The best, worst and most memorable flights

[RitterKreuz]

For all you aviators out there i thought it would be fun to share your best, worst or most memorable flight stories (Real or simulated - first solo flights need not apply because thats been done before many times)  - ill start us off:

Best flight.

I had been asked to deliver a Piper Arrow from Jacksonville, Texas to its new owner in Salt Lake City in December 2004. I aksed a student (a good friend) of mine if he would like to tag along and log some high performance complex flight time for free - only catch being he had to pay for the airline ticket home. He agreed and we met at the airport at 5:00am. It was freezing cold, and dark... there was almost no moon and there were a million stars in the sky. Weather was CAVU all the way to Salt Lake. We started up and taxied out for the trip to Deming New Mexico, our first stop for fuel and a good leg stretching. We picked up our IFR clearance in the air and headed up to 10,000 feet. The air was calm and smooth and the toasty heater worked like a charm. Because we did not have oxygen on board we decided to hug the mexican border close to El Paso and then on to Deming, then up to Salt Lake over the lower elevations as opposed to taking a direct route over the rockies. It was nice to be able to see the gradual change from Pine trees and rolling hills to misquite trees and flat open terrain into the beautiful southern range of the rocky mountains. Wind was quite strong at Deming as it has been every time i have been there. After grabbing some snacks and walking around a bit we headed onward towards Salt Lake. The ground beneath us began a gradual change from dessert mountains to snow caps. In some of the mountain passes we would see homes built in obscure locations miles away from anywhere. Partially frozen mountain streams flowed past large herds of deer. It sticks in my mind quite vividly. As we crested the hills south of Provo Utah we could see into the Salt Lake City Basin. The smog that Salt lake can be nutourious for had already started to settle in pretty heavily. By the time we were established on the approach visibility had dropped down to nearly 1 1/2 miles. We could hear various airliners on the approach frequency into the main Salt Lake City airport, some of which had gone missed approach.  Seconds after landing, a heavy snowfall started to settle in. It was nice to have the flight over with. We had spent nearly 10 hours in the air that day. We got a good nights rest in the hotel and were bumped up to first class for the ride home on a Super 80 the next morning!  ;D

Worst Flight:

It was 6:30pm and one of my flight school clients was wanting a ride to Harlingen, TX near Brownsville. We had scheduled the flight a few days ahead of time and we were booked to take a Piper Aztek. But as we prepared to pull her out of the hangar we noticed a large puddle of red fluid under the right main gear. Hydraulic leak - and a bad one! We were within an hour of departure time, so i had to scramble to find a replacement aircraft. We could have used the School's warrior, but she was down for an annual. I would have requested the use of my buddy's Grumman Cheetah, but he had used it to go to a fishing trip in Mississippi and had not yet returned. The last thing i thought of was another friend who had recently purchased a 1965 Cessna 172. Perhaps he felt comfortable enough to loan it to me since i was in a pinch. He agreed to let me use it with the advice "try not to run her too close to 4 hours... she doesnt have the long range tanks." I recalculated my flight plan to count for the fuel capacity and burn of the smaller aircraft and the slower cruise speed. given the winds aloft the best we would manage to our destination was 95 knots. It took over 3 hours to cover the 320 nautical miles to our first fuel stop, Corpus Christi. The destination was another 1 hour and 20 minutes away. We reached Harlingen around midnight. Fortunately the FBO was open 24 hours. Since i knew that most of the FBOs on the return leg would be closed (corpus included) i decided to top off in Harlingen and head home. I was offered a spot on the fishing trip but declined since i had a couple of students who i was scheduled with the next day who were preparing for check rides. My presence would be required at home and i couldnt neglect that. So tanks topped i planned to stop at a little self serve pump that was advertised as 24 hours with credit card in Navasota. I blasted off into the night bound for home. Upon Reaching Navasota I had been flying for about 3 hours. After pulling up to the pump, i found that the pump was temporarily out of service!  :-[ I studied the airport directory and my charts for a suitable fuel stop... but found nothing open close by. I then decided to check the tanks visually using the light of my cell phone since i was too lazy to get the flash light out of my bag... thats when i discovered that my cell phone battery was dead! After checking the tanks i decided to take off and head home, i made sure to overfly airports that i knew were along my route. My logic was that I could run off the right tank until it was empty, then use the left tank and land & wait it out til morning, then top off and proceed home. I ran the left tank for 45 minutes until she sputtered. Since i only had 20 miles to get home at that point, i decided to continue.  ::) I made it home O.K. and topped her off, i had 6 gallons remaining on board. It was 4am and i still had a 30 minute drive home!

[expat]

Best flight:

Duxford 1994 as I recall, flew in the cockpit of the (at the time) only airworthy Bristol Blenheim during a public display flight. Almost wet myself with excitement.

Worst flight:

During a previous life I was on detachment to a RAF Kinloss in Scotland. My parents lived not too far from RAF St Mawgen in Cornwall. A Nimrod was programmed to fly from Kinloss to Mawgen for the weekend. On detachment we would always have a sweep stake for who could get the furthest away over the weekend. Scotland to the most southern tip of Englnad was sure to win. Rang OPs and got a seat on the aircraft. Cockpit for takeoff, real fun. What nobody told me was the flight south was to be a MADD Boom calibration flight. This involves the aircraft climbing and diving at +1 and -1 G. This went on for about 2 hours as I recall, but it felt like three weeks. I was as sick as a dog after about the first 10 minutes and did not stop until I got out of the car after my mother picked me up.  :'( Still I made about 50 plus Pounds out of it.

Matt

[Mobius]

Sounds like a good idea, but I don't have too many experiences in only 86.5 hours...

Best Flight:

Well, I didn't exactly fly this one, but I was going to.  It was the middle of August of 2003, and I had done one two solo cross country flights, and for my third, my instructor figured I could fly him from here (C29, near Madison, WI) to DuPage, IL, which is under the Chicago Class B, but not in it, so he could ferry the school's new 172RG back because it had just had a stormscope, GPS, autopilot, etc... put in it (this was right before GA glass panels became more and more mainstream).  I figured my instructor wouldn't lead me into something he didn't think I could handle, so I agreed and planned the flight and had all my weather and flight plan ready to go, but the visibility in DuPage was still less than three miles, even an hour after our scheduled departure time, so he had another (commercial) student working at the FBO, so he asked her to fly him down.  Because I was still there, my instructor offered to let me ride along for free, so I couldn't say no.  We got ready to head off, and since the brand new airport was about to start construction, the FBO was throwing a party in a couple of days, with various flying events, like precision landing contests, and flower bomb contests, so we figured this was a good time to do a test drop with one of the flower bombs, so we took off and came back around, and flew over the airport at around 100 ft AGL and dropped a big sack of flour out of the airplane, but we totally missed the target, but it was still fun.  After that, we started to head south to DuPage, and by the time we got there, the visibility was up to 10 miles or so, so I really could have flown it, but I wasn't really complaining .  We landed, and taxied to the avionics shop that's at the airport, and the student that flew us down left and flew back to C29, and my instructor and I picked up the other airplane with all kinds of shiny new toys.  This was my first (and  so far, only) time in a complex GA airplane, so I flew right seat with my instructor as PIC, so I got to watch all the new things that were going on.  We took off, and right after takeoff, my instructor switched over to autopilot, and we watched the airplane fly itself back home.  It was early afternoon on one of those hot, muggy summer days, so the sky was full of towering cumulus clouds, so it was like flying through huge canyons in the sky, except we could just blast right through the middle of them.  This was spectacular because this was the first (and still only) time I've got to fly around and through the clouds like that, and it's my absolute favorite way to fly, and I still remember flying through those huge clouds like that as my best flying memory, even though I wasn't even flying.

As for my worst flight:

I think I've been pretty lucky so far (but again, only 86.5 hours total) to not have had any major problems.  I had the flaps not come down one time on a mid-field downwind when I took a friend of mine up who gets airsick 95% of the time, but luckily he was able to hold it in this time, otherwise that definitely would have been my worst flight. But my actual worst flight would probably be the one I wrote about a couple of weeks ago when the nose-wheel shimmy damper went out on my takeoff roll and scared the cr*p out of me, but luckily that was also my shortest flight ever, so it wasn't so bad either.

[beaky]

Excellent topic... i know how reluctant most of us are to tell stories of our flying exploits   , but it's a great idea.
I'm gonna have to thumb thru my flight journal, because honestly, I've had so many great flights where something bad happened and so many trying flights that were rewarding in some way or had moments of bliss... it's hard to say which was "worst" and which was "best".
I think I'll skip the training flights; those were almost always a 50-50 mix of "who am I kidding, thinking I can do this?" and "I am at one with the sky!" (You all know what I mean).... hmmmm... definitely will require some thought.


But for now, I'll say: the worst-and-best- are probably still ahead of me...  ;D

[TacitBlue]

My best so far was thew first time I was allowed to solo outside of the pattern, it has a twist to it though. My Instructor told me to take off, and practice some turns, climbs, descents, etc. and to have fun. Well, my plan was to take off, and go fly around a nearby lake. This would involve some turns in both directions, and I assigned myself the altitude of 3000 ft. so that I would need to climb to after leaving the pattern. Well, it was a pretty warm day, so I had the window open when taxiing. I neglected to close it before starting my takeoff roll, no big deal right? of course not, I just waited until I had established a steady climb, and reached over and closed it. Apparently, in my haste I didn't get it latched properly because about ten minutes later, just as I was nearing the lake I heard sudden loud bang which scared the living poop out of me. The window had popped open . After gathering my composure, I closed it and continued my flight without event. Flying around that lake was pretty cool though, I hadn't known this, but apparently it is popular with water skiers. I could see the speedboats down below, and people fishing. This flight was the first time I had really felt at ease flying by myself (even with the window incident). It's what I call a pilot moment, where you say to yourself "I am an aviator!". I had rented a plane to go and fly around for a while, handled a small crisis, and brought the plane back safe and sound. I know it sounds cheesy, but that really is why it was my best flight to date.

P.S. Good topic, I've enjoyed reading everyone elses (more interesting) stories.

[wji]

Pardon my succinct writing style:

Best: KPSP-KGCN-KPSP, Decmember 3rd VFR PA28-181

Worst: (which was till pretty good, actually) was going into KRNO Nordo, VFR in a Mooney M20E. Yes, there's a 00:03:35  YouTube.com video-to-prove-it.

[Brett_Henderson]

Worst:

[Peanut1234]

Best and Most Memorable Flight: On August 25, 2006 Anno Domini, I flew a SIAI Marchetti SF.260 with Air Combat USA. It was my birthday gift, and I'll never forget that day. Anyway, we (my dad's plane and my plane) took off from Boeing Field in Seattle, Washington. We headed west toward Bremerton Natl and the Olympic Peninsula. We passed Bremerton, then began the first of our six dogfights. The G-forces were hitting, being tumbled around in the seat, was a great experience. Let me tell you, -G's are uncomfortable! Anyways, I beat my dad 4-2, so I got to do a "victory roll", which I do have proof of. My instructor, who is the head pilot at ACUSA, said that I was one of the best pilots that he's seen in A LONG time, not bragging or anything . That was an unforgetable moment.

Worst Flight: While on approach to Cleveland/Hopkins Intl, the visibility was low and winds were high. I was flying aboard a 737-700, with a window seat. So as we were about 10 feet off of the ground, a gust of wind hit the plane, and the wing on my side dipped very low to the ground, almost an engine strike, which would've brought the plane down. We went around, and landed on a different runway uneventfully. It was a little uneasing though...

Rhys

Edit: Forgot to add the link to the "victory roll", if you want to see. http://youtube.com/watch?v=HRhGmvnL00Y

[ozzy72]

My first time in a Chippie as an Air Cadet many many years ago. My first experience of aerobatics! I've been hooked on inverting myself at every possible occassion ever since. Anyone who has seen any of my screenshots knows what I'm talking about

[RitterKreuz]

good stories.

TacitBlue's story reminded me of a time that a friend of mine were out riding around one day so he could get a little hood time. So we are cruising along and we hear this faint whistle. we cant quite identify it but we know that between us we probably had 250 hours at the time and it wasnt anything that sounded normal.

whistling sound grows louder and louder.... and louder still. Almost got so loud that our headsets were not enough hearing protection! At the peak of the sound it almost sounded like a circular saw!!

we turn to head back to the airport as we think that this might be some kind of contact between the prop spinner and the cowling and just incase we wanted to land.

Well i start looking around thinking "what in the hell is that sound?!?!" and i look up at the "orange juice can" cessna vent on my side and it is barely cracked open. It was also dented  on one part of the opening from years before and it looked just like a big whistle.

So i give this vent a tug and open it about another inch or so and guess what - you guessed it THE WHISTLING NOISE STOPS!

We looked at each other all serious like for a second and exploded into laughter.  ;D

[beaky]

Worst:  The first leg of the trip to Oshkosh comes to mind. When landing-gear do not deploy normally, it kinda takes the fun out of it. But since the emergency pump worked and the worst of it all was waiting for three hours getting it all fixed, it's not THE worst flight ever. About 18 months ago, I was at the Morgan County airport (Ohio)... getting ready for the last leg home. I never have trusted "sticking" tanks for exact fuel calculations, but this measurement looked more than enough. En-route @ 4500ft.. the turbulence was so violent that it was either land ANYWHERE or try to climb to smoother air. Well... 6500 was smoother for sure, but the head-wind must have been near 50knots and that, combined with the climb, had all but used up my fuel reserve. Quite literally, the nearest airport (Newark, Ohio) was my only option.. and I HAD to descend out of that headwind, into the nasty turbulence, else truly risk running completely out of fuel. The last 20 minutes of that flight, I probably switched tanks 10 times, trying to get a feel for the gauges. Looking back now.. I know that wasn't a good idea and it would have been best to just run one low (or out) before switching, as to have a "fullest" tank in case of a go-around. ANYWAY.. I made it. If that 172's tanks are exactly 20gal each.. I had just over one gallon in one tank and just over two in the other     Technically, that IS 30 minutes of fuel (2100rpm  EXTRA lean)..  ::)

Best:  A short flight into Port Columbus. Our club president had dropped a 182 off there and called me to come shuttle him back to KOSU. Nothing really noteworthy about the flight, but it was that defining moment when you realize really are a pilot. The flight had purpose for one. Sure it's fun to just go punch holes in the sky, but actually accomplishing something is more fun. Flying in/out of Charlie airspace is pretty involved (and fun) too. You have to make 7 different radio contacts. After contacting approach, I was vectored straight to the airport and then turned over to the tower. Tower had me continue right over the airport, dead-center at 1500agl. Seeing all those jets on the ground, and on final (for more than one runway) from RIGHT OVER the field was something else ! After crossing over the field, tower cleared me to pattern altitude and a left-downwind for 28L. Then.. he immediately asked for a 360, for spacing on that downwind...  and THEN told me if I could fly at the numbers, he'd get me in ahead of a 737 on final. Straightening out, over the numbers, at 130kias, is something I'll never forget.

Departing was a blast too. Richard (I tried typing the name he goes by, but it got filtered into "thingy") (the guy I picked up) did all the radio work for me (co-pilots a great). You have to talk to clearance delivery first before you can taxi.. Then ground will give you a runway/taxi-route (waiting in line with big jets is neat)..  Then the tower for take-off clearance.. and finally departure, to get out of the airspace (that was 7, count'em ?). I wrapped it up with a perfect landing for the 20,000+hour pilot sitting next to me  :)

Those are a coupla good ones.  I recently landed at Newark, Ohio  flying the Cub in FS9 (making a little jaunt from upper Maine to... wherever; somewhere on the West Coast)... prior to that I had to put it down at Ashtabula on fumes because of headwinds.

Sticking the tanks is better than not looking at all, but the only sure way to know how much is in there is to top it off, eh?
And I just can't picture you looking at those gauges!?! Of all people... tsk, tsk. I never look at them, they are for show only in Cessnas, as far as I can tell.

[Brett_Henderson]

[quote]Sticking the tanks is better than not looking at all, but the only sure way to know how much is in there is to top it off, eh?

[Mobius]

I never look at them, they are for show only in Cessnas, as far as I can tell.

I can vouch for that.  I went flying last Saturday and had requested only half-tanks because I was taking a couple of people up.  When I flipped the master on to check the guages they read three quarters full on the left tank, and maybe seven eighths full on the right, which was still okay weight-wise for me.  I visually checked the tanks later in the preflight and they were much closer to half full on both, instead of what the guages read, which was still okay.  I was flying for 1.7 hours and when I got back, the gauges were still exactly where they were when I left, even though I should have used more than half the fuel left in the tanks.  Oh well, I still haven't crashed yet! (That's the attitude, huh?... [smiley=wink.gif])

[Brett_Henderson]

Oh Oh Oh... that reminds me of another story.. During my instrument training, my instructor and I flew to/from Burke Lakefront (neat airport)(best substitute for those who never got to land at Meigs) right in down town Cleveland.

When we got to Burke, the winds off Lake Erie presented a 20+ knot crosswind. I said, "We can't land here, can we ?".

[Triple_7]

Worst...dont know where to start

I've had some bad ones...including a TWA DC-9 that after takeoff we were forced to make an emergancy landing because the aircraft aparently didnt feel like climbing.  Also sitting over the wings and watching rivets rattle isnt my idea of a fun flight :-/

But more recently I would have to say the worst was my flights to and from Taiwan.  LAX-TPE 14 hours, TPE-LAX 13.5 hours.  Both times crammed in the hell known as the Malaysia Airlines 747-400 Economy class.  No leg room, person in front reclines putting them in your lap, virtualy cant move...and both times my seat mates fell asleep for almost the entire flights, didnt want to wake them up so I was stuck in my seat the entire time.  Its really painfull to stand up after 14 hours of being cramped in those seats.  Only good part of those flights was the meals and the beer  

Best flight.  Morning of August 19th, 2006...American ERJ-145 ORD-FWA.  Having already been delayed at TPE, and LAX, I ended up delayed at ORD as well.  But this was still the best flight I've ever been on.  Seats so comfortable, so much leg room, a whole 10 PAX including me 8-)  Flight attendent was friendly and virtualy no turbulence till approch into FWA.  Then again we only spent like 20 minutes in the air [smiley=beer.gif]  What made this flight the best was that it brought an end to my 27 hour journey from Taipei, and a great end to that 3 week trip [smiley=cool.gif]