both pilots to keep the wings mostly level. There was no way to control our altitude. Radio contact was gone... nothing but static. I looked out at the right wing, and during a lightning flash, I could see it flexing up and down. Holy crap! How much stress can that wing take?

At one point, we entered a period of hail. There were blue sparks all over the windscreen just in front of my face, and I remember thinking if that glass breaks, I will die.

Our navigator was a new guy, just out of nav school. He was trying to give us heading changes based on radar, but the truth was, all we could do is try to stay upright and ride the updrafts and downdrafts. Now and then we'd pop out of the clouds during a lightning flash and see the towering cumulous all around us.

Eventually we came out the other side into calm darkness. I don't know how long we were in the thunderstorms, but now we had no idea where we were. After a while, we discovered we were near Tulsa, Oklahoma, a long way south of our course to Topeka. But we did re-establish radio contact and were cleared direct to our home base. I don't think there was any conversation the rest of the way, other than necessary checklists and ATC communications. Now, more than 50 years later, I clearly remember walking down the crew entrance stairs onto the wet parking ramp, and thinking about kissing the ground.
 
Only one that I'd say was scary. I was flying home in the club PA-28 from my second Gastons Fly-in, circa 2007, about a year since I passed my PPL ride. The ride over was bumpy (northern Arkansas/western TN in June), so everyone suggested I go home high, 9500, to be in cooler more stable air. Forecast is decent, potential scattered TS starting mid-afternoon on, so I depart 9am to get out before the anticipated activity.

About the time I reach 9500, I find I'm flying through a corridor of clouds, but the corridor is going my general direction so I roll with it. Until I find that I'm walled in to the front. Bang a 180 and find a wall to the rear, I'm now walled in on all sides. Look down, can see the ground, so I start spiralling down through the hole. About the time I get established in bank, lightning flashes across the windscreen, the thunder is loud enough to be heard through the noise cancelling headphones, and then the heavy rain. I tell center that I'm switching to flight service to get some advice on which way to run. As I'm talking to radio, the turbulence starts. After a few seconds it dawns on my to check my gauges, and I find my bank is 45* and increasing with increasing airspeed approaching redline.

I tell radio to standby, yank the throttle to idle (shock cooling be damned), shallow the bank, and gentle pull until I bring the speed down to Va. I then continued to do nothing but pretend to be an IFR pilot and keep the bank at standard rate and speed at Va as I buck and bronc down through the clouds. I locked onto those gauges as if my life depended on it.

I come out the bottom at 3500ft, storm still building, and I ask radio for guidance. They give me a vector they say will quickly get me away from the strom, so I head that way and get back with center to tell them what happened and where I'm going. I spent the rest of the flight bouncing along at 3000 (deck was still about 3500 give or take). Radio said I should not encounter any more convective activity along my path, and I prayed that was true. I think I was still a little shaky when I landed.

I called my CFI the next day and started instrument lessons.
 
I've been fortunate...or at least young and dumb enough...to not have many scary moments.

When I was a fresh PPL, I was out building time on XCs. One on particular flight I was cruising at 5,500, fat, dumb, and happy on flight following. I happened to be looking out the left side window when I caught a split second glance of a Mooney (I remember the tail clear as day) going the opposite direction, level, and just a wingspan away. As fast as it was there, it was gone, then I felt the slight bump of wake to confirm I didn't imagine it. I queried the Center controller if he had anything on radar and told him what just happened, he said he wasn't showing anything. I was young enough it didn't really affect me. Fate is the hunter.

The only time I've had the hair on my neck stand up might sound silly, but was when flying over the Mark Twain National Forest in Missouri at 1,000 AGL. I was flying lower than usual on that trip to stay clear of the bases and visually thread my way around some scattered T-storms. Now I've flown over remote areas before, including some rather sparse areas of Ontario, and never considered the risk that much. But for some reason that day it popped in my head that if the engine quit, there wasn't a clearing, road, or anywhere I could put down safely, and if I went down in the trees I'd be on my own for quite a while. First time I've really considered my own mortality while flying an airplane. I must be getting older and wiser, or at least the former.
 
Ordinary day in Vietnam, early in 1970. Operating a UH-1H on routine missions out of Chu Lai. The weather was normal for that time of year, with clouds and haze. I got word to pick up a Navy petty officer at Quang Ngai and take him out to a boat. That was it—no other coordinating instructions such as the location of the boat. I thought let’s give this a look and do what we can do. We land at Quang Ngai, the pax comes out, gets on board, and says fly heading 093. I ask how far and he says he doesn’t know exactly, but estimates 30-40 NM. Off we go eastbound, crossing the coast line shortly, and on our way out over the South China Sea. Not seeing anything on the horizon, at all. Flying 093 degrees with autopilot precision, though. Fly and fly, and after 20 to 25 minutes I see a dot out there. Damned if we’re not heading straight at it. Yeah, it was close to 50 miles out but at least we found it. Worrying about engine failure now took a back seat to worrying about the next phase of the mission: offloading my pax securely.

I got closer to the boat and started coming up with my plan. One of the problems with that particular mission is that we had not been assigned a radio frequency, so I have no way to contact the boat except by over flying it.

Soon the boat is right there. It’s making good speed into the wind, and I notice choppy waves in the water. It’s a small boat, which I was informed later was a Coast Guard cutter. What it was doing in that part of the world I never figured out. It was a boat just barely large enough to have a helicopter landing pad. It also had tall radio and radar antennas of every description in the immediate vicinity of the pad. I notice it’s flashing lights at me but I don’t know their code.

Circling the boat at low altitude I could see an individual with a helmet and goggles on a platform adjacent to the helipad. He was waving semaphores in each hand. Little good that did. So I figured an approach azimuth that gave the maximum clearance from the antennas and swung wide around to set up for landing. So far, so good, except that the boat was really going up and down as I could see by getting closer. And the little man was waving those flags faster.

About 100 meters out I was down to a manageable speed but realized that pad was rapidly moving target, rising up and down, up and down. So I approached to a high hover over the pad, noticing that after waving his flags in a blur, the little man had dived over the side of his platform and disappeared. At least we were temporarily safe, having dodged obstacles successfully, so far.

Now the problem was the pad was going up and down at least 15-20 feet if not more. But I had good aircraft control and plenty of power so it was game on. As the boat would rise, I would drop a bit to catch it at the top and follow it down, but not too much. Up and down the pad and I went until I got the rhythm of it. On about the third or fourth up and down cycle I got within about 5 feet and firmly planted the collective down, getting us on the deck with a jolt but still moving which was an exceedingly strange experience.

Pax debarked immediately. As soon as he was clear I saw the little helmeted man peek his head up and start waving his flags or paddles, I honestly forget which. But it was moot. I asked the crew were we clear left, right, and overhead? They said yes so I waited for an upswing and pulled max torque straight up at the top of the heave. I think the Navy was glad to get rid of us. I was pleased, also.
 
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Ed Haywood said:
I know we have some old bold pilots in here, and probably some young and dumb ones too. So let's hear your most hair raising aviation tale.
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Turbulence southeast of Yakutat in a Cub last November was the worst flight I've had in 25 years. It's not too hair raising aside from the fact that it was bad enough to make the engine sputter a few times during the negative G. The Garmin G3X accelerometer only indicated +2.5/-1 G but it must've been the rapid oscillation between those two extremes. There were localized 70 knot winds being sucked through glacial valleys into the ocean by a "bomb cyclone" that was 1000 miles south from where I was flying. It would be 30 minutes of perfect calm interspersed with 2-3 minutes of hell. You know it's not good when you're at full power, Vy and you're still descending at 1000 fpm @ 500 AGL!

My mistakes were only looking at winds aloft (forecast to be ~30 knots) and PIREPS (there were none due to remoteness) instead of the windy app. I also should've just bitten the bullet and flown 5 miles offshore, which is what I did on the way back, reading the waves to avoid turbulence, and it was not bad at all, even though windy app said conditions were 75-80% as strong as the really bad day. Of course I didn't want to go offshore in case the engine quit. Overall I should not have gone on the trip, but I did, learned some stuff, and the airplane is none the worse for wear after a close inspection. My helmet at the least saved me from some noggin bruises, at most might've saved me from a concussion because I did hit the internal tubing above the pilot seat several times, despite having the seatbelt as tight as it would go.

Turbulence is at about 2:35 and I didn't actually film the worst of it.
 
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flyingcheesehead said:
I was on my way to Michigan one fine summer day in the pre-datalink weather days, bumping around at 9,000 feet in a broken layer a ways south of Green Bay. Thunderstorms weren't forecast, but I was looking up and ahead when I hit the breaks in the layer just to be sure.

And then, right when I flew into it, a cloud got excited. With nary a bump, all of a sudden my VSI did a backflip and the altimeter was winding up like crazy. I pulled power back to idle and pushed the yoke forward until I was up against Vne, but the VSI was still pegged at >2000fpm. I called Green Bay Approach and told them I was in an uncontrolled climb, just in case they had anyone above me. Eventually the cell spit me out, and I descended down to 13,000 and continued on my way.

I may have also had some words for them about not warning me about that storm cell when the frequency was very quiet, but they said they weren't painting anything. That's when I realized the plane was still dry too. The lesson there is that there was likely nothing that could have shown me that cell was going to do what it did, other than possibly a stormscope. Since there was no precip yet, nobody on the ground had it on radar. Of course, even onboard radar wouldn't have painted it, and that's with no delay like we have to deal with when using NEXRAD datalink today.

A few minutes later, Green Bay told me "okay, NOW we're painting that cell."

TL;DR: Brand new building thunderstorms hide themselves very well, but they're still scary.
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Had an experience just like this in a Baron in Texas; short 30 nightime IFR minute flight, called FSS right before launching and get the "radar is clear" briefing. Next thing I know I'm in a cloud with severe turbluence and lightning everwwhere hoping that the 40 year old airplane would hold together. Radios became so staticy that comms were not possible. When it spit me out the other side, I cancelled, then diverteted to the nearest airport. Weather became very stormy at intended destination so I ended up sitting there for 2 hours. It was a long time ago so maybe T-storm forecasting wasn't quite as good. It is #2 on my list.

3rd on my list would be in the 747 freighter at 30W over the north atlantic, about 90 minutes from the closest airport, when the Main Deck cargo fire warning came on and stayed on for an hour. There are no fire extinguishers in that compartment (other than crew-operated handheld) so the procedure is to depressurize and descend to 25,000, which we did. They say you have 18 minutes to get on the ground before survival is unlikely with a maindeck fire. We got into some cloud/turbulence at 25,000, and the First Officer came to the cockpit from his crew rest carrying his portable oxygen. He exclaimed that we "must be coming apart" since the airplane was shaking (turbulence) and we needed to ditch. Fortunately we disregarded that input. Luckily in the end it was just a false alarm, but it was fun flying M 0.92 to Shannon for a pint of guiness during the debrief!
 
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I don’t have scary flights. I just have scary things happen on normal flights….

Not sure if that’s better or :dunno:


The times that really come to mind:
1) approaching the airport to cross midfields and enter the downwind on the other side in a bright yellow non-electric piper cub (read: no adsb out), a lance doing the exact same thing blows by me at 120+ kts 30 feet off my port, same altitude.
(He grinned and waved at me on my roll out while he was taxiing to the FBO)
(No it wasn’t Jim or Neal)

2) taking off on a mega humid southern Tennessee afternoon at 300’ AGL in a carb’s 172 when the engine coughs… long enough to start looking for which trees look most soft. Of course engine roars back to life and I continue on my merry way.

3) again in the bright yellow non-electric piper cub, I’m flying around low minding my own business when I look to my 3 o clock and see another non-electric night yellow piper cub 25’ below me pass below.

4) the one time in the fast business aircraft I fly when ATC vectors me over an airport at 3000’ 20 nm from my destination… right under where another airplane was doing steep spirals. I get an RA to descend and immediately wake up all the pax with some negative Gs.
 
I heard about this guy that was scud running about 400 AGL over 7000’ terrain. He saw a tower on his nose and did a little jog to miss it. He has kept this screen shot to remind himself what an idiot he is.
 

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