Your Top Five Worst Flights

Jay Honeck

Jay Honeck

Touchdown! Greaser!
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Jay Honeck
Yep, it's a slow night at the hotel... :lol: All the tourists are GONE! :)

So, I will start. After 20 years of flying, it's hard to pare it down to just five notable flights, but here goes:

1. The Vomit Comet
Flying copilot in an Aztec from Iowa to Vegas, we skirted south of strong storms in Kansas. Everyone on board that plane threw up multiple time -- except me. We filled TWENTY ONE sick-sacks on that flight, and the sound of wretching and splashing in the intercom haunts me still.

It was...awful.

2. Short Field/Soft Field Departure from Keosauqua, Iowa.
I was in charge of finding places for our little group to fly out to. Someone said that Keosauqua "used to have a little grass strip" -- so we set out to "check it out".

We decided to take the Ercoupe, because it was a gorgeous day, and not too far from Iowa City. That decision nearly killed us.

The landing was uneventful, on a pretty grass strip right next to the river, but the grass was very deep. Like, 7" deep. It was obvious that the city had not been maintaining the strip, and we stopped very, very quickly. Worse, there were mole hills everywhere. Still we went to lunch -- might as well, right?

After lunch, we fired up the 'Coupe's 85 HP O-200, and trundled out to the runway. As we rolled down the runway, we kept hitting mole hills of loamy river bottom soil, which prevented us from gaining flying speed. Half way down, I aborted (to this day, it's still my only aborted departure), and taxied back down the strip to figure out what to do.

The Ercoupe is "unstallable" because of limited elevator travel. Unfortunately, this also make soft field departures impossible, because you can't lift the nose wheel off the ground with the elevator. The solution was simple: Roll up and down the runway as many times as necessary, compacting all the mole hills. Up and down I taxied, until I had flattened a suitably wide and long area.

I add full power, accelerating away from our direction of departure. This buys us an extra 100' or so, by my calculations. Spin the plane around, and "rocket" (ha!) down the runway, watching the airspeed all the way. We eventually got airborne, clearing the trees at the end by inches. I think we literally lifted that plane off the runway by clenching our butt muscles.

This flight is still the closest we've ever come to buying the farm in an airplane.

3. Turbulence in Oelwein, Iowa
Late winter, and I'm itchy to fly. It's cold, with gusty winds, but CAVU conditions. Mary doesn't want to go, because turbulence is forecast. I bravely state that we will "climb above it".

We never do, even at 10,500'. For over an hour, we were tossed around like a shuttlecock, and it still lives as the worst turbulence ever.

Both ways.

I still hear about this flight. :mad2:

4. Scud Running to Perry-Foley, FL.
We were coming out of Sun N Fun, trying to get past the inevitable line of weather at the Florida panhandle that separates winter from spring. Leaving Titusville, where we had just had to return due to a rough-running engine (fouled plugs), the weather was VFR -- just barely. Already on edge from the rough engine, we chug along beneath a solid, murky ceiling with tendrils of cloud hanging down, and the view of the ground slowly rolling forward...until it doesn't.

That sinking, trapped feeling was unlike anything I'd ever felt. We were down to 800 AGL, with deteriorating forward visability, when I finally hit "nearest" and land at Perry-Foley Airport, where we spent the afternoon with a dozen others who dropped in out of the murk.

5. Wake Turbulence in Albuquerque, NM
So I'm at the end of a long cross-country flight with Mary and the kids. We're coming into Albuquerque from the East, which means crossing a mountain ridge, turning right, and making a giant, descending S-curve to the airport, which is WAY down there.

Ahead of us, somewhere, is a C-130. He's way ahead, so I don't think about him much. In my head, I'm already parked and on the way to the hotel...

As we line up with their ginormous runway on a long straight in, the controller clears us to land and says -- "Caution, wake turbulence". I'm thinking "Hmm, a C-130 isn't THAT big..."

As I come over the numbers, fat, dumb, tired, and happy -- BLAM. I am thrown over into 80-degree, knife-edge flight! Suddenly WIDE awake, I slap the yoke back, and -- luckily -- level out for a fairly normal landing. It was the most unnerving thing, ever, and coming at the end of an uber-long day made it all the more jarring.

I have taken wake turbulence VERY seriously ever since.

So, there you have it -- pretty tame stuff, compared to some of y'all, I'm sure!

Next!
 
I am only 19 hours into my PPL training so I don't have 5 worst flights per se, but I did have one training flight where damn near everything went wrong!

Took off from KMYF (Montgomery Field) to head east and learn the way to KRNM (Ramona) where we were going to do a couple of landings. I take off, turn crosswind, then as I am rolling out of my turn into a downwind departure, I look over and my first thought is WTF????. Right at that moment the tower comes on and calls my tail number and says "26N, give way to Blackhawk crossing midfield at pattern altitude". Here I am 7 hours into my training and I am looking right at a freaking Blackhawk helicopter crossing directly in front of me at my altitude! My instructor tells me he is taking over and climbs and goes to the inside to avoid the wake turbulence.

Then we get out to KRNM, call the tower and give our position. Apparently they don't have radar or it was not working, ATC tells us to overfly the runway at 3000 and report mid-field. As we get closer to the airport, he changed his mind and told us we were cleared to land. We descend for a straight in approach. We were about a 1/2 mile out and a plane on the ground called tower for take off clearance. They said it was for a dispatch. Tower called us immediately, cancels landing clearance, make an immediate left turn and return to the pattern. Turns out it was a pair of fire fighting planes that were taking off for a real fire, so of course they get priority (As they should).

We had turned as instructed, but the tower called us and asked us where we were, the traffic behind us came on and said they didn't have us in sight. So both the tower and traffic immediately following couldn't see us. With 3 additional planes in the pattern, my instructor called the tower and said we were just going to leave.

Pretty much everything we had planned to accomplish that day had to be cancelled! We ended up doing stalls and engine out maneuvers instead.

For being 7 hours in, I was definitely like holy crap, wtf is going on, but ultimately I took away a lot of information that I might not have otherwise. Learned how to avoid Blackhawk wake, and if a plane needing to take off from a fire fighting airport is on a dispatch, expect to get out of the way asap!

Plus passing by a Blackhawk and seeing inside the door at the gunner looking back at me was kind of cool! :)

-Brian
 
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don't have five worst, got one worst - I flew out of the mountains in a snowstorm - not a good idea at all but at least I didn't ice up and don't try it in the dark

runner-up is crossing west Texas when the dust-devils were topping out near 11,000...red sky from all the dust...surreal with the sun a dull yellow-red circle in the sky
 
The worst three that come to mind:

As PIC, low altitude VMC into IMC in 'tower country'
As crew, <1 wingspan separation with >400 kt closure
As passenger, the contract flight that left me on NOLF San Nicholas

Nauga,
who has two buckets...
 
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I can't give you five, because there's one that eclipses the rest. Here's the story:

We're flying a corporate jet east to west across the country, it's about 9pm at night, and there are three passengers in the back. Nice smooth flight so far. Just west of Denver, I can feel it. A low rumble somewhere between my stomach and ass. It's subtle, but very much there. I'm the pilot flying, so I reach up and increase the Mach by .02. With only 1.5 hours to go it won't make a difference, but this very well might turn into a phycological battle, and bumping the speed a few knots becomes my first salvo.

About an hour out it's obvious I'm in a race against time. My digestive tract isn't happy, and I start fidgeting in my seat. I have a PIC decision to make. If I were smart, I'd admit defeat and do my business while still 400 miles out, comfortably at cruise. But as any corporate pilot knows, this isn't an easy choice to make. I'm not flying an airliner, or some huge ass corporate jet with a forward lav. I'd have to make the walk of shame through my passengers, and this isn't a mere p_iss break. I know how this is gonna go, and I have half a mind to tell my FO to put his mask on and dump the friggin' cabin. This isn't a big airplane, and it's poor form to be dropping heat a mere yard from the passengers.

But no, pride gets the better of me and I press on. We're on the arrival, descending somewhere over Palm Springs, and I'm looking like something out of a Wes Craven film. At this point my FO notices something is wrong, and I tell him, "I'll make it, but as soon as I set the parking brake, I'm gonna need to run inside." We continue. I'm glad there's no check airman onboard, because I'm adding a good 20 knots to anything ATC tells me to do. It was a strong effort, but somewhere just outside of LIMMA, my body tells me on no uncertain terms that it's time. We're just over five miles from the runway. I can either s_hit my pants, or give my FO a single pilot LAX story to tell chicks at the bar later tonight. I opt the latter. "Sorry buddy, she's all yours!"

It was ugly. Oh my God it was ugly. My FO made a fantastic landing, but I figured I'd need to make a call to the insurance company and total the airplane once we blocked in. The smell was horrible. Fortunately the passengers all knew me and took it in good humor. I wanted to commit Hara-Kiri as soon as possible.

We still laugh about it over beers today.
 
kayoh190 said:
I can't give you five, because there's one that eclipses the rest. Here's the story:

We're flying a corporate jet east to west across the country, it's about 9pm at night, and there are three passengers in the back. Nice smooth flight so far. Just west of Denver, I can feel it. A low rumble somewhere between my stomach and ass. It's subtle, but very much there. I'm the pilot flying, so I reach up and increase the Mach by .02. With only 1.5 hours to go it won't make a difference, but this very well might turn into a phycological battle, and bumping the speed a few knots becomes my first salvo.

About an hour out it's obvious I'm in a race against time. My digestive tract isn't happy, and I start fidgeting in my seat. I have a PIC decision to make. If I were smart, I'd admit defeat and do my business while still 400 miles out, comfortably at cruise. But as any corporate pilot knows, this isn't an easy choice to make. I'm not flying an airliner, or some huge ass corporate jet with a forward lav. I'd have to make the walk of shame through my passengers, and this isn't a mere p_iss break. I know how this is gonna go, and I have half a mind to tell my FO to put his mask on and dump the friggin' cabin. This isn't a big airplane, and it's poor form to be dropping heat a mere yard from the passengers.

But no, pride gets the better of me and I press on. We're on the arrival, descending somewhere over Palm Springs, and I'm looking like something out of a Wes Craven film. At this point my FO notices something is wrong, and I tell him, "I'll make it, but as soon as I set the parking brake, I'm gonna need to run inside." We continue. I'm glad there's no check airman onboard, because I'm adding a good 20 knots to anything ATC tells me to do. It was a strong effort, but somewhere just outside of LIMMA, my body tells me on no uncertain terms that it's time. We're just over five miles from the runway. I can either s_hit my pants, or give my FO a single pilot LAX story to tell chicks at the bar later tonight. I opt the latter. "Sorry buddy, she's all yours!"

It was ugly. Oh my God it was ugly. My FO made a fantastic landing, but I figured I'd need to make a call to the insurance company and total the airplane once we blocked in. The smell was horrible. Fortunately the passengers all knew me and took it in good humor. I wanted to commit Hara-Kiri as soon as possible.

We still laugh about it over beers today.
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Man, that's rough...I still recall with horror the night I had too much Mexican food at Enrique's in Ponca City and had to divert and unleash hell at Strother Field in Winfield, Kansas...As if that wasn't enough, a friend and her mom were onboard that night, and I remember walking back to the airplane (after a good 25 minutes, mind you), starting it up, flying 20 minutes back to Stearman Field without looking either of them in the eye or uttering even one word...It is, however, somewhat funny to look back on it now ;)
Blue skies,
Jacob
 
Kayoh, Did you have Chinese or Mexican for dinner?
 
kayoh190 said:
I can't give you five, because there's one that eclipses the rest. Here's the story:

We're flying a corporate jet east to west across the country, it's about 9pm at night, and there are three passengers in the back. Nice smooth flight so far. Just west of Denver, I can feel it. A low rumble somewhere between my stomach and ass. It's subtle, but very much there. I'm the pilot flying, so I reach up and increase the Mach by .02. With only 1.5 hours to go it won't make a difference, but this very well might turn into a phycological battle, and bumping the speed a few knots becomes my first salvo.

About an hour out it's obvious I'm in a race against time. My digestive tract isn't happy, and I start fidgeting in my seat. I have a PIC decision to make. If I were smart, I'd admit defeat and do my business while still 400 miles out, comfortably at cruise. But as any corporate pilot knows, this isn't an easy choice to make. I'm not flying an airliner, or some huge ass corporate jet with a forward lav. I'd have to make the walk of shame through my passengers, and this isn't a mere p_iss break. I know how this is gonna go, and I have half a mind to tell my FO to put his mask on and dump the friggin' cabin. This isn't a big airplane, and it's poor form to be dropping heat a mere yard from the passengers.

But no, pride gets the better of me and I press on. We're on the arrival, descending somewhere over Palm Springs, and I'm looking like something out of a Wes Craven film. At this point my FO notices something is wrong, and I tell him, "I'll make it, but as soon as I set the parking brake, I'm gonna need to run inside." We continue. I'm glad there's no check airman onboard, because I'm adding a good 20 knots to anything ATC tells me to do. It was a strong effort, but somewhere just outside of LIMMA, my body tells me on no uncertain terms that it's time. We're just over five miles from the runway. I can either s_hit my pants, or give my FO a single pilot LAX story to tell chicks at the bar later tonight. I opt the latter. "Sorry buddy, she's all yours!"

It was ugly. Oh my God it was ugly. My FO made a fantastic landing, but I figured I'd need to make a call to the insurance company and total the airplane once we blocked in. The smell was horrible. Fortunately the passengers all knew me and took it in good humor. I wanted to commit Hara-Kiri as soon as possible.

We still laugh about it over beers today.
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:rofl: Thanks for the stellar description and good writing!
 
Worst flight was getting my night currency a few months ago. I couldn't find any airport, lost my bearings, got confused with traffic patterns, landings sucked. I like to forget that flight.
 
Jay Honeck said:
As I come over the numbers, fat, dumb, tired, and happy -- BLAM. I am thrown over into 80-degree, knife-edge flight! Suddenly WIDE awake, I slap the yoke back, and -- luckily -- level out for a fairly normal landing. It was the most unnerving thing, ever, and coming at the end of an uber-long day made it all the more jarring.

I have taken wake turbulence VERY seriously ever since.
Click to expand...

I catch some occasional crap at my home field for my VERY conservative stance on wake turbulence. Jay's experience reinforces my belief that you take it much more seriously once you've lived the terror. I did, back in 1994, when my instrument flight instructor and I were on a 7-mile final to San Jose, CA in a 172. The tower inexplicably cleared a 757 to fly a short base and cut in front of us to land. It was about 500 feet above us and 2 miles in front of us when it turned final. We knew we were in trouble but things started happening before we could plot our escape.

BLAM!! Uncommanded 90 degree, maybe more, snap roll left, followed by an equally violent roll back right. Our headsets and flight bags flew about the cabin. Both of us were momentarily completely disoriented. The plane shook and rocked violently. Control inputs had no effect. Then, as quickly as it began, it ended, and we landed normally.

My instructor, who was visibly shaken, clambered up to the tower and tore everyone up there a new one. It took us a while to regain our composure before we struck back out for our home field.

BTW, that's one of my five worst. After work tonight I'll see if I can think of the others. I know they're out there!
 
Worst flight I've flown was Norcal to LA in the spring, encountering some unexpected ice in IMC coming over the mountains North of the LA basin. I've posted about it before.

Worst flight I was a passenger in is in the back of a C141 from Edwards to Texas (returning from NTC) and someone barfed in their helmet. Then, nearly everyone barfed in their helmet. It was a VERY miserable ride. I held it in, but still felt sick for three days.
 
we can only pick 5???

They are all a miracle if I get down in one piece.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
we can only pick 5???

They are all a miracle if I get down in one piece.
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Personally, I could give a crap when stuff happens to just me. Had lots of that sort of thing. My couple "worst" flights involve other people.
 
I don't have enough hours for 5 horrible flights, although I've got a few already under my belt the worst by far was on one of my first solo flights from KBNA to KMQY to practice touch and goes. I was entering the downwind when I hear the tower talking to another student pilot on upwind. The tower asks if he sees the traffic off his wing and he responds with affirmative. The only problem is he was looking off his other wing and proceeded to turn crosswind right as I entered the pattern. He pulled up at the last second and went about 10 or 15 feet over my windshield. It was terrifying. He was waiting when I got back to KBNA to apologize, but I was so shaken all I could do was say "no problem" and walk off...
 
Like it anytime I'm flying,if it's a bad flight I try to forget about it. I can still remember getting too close to a thunderstorm. Never again.
 
Like never again,scary to say the least. Your just along for the ride.
 
I've only had a couple of bad ones:

The time I came surprisingly close to hitting a hangar. The shakes only lasted a day or so...

The first time (as a student pilot) I went out to shoot TnG's on a bumpy 95 degree day. Didn't get sick, didn't get close, but it was uncomfortably hot and bumpy.
 
I got two. One I have posted here before about being #2 behind traffic and another inbound plane was to be #3 but looking at the wrong aircraft, tried to take my spot. It was hard to sleep that night.

First off, I don't need a lecture from anyone on this. I understand.
It was a Self induced problem.

About 6 weeks ago. A couple members here and I went to Cedar Mills to get some air to air photos. (that part worked out beautifully)

However the departure was eye opening.
My plane needed 2464 feet to get up that day given the conditions (Heat + Grass + uphill) and that strip is ~3000. The math worked out but no room for error and I made one.

Generally the rule of thumb is land over the water and takeoff over the water.
We got out on the runway and the wind coming from the tree end of the field was significant.

We all agreed given the wind it is probably better to go ahead and takeoff into it.
I go to the water end and do my runup. The other 2 are ready to go and I felt like I really needed another minute to go through my checklist but I didn't want to be holding anyone up (I know I know) so I rushed myself.

RPM 1800, left mag off, left mag on, right mag off, right mag on, carb heat on, check suction, RPM 1100.

Roll out and give it full throttle.
Acceleration is slow but increasing.
I see the wall of trees at the far end getting bigger.
Something isn't right half way down I am at 40 kts Vr is 65.
Maybe I can make it.
The trees are getting bigger, my airspeed is creeping up.
Something is wrong.
I am not gaining speed fast enough.
Oh there are some people near the runway watching and I am having a problem but I don't know why I am accelerating so slow and I don't want to be watched and make a mistake.

Point of no return and I hit Vy (that's a rough spot to be in)
I had maybe 2 seconds to decide.

I am right on the cusp of flight in a lethargic plane.

Glanced down just to confirm throttle was full forward and saw my carb heat was on.

Abort! Aborted successfully.

I was nervous, and sort of in a blur. I don't remember anything vividly except I hear one of the other pilots come on and just say "you did the right thing"

I should have gotten out and calmed down a bit but I just did what I felt was the "Back taxi of shame" and went back to the far end of the runway. I explained the situation to the other pilots and they made me laugh "Bryan, do you get a lot of carb ice in that plane on 100 degree days?"

This time I went ahead and opted for the short field takeoff at one of their suggestions. It was not ideal. 2464 feet is a lot of runway.

I am rolling and getting better speed this time I am accelerating faster and on my radio I hear "much better".

I hit Vr about the 3/4 mark and still not a perfect situation, I rotate and climb. It feels like I am going to settle back down to the ground but I don't. I am over vX but can't seem to hit Vy but I am climbing and I clear the treetops.

It felt like inches. I swore to God I would never play with numbers this close again.
We got up and out and everything was perfect after.

I landed and texted both pilots and called one of them asking how close I was to the trees. Both said easily 75-100 feet. Okay it was good to hear that. I really thought I was skimming them.

In 200 hours of flying, this was easily my worst 10 minutes.
The lessons learned were numerous and I have spent a significant amount of time breaking down what I did wrong and right. I guess that is part of the silver lining.
 
Bryan, One rule of thumb you probably already know...

If one does not reach 71% of rotation speed(47 kts for you and me) when you are half way down the runway, one may not have enough runway length for a safe takeoff and should abort the takeoff roll. Mark the half way point with something easily seen. One can begin T/O roll with no flaps to minimize drag, then add one notch of flaps when you reach rotation speed. After your aircraft breaks the runway surface, fly in ground effect for several seconds to pick up speed before climbing out at Vx then Vy.
 
Jay Honeck said:
2. Short Field/Soft Field Departure from Keosauqua, Iowa.
I was in charge of finding places for our little group to fly out to. Someone said that Keosauqua "used to have a little grass strip" -- so we set out to "check it out".

We decided to take the Ercoupe, because it was a gorgeous day, and not too far from Iowa City. That decision nearly killed us.

The landing was uneventful, on a pretty grass strip right next to the river, but the grass was very deep. Like, 7" deep. It was obvious that the city had not been maintaining the strip, and we stopped very, very quickly. Worse, there were mole hills everywhere. Still we went to lunch -- might as well, right?

After lunch, we fired up the 'Coupe's 85 HP O-200, and trundled out to the runway. As we rolled down the runway, we kept hitting mole hills of loamy river bottom soil, which prevented us from gaining flying speed. Half way down, I aborted (to this day, it's still my only aborted departure), and taxied back down the strip to figure out what to do.

The Ercoupe is "unstallable" because of limited elevator travel. Unfortunately, this also make soft field departures impossible, because you can't lift the nose wheel off the ground with the elevator. The solution was simple: Roll up and down the runway as many times as necessary, compacting all the mole hills. Up and down I taxied, until I had flattened a suitably wide and long area.

I add full power, accelerating away from our direction of departure. This buys us an extra 100' or so, by my calculations. Spin the plane around, and "rocket" (ha!) down the runway, watching the airspeed all the way. We eventually got airborne, clearing the trees at the end by inches. I think we literally lifted that plane off the runway by clenching our butt muscles.

This flight is still the closest we've ever come to buying the farm in an airplane.
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Bold move going for lunch. Probably should have opted for the drug store for a diuretic.
 
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