Debating whether or not to ever fly again…
To date, this was the last plane ride I’ve ever been on. I’m skeptical about getting on another plane, especially after this. Twelve hour flights, 30 minute flights – turbulence is a pretty frightening thing.
Last August (that would be 8/09), I was on a flight from Las Vegas to LAX. This is pretty typical of me as my aunt lives in LA and I live in Vegas and I frequently stay at her house when I visit. Since I no longer own a car, flying there has become more frequent.
This time around I took my 11-year-old cousin who had never flown before. I was trying to be comforting, positive and as upbeat as possible… which, in the end, turned out to be unnecessary. She was excited – as was I. It was a fun ride there. I gave her, pretty much, a check list of what to expect during the plane ride. It was relatively smooth the entire way.
On the way back, however… it was pretty life changing. A 30 minute “air time” flight turned into 2 hours of pure hell.
Now, I’ve flown since I was a newborn (practically) and my first “alone” plane ride was in 1988 when I was 7 years old. Again, plane rides my entire life – no issues.
I’ve flown in clear weather, rainy weather, snow, light turbulence with spats of “drops.” It has had its moments but never like this… maybe because I’m older and more “aware…” who knows.
Anyone flying into Las Vegas knows the weather here can be kind of volatile. We have some of the strongest winds that seem to be getting worse? It seems the last few years have been windier since the time from when I moved here approximately 20 years ago.
This time, the wind shear and gusts were so bad they could NOT land. The 2 hours I mentioned? Yeah that was circling around the Las Vegas area trying to “approach” from approximately 3 different angles. We could NOT land. We’d get to a certain elevation and the plane was bouncing up and down, side to side. EXTREME drops. I had sweat pouring down my face; my cousin and I were gripping on to each other for dear life, screams coming from all around the cabin. I just wanted the plane to LAND. I didn’t care if it was on a house or in the middle of the freeway.
It was like a torture movie – the shaking and bouncing would delay for a few minutes, and you’d think it was all over, then BAM!! a huge drop.
So here I am, trying to be brave for my cousin, a first time flier, and for the first time in MY life I’m thinking we’re going to die in a fiery plane crash.
So, 2 hours go by and we finally land – the shaking did NOT subside the entire landing process – but as soon as we touch ground – it was like a Southern Baptist Tent Revival throughout the entire air plane.
And here I am still, debating whether or not to ever fly again.
Tagged as:
weather
In January 2004 I was on an Emirates Airlines flight from Dubai/United Arab Emirates to Dusseldorf/Germany. The flight left DXB in the early morning, and just before take-off the pilot announced that there was turbulence over Iran. Yummy!
Well, for the first hour or so nothing happened. We were served breakfast and I had a nice chat with a Palestinian guy next to me who had been to some event in Dubai with his workmates from Germany. Shortly after breakfast, however, the rough weather started. What were small shakes in the beginning turned into heavy swings and the plane dropped several times with people screaming and clinging to their armrests. I am not a brave flier, but thanks to a friend who is a FA with Emirates and a book I had bought which explains basically every single plane movement, I was quite calm. Add to that a travel sickness pill and I was even able to keep the guy sitting beside me relaxed, though he did grab the front seat a few times with force.
The pilots ascended as high as they could to avoid the worst but it was no use. The turbulence got so bad that the FAs were ordered to stop all service and sit down as well.
An Indian couple right in front of me had a particularly bad time; the lady had to throw up again and again and her husband kept on handing the bags to a FA. At some point I offered them one of my travel pills which they gratefully accepted and luckily she was able to keep her stuff down long enough for the pill to start working. She looked mighty relieved and so did her hubby!
We were strapped to our seats all across Iran, Turkey and the Black Sea. Only when we reached Romania did the turbulence go away – just with a snap it was gone. Service started up again right away and when we reached Germany the descent began in the region of Nuremberg as we were so high.
I was really glad when the flight was over, and to top it all off I was confronted with a very unfriendly customs guy. I am usually polite, but after more than 4 hours of shaky weather I was in no mood to argue politely so I more or less told him where to stick it and even got an apology. 
Tagged as:
emirates airline,
vomit,
weather
My mother in law bought my husband and I tickets to see her in Wyoming. The day of the flight the weather took a turn for the worse. The plane was over an hour late leaving Denver. Once we were finally able to board, the visibility was at minimum. I wasn’t too worried about that. We had a female pilot that really had good work ethic and I had complete faith in.
The flight into Denver was uneventful. We looked at the screen to see which gate our next flight took off from. It was delayed 3 hours. We sat and waited with our fussy 20 month old daughter. My husband went to look to see if it was delayed anymore, and it said it was canceled. My husband went and talked to the people in charge, and they said they said there was freezing rain at the airport we were supposed to fly into, and that they couldn’t issue a hotel voucher for “weather related” cancellations. I had my laptop with me and I pulled up the weather for our destination; it was 25 degrees and clear. They threw in the bad weather to get out of hotel vouchers. Then to add insult to injury, they told us to take our baggage tags down to the baggage claim and they would have our luggage ready in about 2 more hours (note that it was already 11 pm). We waited the 2 hours, and then my husband went to talk to the person in baggage to ask about it and turns out they never took our baggage off and they weren’t going to either. United had booked us new tickets for 2 days later (Christmas day), so we were stuck without clothes and diapers and my husband’s medication. My mother in law ended up coming to Denver to pick us up so we wouldn’t have to wait.
That was just the way down! Then on the way back, we were stuck on the Dash-8. I’m not big on turboprop planes to begin with. We were the first flight of the day so the pilot had to “test” the engines and the plane was sitting there pulled back from the gate just rocking like crazy. It was slightly windy when we took off, but it was a relatively smooth flight until we neared Denver. Then we hit the worst turbulence I had ever seen! The plane was rocking and shaking and then we took two big drops, probably 200 feet or so at a time. Finally after about ten minutes it started to smooth out and was pretty calm the rest of the final approach. After that, the final leg of our flight home was smooth. I got to sit back and relax and was happy to be back on the CRJ200 again. I will never fly on a Dash-8 again; I’ll drive before I ever fly on one of those.
Tagged as:
delay & cancellation,
pilot,
united airlines,
weather
I would say that I used to be a regular flier. I would fly about once a month. Turbulence and thunderstorms never really scared me, until this flight.
I was flying from Sioux Falls, SD to Chicago a few days after Christmas. The flight was horribly delayed because of the massive snow storm that was surrounding O’Hare, so I sat in the tiny Sioux Falls airport for over 4 hours just waiting. I was worried about missing my connecting flight to Pennsylvania, so I made the change to another flight just in case.
As the plane was taking off I noticed that there was some turbulence but nothing I wasn’t used to. But as we settled to our cruising, I noticed that the turbulence wasn’t getting any better, but was getting worse. We were going up and down, side to side and it never stopped, even for a second. But the worst part of it was, was that when I looked out the window I couldn’t see anything but white. Nothing above the plane, nothing below the plane. So I thought to myself ”If I can’t see, how can the pilots see?”
I was completely frozen with fear and I was sweating horribly because I thought we were going to go down. The flight attendant tried to make it better by telling us it was like a “roller coaster,” but I would feel MUCH safer on the roller coaster.
Luckily we landed at O’Hare OK but all of us were incredibly shaken. After that flight whenever I get on a plane I have mini anxiety attacks every time there is even the littlest bit of turbulence. Thanks a lot United!
Tagged as:
united airlines,
weather
