The joys of commuting by air

[stek]

Well, I've arrived safe n sound

The guys that got off are still waiting for a bus in hannover no doubt.

Super bumpy on the way down though so I was amost glad they don't bother feeding you anymore.

I was on a bad one from Hamburg to Manchester - all fine until plane descended below cloud level on approach, then it was all over the place, I actually had to put my book down, text jumping about - women screaming - saying 'I love you' to their loved ones, was blowing about a bit but thanks to Lufthansa's generous amounts of Warsteiner I was ok.

Then it wobbled like fook and I shat myself, right at last minute pilot corrected it and put us down and I was thinking 'what a piece of flying..' - said women then moaned at the flight attendants saying 'is the pilot drunk..' in a non-jokey way. I was so incensed I almost said something to them.

[d000hg]

I was so incensed I almost said something to them.

How very English.

[NotAllThere]

Flying in the summer with lots of thunderstorms around. The pilot circled for half an hour, having warned us that the crosswinds were too high to attempt a landing, but he didn't want to go to another airport and he was sure we didn't either. Then he announced - "we're going for landing... now!". I'm sure he put it in a power dive.

We landed safely - spontaneous applause from the passengers. But then - they were mostly Baslers, and really wouldn't want to go Zürich.

[Wilmslow]

On a £200 budget break to Rhodes.

Airline was Greek, called Galaxy Airways. Crappest 737 I have been on. Remember Dan Air?

Time – when Runway2 at Manchester was under construction.

All the stewardesses could say was Taaaeeee? Kaaaffeeeee? Noting else in English.

We were approaching for landing, when, suddenly the pilot pulled right back, and we went sideways over the unbuilt runway.

We shot back into the sky.

None of the crew said anything to us. I started to read the safety card, and checking out the exits.

Stewardess and one of the pilots go to back of plane, lift up some floor, and draw a curtain. I am assuming manually lowering the wheels.

After an hour of circling to burn fuel I am assuming, we landed.

Stewardesses looked at each other making the catholic cross sign, sweating nervously.

As soon as we were disembarking, the plane got re-loaded and off they went with the next load of victims.

Scary.

[Churchill]

On a £200 budget break to Rhodes.

Airline was Greek, called Galaxy Airways. Crappest 737 I have been on. Remember Dan Air?

Time – when Runway2 at Manchester was under construction.

All the stewardesses could say was Taaaeeee? Kaaaffeeeee? Noting else in English.

We were approaching for landing, when, suddenly the pilot pulled right back, and we went sideways over the unbuilt runway.

We shot back into the sky.

None of the crew said anything to us. I started to read the safety card, and checking out the exits.

Stewardess and one of the pilots go to back of plane, lift up some floor, and draw a curtain. I am assuming manually lowering the wheels.

After an hour of circling to burn fuel I am assuming, we landed.

Stewardesses looked at each other making the catholic cross sign, sweating nervously.

As soon as we were disembarking, the plane got re-loaded and off they went with the next load of victims.

Scary.

Ah go on, did you exagerate there just a little bit? Eh? Just to add a little atmosphere?

[Wilmslow]

Ah go on, did you exagerate there just a little bit? Eh? Just to add a little atmosphere?

No, not at all, this is exactly what happened! If the crew talked to us I m sure we would have felt ok, but the msot surreal part of the experience was not getting a singe work from any of the crew, other than very scared looking stewardesses.

Edit: The airline only operated for 2 years, defunct a decade ago. I wonder why.
http://www.airlinehistory.co.uk/Euro...e/Airlines.asp

[darmstadt]

Flying on a Douglas DC3 (Dakota) from Rhodesia to South Africa some years ago it caught up in a thunderstorm and just happened to get hit by lightning. Cue the plane dropping like a Guinness turd in a toilet and people screaming and wailing and lots of gnashing of teeth. My sister loved it, thought she was on a rollercoaster. Those planes were built to fly through anything and we got home safely.

Got an Air Nepal flight once from Frankfurt to London. They only had 3 planes and one was being serviced. This one had flown from Nepal to Dubai to Germany and then on to London so was starting to get a bit smelly. What a landing, we hit the runway like a rock, all the oxygen masks dropped down and we bounced up again, and down again, and up again until eventually we bounced to a stop somewhere in the Home Counties.

[Waldorf]

There are NO joys of commuting by air.

[DaveB]

We had an "interesting" approach to Palma last year. Came over the hills behind the town and all hell broke loose. Huge storm right over the airport. Bumping and bouncing all over the place, screaming from kids and assorted nervous flyers. Pilot took three goes to get us down. When we finally landed there was inches of water on the taxiways and hard standings.

[Bunk]

I started to read the safety card, and checking out the exits.

Yeah, cos that would have helped if you'd gone straight into the ******* runway