Job Discussion Forums

[basiltherat]

Anyone had any hair-raising flights during their travels to and from their countries of work. Ive just got back to the uk for a deserved month off. arrived back at heathrow on sunday afternoon. the landing was so terrifying that the pilot felt it necessary to stand at the front of the plane as we disembarked to apologise to each of us for the crushing landing (almost tipped over as we landed virtually hopping down the runway). admittedly it was windy and dreadful for the prospect of attempting any sort of landing but ... british airways . I mean COME ON !
Anyone have any other nightmare journeys ?
basil

[lagerlout2006]

Not to home but I was on an internal Korea flight---Seoul to Busan.. 2 years ago a Chinese pilot crashed a plane into a mountain which is not too encouraging. Pilot error was blamed.

Do you know when someone spreads their arms and pretends they are a plane? That is what this flight was like. The wings of the plane were going up and down up and down. Not good...As luck would have it that was the first flight I was sober on since I was a kid. There were no apologies from the pilot. Not even a beverage... I RAN out of that airport.

[yaramaz]

1. London to Ghana, Balkan Airlines, via Sofia and Tunis, early 1998. First of all, inside the plane you could plainly see the bolts that held the plane together. Did you know they move when you fly? Second, they served (essential) 14% alcohol Bulgarian beer to go with the mound of goulash (yum!). Third, there were stowaways on board, hence the stop in Tunis to drop them off. Fourth, upon landing back at Heathrow, in the rain we couldnt disembark for a hour. There were fire trucks wailing towards us. No explanation. I learned later that upon landing our wheels had caught fire.

2. Paris-Amsterdam, this past Christmas, KLM. It was so stormy outside that we couldnt land even after 4 attempts. The pilot sounded frighteningly tense as we flew toward Germany yet again, as we bounced and shook and shuddered. Kept referring to cryptic 'probelems' that we were experiencing but refused to elaborate. The family of four behind me vomited repeatedy and noisily for the entire flight, one after the other in strict rotation.

[Teacher in Rome]

Anywhere by bus in Nepal. The bus drivers are all "protected" by a Hindu god (generally Ganesh) which means they can drive at any speed they like and overtake round the hair-pin corners safe in the knowledge that their god will keep them safe. Never mind the evidence of unlucky bus drivers to be seen in the gorges 100 metres below us. Mind you, on long bus journeys, a break to allow us to stretch our legs and witness one of the accidents being winched back to the road wa always a lesson in mortality...

[Marcoregano]

London to Istanbul in 1987 on the now defunct (at least, it should be) Air Tarom (the old 'Eastern Bloc' Rumanian Airlines). Apart from the fact that it was a crap airline using dodgy Russian planes, there was an electric storm around Bucharest. Pretty scary. Also, it was the only time I've ever been served home-brewed beer on a flight (plastic tops, no labels), with hard stale-bread cheese sandwiches. Plus, a few dicky internal Korean Air flights from Mokpo to Seoul. Not to mention a couple of spooky China Southern flights. And then there was....

[johnslat]

My most hair-raising journey was the one I didn't take. I'd arrived in Riyadh in August of 1980 and I and another couple, a guy from the USA and his Burmese wife, talked the director there in letting us go to the Jeddah branch of the IPA. We went to the airport, but our scheduled flight was delayed. However, three hours later, a flight coming from Pakistan but going on to Jeddah arrived and let some passengers off. An announcement was made, in Arabic, that families on our delayed flight could board this other plane to Jeddah. So, the three of us jumped up and got in line. The couple got through. I had my wedding ring on and had planned to tell the guy at the gate that my wife was "back there" in the line. But, at the last minute, for some reason I decided not to lie about it. When I admitted I wasn't "family", I was ordered back to the terminal. The plane, with 301 people aboard, including the IPA couple, took off. Here's what then happened:

http://planecrashinfo.com/w800819.htm

"The flight experienced fire in the aft cargo compartment 6 minutes after takeoff from Rilyadh. The plane returned to the airport and landed but because of a delay in evacuating the plane, all aboard were killed by smoke and fire. Half a minute before landing the captain decided not to order an emergency evacuation. When he landed, he did not stop immediately but instead proceeded to make a normal landing delaying the fire equipment from putting out the fire. It took a full twenty-three minutes after touchdown before the doors were opened. The failure of the captain to prepare the cabin crew for immediate evacuation upon landing and his failure in not making a maximum stop landing on the runway, with immediate evacuation."

I've often thought about that night, that couple and the other 299 people on board.
Regards,
John

[foster]

Have been very lucky with planes, but taking a cab in Shenzhen is another story. As a friend so eloquently put it, there are NO traffic laws, merely suggestions. Our illiterate cab driver was swerving all over the road, driving bettwen 2 lanes and we were almost struck 3 times by large vehicles.

[Joachim]

In Indonesia:

From Semarang to Surabaya by bus - eight hours in the most hellish roads imaginable, I was unable to sleep until I put on my headphones and a towel over my head, just so I was unaware of the sonds and sights, but I could still feel all the "swerving" - NOBODY observed the traffic laws in a country where it's possible to buy a drivers licence for $50 US.

And a plane from Denpasar Bali to Yogyakarta on Garuda - landing was so bad that the overhead lockers flew open and stuff fell out all over the cabin. people wer screaming, and my hear rate didn't get back to normal for several hours.

Also Bangkok-Hong Kong on China Airlines is no picnic!

[Roger]

A) Plane from Varanasi touching down at Kathmandu Airport;
our pilot made three attempts at landing, each time but the
last time he put the machine on a steep ascent again, which
I felt in the pit of my stomach, while you could see peasants
outside tending their paddies.
B) Then the taxi ride to the Tibetan border: the first 70 kms
or so were in good shape, but around a corner we came to a sudden
halt in front of a stomach-churning abyss that the heavy summer
monsoon rain had washed into the tarmac! From there on we had
to walk for the next 50 kms.
C) Inside Tibet, bus drivers would coast down the steepest roads
from passes 5300 meters above sea level to the bottom 1000 meters
below them...

[bayabule]

A ferry from Jepara, central Java to the Karimunjawa Islands north of central Java. 6 hours of hell.
We were delighted to get "VIP" tickets and were seated in an airconditioned room at the front of the boat with a TV, huge windows out onto the sea, comfy seas etc. Huh!
The Javanese passengers spent the first 2 hours stuffing their faces non stop with fruit and instant noodles, then the next 4 throwing up all over the floor. The TV was blaring Indo games shows, the sun was beating in the windows and the ac broke, children were screaming. The boat was rocking so violently I was mentally preparing to abandon ship. My 3 companions were seasick so had left me looking after all the luggage in that horrid room while they sat on deck so I couldn't leave to get some air. Finally I got to go to the toilet which was the only one of 6 that wasn't locked. It was a squat toilet. If you can imagine using a squat toilet on a heaving boat you can maybe imagine the state of that room.
It was worth it though as the islands were amazing and we had an excellet holiday.
On the return trip we were wiser and paid the captain for the use of the crew's cabin, took loads of travel pills and passed out for the entire crossing.
Incidentally, someone once told me that if you're on a ferry that goes down in Indonesia you should swim away as fast as possible as they can't swim and will climb on to any foreigner that's there. They know we can swim you see. Apparently everyone will pile onto you and you'll be dragged under. This was going through my mind during the whole journey. And sharks.
2nd choice goes to any bus journey in Java, know where you're comng from Joachim!

[Capergirl]

I had a similar experience with "Scare China" five or six years ago. I believe we were heading to Taipei from the Phillippines (memory isn't serving too well at the moment). Anyway, the pilot had such a hard landing, he broke off part of the landing gear. We basically skidded down the runway. Fun, fun!