Airline Horror Stories

[chanel]

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration took aim Monday at tarmac horror stories, ordering airlines to let passengers stuck in stranded airplanes get off the plane after three hours.

With its new regulations, the Transportation Department sent an unequivocal message on the eve of the busy holiday travel season: Don't hold travelers hostage to delayed flights.

"Airline passengers have rights, and these new rules will require airlines to live up to their obligation to treat their customers fairly," Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said in a statement.

Under the new regulations, airlines would be fined $27,500 per passenger for each violation of the three-hour limit, LaHood said.

FOXNews.com - Government Orders Airlines to Let Passengers Off Stranded Planes or Face Fines

Thank goodness!!!!

 

[Midnight Marauder]

Here's mine:

1989. Getting ready to get on a plane at Minneapolis/St. Paul. Whole airport is in disarray, undergoing renovations. Big mess, crap everywhere.

I get to my gate, and there sits my plane. They are loading baggage but I also notice they have a engine cowling open with two mechanics working on the engine, and they have a access panel open near the front landing gear, two guys doing something there too. Really filled me with confidence.

We board the plane, everything here is in disarray too. Panels above our heads open, wires and shit sticking out. I look down, see the mechanics are now closing up the engine cowling. Two more techs board and start stuffing the wires up into the compartments and closing up the panels above our heads.

Things are now starting to look and feel a little better, then it happened.

I see Terry Funk boarding the plane. Now I know we're all dead. A celebrity on the plane, with all this chaos. We're dead.

At least it's a friend though, I have known Terry for many years and as fate would have it, he had the seat next to me. So, we started chatting about the chaos, and old times. Then it got worse.

A female voice came over the speakers, "Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking..."

Terry looked at me and said, "Oh shit, here we go" to which I replied, "I guess it's too late to take a car?" Then said, "Everything will be fine, only the good die young and we're both still far too young!"

Well, our chauvinism aside, the flight went swimmingly well and we arrived at DFW ahead of schedule with not even a bump in the ride, and with the smoothest landing ever!

An aside: During the flight, Terry gave me a tip: Watch WCW wrestling, something big is gonna happen. Two months later something big DID happen, Terry was back on the show and attacked Ric Flair, putting him "out of action" with a pile driver on a table!

That summer and fall, and on into the winter was some good pro wrestling coming out of WCW at the time...

Ahh, memories...

 

[rightwinger]

2002 I'm in Killeen Texas and board a 35 passenger turboprop bound for Dallas. As we clear the runway, the plane starts to shake violently and struggles to gain altitude. We gradually get to about a thousand feet and the plane is not shaking as much.
The captain gets on the PA and announces that we hit a flock of birds at takeoff and the left engine is on fire. We start to circle back and burn off excess fuel. Finally, after about 40 minutes we clear for landing and approach the runway. It seems every ambulance and fire truck in Killeen is now parked alongside the runway.
Still shaking like crazy, we came in for a fairly decent landing and parked at the end of the runway while the emergency vehicles converged on us. As we deplaned, you could see the feathers and bird guts all over the left side of the plane. The engine was charred and smouldering.

I still got on the next available plane out of there

 

[chanel]

Holy moly guys!!

We've experienced just about everything that could go wrong from cancelled flights to missed connections to lost luggage. But I have never been stuck on the tarmac for hours. I really think I might lose it.

I love to travel, but it can be so dang stressful.

 

[Oddball]

Here's mine:

1989. Getting ready to get on a plane at Minneapolis/St. Paul. Whole airport is in disarray, undergoing renovations. Big mess, crap everywhere.

I get to my gate, and there sits my plane. They are loading baggage but I also notice they have a engine cowling open with two mechanics working on the engine, and they have a access panel open near the front landing gear, two guys doing something there too. Really filled me with confidence.

We board the plane, everything here is in disarray too. Panels above our heads open, wires and shit sticking out. I look down, see the mechanics are now closing up the engine cowling. Two more techs board and start stuffing the wires up into the compartments and closing up the panels above our heads.

Things are now starting to look and feel a little better, then it happened.

I see Terry Funk boarding the plane. Now I know we're all dead. A celebrity on the plane, with all this chaos. We're dead.

At least it's a friend though, I have known Terry for many years and as fate would have it, he had the seat next to me. So, we started chatting about the chaos, and old times. Then it got worse.

A female voice came over the speakers, "Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking..."

Terry looked at me and said, "Oh shit, here we go" to which I replied, "I guess it's too late to take a car?" Then said, "Everything will be fine, only the good die young and we're both still far too young!"

Well, our chauvinism aside, the flight went swimmingly well and we arrived at DFW ahead of schedule with not even a bump in the ride, and with the smoothest landing ever!

An aside: During the flight, Terry gave me a tip: Watch WCW wrestling, something big is gonna happen. Two months later something big DID happen, Terry was back on the show and attacked Ric Flair, putting him "out of action" with a pile driver on a table!

That summer and fall, and on into the winter was some good pro wrestling coming out of WCW at the time...

Ahh, memories...

Michael Hayes and Jimmy Garvin got me dead drunk after a match in Minneapolis back in the '80s. I guess they liked my impersonation of their schticks.

Although I don't have an airline horror story, my first cross-country solo featured an alternator failure. Damn scary watching your fuel gauges go dead.

 

[noose4]

I have been lucky with airline travel the closest I have had to a possible bad story actually turned out pretty well, I was flying to New Orleans in February 2 years ago, it was a mild winter but of course the day of my flight was the one day of snow, the plane was fully loaded and ready for take off after being delayed for about 2 hours when the flight was cancelled but the pilot talked them into letting us take off and once we left the ground it was such a relief as a major headache was avoided.

 

[noose4]

Here's mine:

1989. Getting ready to get on a plane at Minneapolis/St. Paul. Whole airport is in disarray, undergoing renovations. Big mess, crap everywhere.

I get to my gate, and there sits my plane. They are loading baggage but I also notice they have a engine cowling open with two mechanics working on the engine, and they have a access panel open near the front landing gear, two guys doing something there too. Really filled me with confidence.

We board the plane, everything here is in disarray too. Panels above our heads open, wires and shit sticking out. I look down, see the mechanics are now closing up the engine cowling. Two more techs board and start stuffing the wires up into the compartments and closing up the panels above our heads.

Things are now starting to look and feel a little better, then it happened.

I see Terry Funk boarding the plane. Now I know we're all dead. A celebrity on the plane, with all this chaos. We're dead.

At least it's a friend though, I have known Terry for many years and as fate would have it, he had the seat next to me. So, we started chatting about the chaos, and old times. Then it got worse.

A female voice came over the speakers, "Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking..."

Terry looked at me and said, "Oh shit, here we go" to which I replied, "I guess it's too late to take a car?" Then said, "Everything will be fine, only the good die young and we're both still far too young!"

Well, our chauvinism aside, the flight went swimmingly well and we arrived at DFW ahead of schedule with not even a bump in the ride, and with the smoothest landing ever!

An aside: During the flight, Terry gave me a tip: Watch WCW wrestling, something big is gonna happen. Two months later something big DID happen, Terry was back on the show and attacked Ric Flair, putting him "out of action" with a pile driver on a table!

That summer and fall, and on into the winter was some good pro wrestling coming out of WCW at the time...

Ahh, memories...

Michael Hayes and Jimmy Garvin got me dead drunk after a match in Minneapolis back in the '80s. I guess they liked my impersonation of their schticks.

Although I don't have an airline horror story, my first cross-country solo featured an alternator failure. Damn scary watching your fuel gauges go dead.

The bar I hung out in as a teenager was a bar that was often frequented by Andre the Giant, a bunch of guys I know got into a kind of brawl with him, it didnt go well for them, they wound up throwing a bar stool at him and running, thankfully I was not involved in it.

 

[Midnight Marauder]

Michael Hayes and Jimmy Garvin got me dead drunk after a match in Minneapolis back in the '80s. I guess they liked my impersonation of their schticks.

I was a Freebird fan as well!

By the way Terry and myself had our share of beers during that layover at DFW. We'd actually had a couple on the flight as well. So we were pretty gssed up by the time our separate flights to Amarillo popped up!

Although I don't have an airline horror story, my first cross-country solo featured an alternator failure. Damn scary watching your fuel gauges go dead.

I had one fail once, but it didn't kill the system. What happened was a a rectifier opened, making the alternator put out AC voltage which for some reason was okay for everything except the bettery! I never knew I had a problem until I stopped, turned off the engine, went in and got my beer then tried to re-start! It was...

Nothing. Dead.

As a doornail.

 

[Midnight Marauder]

The bar I hung out in as a teenager was a bar that was often frequented by Andre the Giant, a bunch of guys I know got into a kind of brawl with him, it didnt go well for them, they wound up throwing a bar stool at him and running, thankfully I was not involved in it.

KFDA-TV, a Saturday morning in 1971... At the time they did their TV tapings there for the Saturday afternoon wrestling show for Dory Funk Jr's NWA promotion. Andre was in town. I was 8. He was 8 foot! (Seemed like.)

I was at ringside when he came in, the 20th man in a 20 man over the top rope battle royal where you had to get the belt off of a 20 foot pole to win it. I was at the corner where he took his now-famous leather vest off, and he looked down at me, smiled, and just dropped it on me! It was so large and heavy and I was so small it knocked me down to the floor and covered me up. I had a hell of a time getting out from under it to watch the match!

 

[froggy]

I have this premonition that the flight explodes in mid-air, killing everybody. Then i wake up and assumes the premonition was just a dream but as events from my vision begin to repeat themselves in reality, wait maybe that was a movie.

 

[JW Frogen]

I was once on a flight in a storm, I had a window seat and I look out at the wing of the plane, much to my despair there was a manic little gremlin tearing his claws into the engine.

I try to get the cabin crew to listen to me, but they would not. No one will believe me.

NO ONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Then the bar service started and I returned to my normal self.

 

[Midnight Marauder]

I was once on a flight in a storm, I had a window seat and I look out at the wing of the plane, much to my despair there was a manic little gremlin tearing his claws into the engine.

I try to get the cabin crew to listen to me, but they would not. No one will believe me.

NO ONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Then the bar service started and I returned to my normal self.

 

[JW Frogen]

That is where that little bastard taunted me, "You are sober and the cabin crew is slooooow with the booze, slooooow. And the bottles are smaaaaal, so very smaaaaalll."

 

[Midnight Marauder]

That is where that little bastard taunted me, "You are sober and the cabin crew is slooooow with the booze, slooooow. And the bottles are smaaaaal, so very smaaaaalll."

And you just looked over and said, "DENNY CRANE!" and took a shot at him with a pistol!