comment #1

lazespud says ...

Definately consider reading the "Ask the Pilot" column on Salon.com. The guy's favorite subject is real versus percieved danger with flying airplanes. My favorite scary, wind-driven landing video was the 747 landing at the old Hong Kong airport... but this one tops that one by a wide margin... sheesh.

comment #2

DarthCorleone says ...

Wow - scary video. Thanks for sharing that.

I've had more than my fair share of flight scares, but the one most similar to this one occurred at O'Hare. We were on a big passenger plane headed in for a landing. We couldn't have been more than a few hundred feet off the ground when all of the sudden we're fighting to go back up with the entire plane shaking as the engines strained. We made it back up to circling altitude, and while we waited for another half hour to land, the pilot apologized to us over the intercom for coming in at too steep of an angle.

comment #3

Jean says ...

Wow, this video is really getting around - I heard about it on the radio this morning. I've got a close call story myself: I was on a TWA flight coming into St. Louis during a storm. Couldn't see much out of the windows, since it was nighttime, but you could feel the plane swaying due to the heavy crosswind. Remember Cougar's landing at the beginning of "Top Gun"? Same thing here. We did land safely (but the plane hit the runway HARD) Not even a second after we touch down the pilot is on the intercom with the "welcome to blah-blah-blah" speech in an obvious attempt to calm everyone down, but everyone on the flight pretty much knew we were lucky that night...

comment #4

Josh Massey says ...

"That concludes our object lesson for this evening. If the 747 we've requested is ready on time and General Esperanza's plane arrives unmolested, further lessons can be avoided."

comment #5

Sefster says ...

Nice...Colonel Stewart. Was thinking the same thing.

comment #6

actionman says ...

I hate flying, nothing scares me more or makes me more uncomfortable than being up in a plane. Last year when flying back to LA from CT during the holidays, my plane shook so much over the Rocky Mountains that I legitimately thought that was it for me. The worst feeling ever. I also had a terrible landing at LAX a few years ago where the plane was shaking from side to side, back and forth, as we made our descent. I just can't stand being on a plane.

comment #7

christian says ...

Flying into DFW, aka The World's Biggest Worst Airport, back in 98, we encountered a lightning storm of such magnitude the sky was pitch black outside the windows. The pilot told us DFW had been closed so we had to land in Oklahoma. 20 minutes later the pilot announced we were low on fuel and would be landing...at DFW.

The passengers were very quiet as we circled the airport forever and finally landed to applause. The terminal was EMPTY. American Airlines had sent nobody to deal with us, and pasengers were so furious they started CLIMBING onto the baggage ramp. I had to stop a bully from screaming at the only employee in sight, some tiny female.

I got an actual only letter of apology from AA - but no free ticket or nuthin'...

Fuck American Airlines and Fuck DFW. Over and out.

comment #8

MilkMan says ...

Being in a plane crash is my worst nightmare, and has been since I've been a little boy and was on a flight from SFO that, due to turbulence, dropped a five hundred feet in a couple of seconds. The sound my father made as the plane began it's freefall was unlike any sound I have ever heard him make since, and the look of absolute helpless horror in his eyes, let me know that when push comes to shove, every man for himself. I have not flown since Dec. of 2000 and I will not fly again, ever, if I can help it. There must be nothing as terrifying as falling from the sky in an aluminum tube. To have one's life end in a plane crash seems to me the absolute most unjust circumstance in life.

comment #9

actionman says ...

Totally agree with you MilkMan.

comment #10

T. Holly says ...

What's the skinny on Final Destination 4?

comment #11

MAGGA says ...

I went on a work-related trip with my dad when I was seven or eight on a chartered plane, and on the very next trip the plane crashed due to a mechanical error. Still strange to think about, especially since we talked to the flight attendants and crew on the trip. I have no idea if they used the same crew all the time or anything, but it is kind of bothersome.

comment #12

christian says ...

My friend's room-mate was on flight 261 that crashed off the LA coast in 2000 and I can't express how odd it was to be in their place after and walk past that closed door...awful.

Anyway. Let's take the A train.

comment #13

actionman says ...

What a happy little thread this has turned out to be!

comment #14

actionman says ...

And I am not trying to be insensitive to anyone with my above comment; I just don't remember a darker thread than this one at HE in a while...

As MilkMan pointed out, the idea of being in a plane crash is just about the worst thing imaginable.

I think I watched Fearless one too many times on HBO in my teen years; that mid-air collision scene in Fight Club doesn't help matters either.

comment #15

Josh Massey says ...

Statistically speaking, it's still the safest way to travel.

comment #16

christian says ...

Stats don't mean shit when you're falling 20000 feet from the sky.

That said, we're all still here, so Be Happy!

comment #17

abuseintake says ...

This is a classic crosswind approach in an Airbus A-320. The 'Bus has a fly-by wire system that cause control surface inputs made by the pilot to lag slightly. When the A-320 series went into service in 1988 pilots had to adjust to the side-stick set-up and the craft's flight management system. An Indian Airlines crash in Feb of 1990 happened on approach in clear weather, and the cause is still in dispute but Airbus made the first of many software upgrades to the FMS. I fly 2-3 times a month, and when I am on an A-320 or 330 and if the destination airport has sustained crosswinds of 15 to 25 knots, I know that the FMS will over-correct the hell out of the pitch and yaw angle and you can feel the craft get pretty squirrelly. I have flown into some nasty gale force shit in Petropavlovsk on a Boeing 767 and the beast just gets through a whole lot smoother. Fun stuff.

comment #18

Walter Sobchak says ...

Bolter! Bolter!

One of my biggest regrets is never getting to fly into Hong Kong's old legendary Kai Tak airport.

Ahhh. The checkerboard approach. Looking out the window of the plane UP at people hanging clothes out to dry on their apartment balcony. The engine strikes. The go-arounds.

Go here and take a look. (proceed to more pages for more pix)

http://www.airliners.net/search/photo.search?nr_of_rows=4127&countrysearch=-%20Hong%20Kong%20-%20Kai%20Tak%20Int.%20%28HKG%20%2F%20VHHH%29%20%28closed%29&first_this_page=0&page_limit=15&sort_order=views+DESC&thumbnails=&engine_version=6.0&nr_pages=276&page=

comment #19

Walter Sobchak says ...

Heed the words of abuseintake, for he is probably the only movie nerd on here who knows more about aviation than I.

comment #20

Walter Sobchak says ...

Here's more from "Airbus' Greatest Hits".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kHa3WNerjU

comment #21

abuseintake says ...

Kai Tak was always a special place in my life...That was an amazing place to fly into and gave Hong Kong soul. I was at the dirt mound that resides in its place last year and I turned away slowly and reenacted that 1970's anti pollution ad with the Native American that has a tear coming down his cheek. Cue the William Conrad voice over please…

comment #22

Josh Massey says ...

I was just doing my best Superman impression. I'm sure traveling by rickshaw is safer.

comment #23

MickTravis says ...

Reminds me of Mark's monologue from "SLC Punk."

"When I was a kid, my family died in a crash. My mother told us to buckle up because things were going to get bumpy...so I did. I looked at her, and she smiled. And then like this, boom, the plane was going down. My dad was next to the pilot and he told us not to worry. But hey, even at five, I knew we had trouble because the pilot was crying. So I looked at my sister. She was like "Oh man, we're getting close." So I looked at my mom again, and she smiled at me again...and so this time I smiled. And then we hit the ground...and something came through that plane...and cut my mother's head off. So now this head was flying straight at me...and she never took her eyes off of me. That's when I passed out. And when I woke up, my family was all around me in pieces. I saw my mother's arm, my sister's leg...my brother's head...but I couldn't find my father. I wanted to, though. Because I was going to kick his fucking dead body. 'Cause he lied."

comment #24

Breedlove says ...

forget fearless...castaway has the scariest plane crash ever put to film...

comment #25

BurmaShave says ...

Haha Jeff almost died. That would have been awesome. Serves you right for getting on a plane you fag. - p.Vice

comment #26

frankbooth says ...

Coming out of Palm Springs, worst turbulence I've ever been in. I was with a group of guys who fancy themselves pretty tough, and they were all green. We had gotten on each others nerves over the course of the preceding days, and I really didn't wanna die with this bunch.

It's the idea of KNOWING that you're going down, being bounced around among screaming doomed fellow passengers and not being able to do a thing about it.

Imagine being conscious through several minutes of that. Yeah, almost anything would be better.

comment #27

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comment #28

Rich S. says ...

I was once on a little prop puddle jumper flying in a rainstorm between Orlando and Tallahassee. The rain wasn't bad. I was sitting over the wing and chanced to look outside. A hatch on the engine cowling had popped loose and was flopping around about a foot behind the propeller.

I quietly alerted the flight attendant, who then went up to the cabin. She said she had told the captain and that he said there probably wasn't anything to worry about. I made it, so I guess he was right. But I've never felt more like William Shatner and John Lithgow in my life.

comment #29

christian says ...

ALIVE has the scariest plane cash on film.

As far as UNITED 93, there's another story outside the extraodinary heroics of the passengers, namely the efforts of the families to get access to hearing their loved ones last moments, which there seemed to be no reason to suppress.

Of course, the bigger question to me will always be, how did that plane fly for so long while being tracked by fighter jets? I'm no 9/11 conspiracy theorist, but the whole story of that flight has yet to be told:

COOPER: Do you feel like you know all you need to know and your family knows all they need to know about what went on? Are you satisfied?

CROWLEY: Actually not. I would like to see the FBI come out with a definitive report of what happened on that flight. I think they've got the information. They have the information from the families.

They have the timings of the two black boxes that they recovered, plus the timings of Lizzie's phone conversation, which also was with New York State Police at the time. So all of that is recorded. And that information can be correlated and I believe they can get a lot closer to what really happened.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0308/08/se.06.html

comment #30

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