Pilots and flight attendants: What was the scariest thing to happen to you in-flight? [Serious]

1. Private pilot here. I only have about 110 hours so far, so I haven't had any near misses or anything regarding crashes/collisions yet, and hopefully, I never will. However, I was taking my mother to breakfast at an airport about 55 miles from our home airport. This airport is uncontrolled, so I was making the appropriate self-announcing calls on the airport's frequency and was scanning for traffic as well as I could. This airport shares a radio frequency with about 3-4 other airports, so when you make your call, it's important to note at the beginning and end which airport you're addressing. With no one in sight, I enter the pattern to set up to land. As I'm about to turn left base ( [diagram for those unfamiliar with traffic patterns](http://ivao.co.uk/training/material/vfr1/Image_002.jpg) ), I announce it on my radio. Immediately after the announcement, some guy yells into his radio "LOOK OUT, LOOK OUT!" My heart drops, as I immediately think that I somehow missed spotting some other traffic (who perhaps wasn't using their radio) and that we were going to collide. Turns out there were sky divers being released at one of the other airports on the frequency. The pilot who made the call made this clear after the "LOOK OUT" part, but for about a second, I was thinking "oh shit" because he didn't make it clear that he was at a different airport. My mom and I did get a laugh out of it afterwards, although she was also terrified when it happened. **TL;DR: Skydiver pilot at a different airport makes loud, unexpected announcement starting with "LOOK OUT, LOOK OUT" right after one of my radio calls on the same frequency at an uncontrolled airport, which made my mom and I think we were at risk of a collision with another plane.**
   — BostonGuy245


2. Took off at night, right alternator light comes on right after takeoff. The aircraft instrument lights start flickering. My first officer is flying the airplane. I tell him to continue as normal until we reach a safe altitude to run the checklist. As we're climbing through 500' I see a bright shower of sparks from the right engine. Passengers start gasping and talking. My first officer kinda freezes up. I say, "turn back." He starts to turn the airplane the opposite direction of what we had briefed in case of an emergency situation. I say, "I have the controls" and take over, and turn us on a right downwind. I tell him to tell air traffic control we need to return immediately. I turn the alternator off but the sparks are still flying. The engine is running fine though. We were only in the air for a couple minutes, but the adrenaline was high for sure. Seeing sparks flying from the front of your engine is never a good thing. I was glad it was just the alternator though because it didn't cause any power loss. Turns out one of the mechanics that put the engine back together after an inspection forgot to tighten the alternator wire bundle down completely, resulting in loose wires contacting eachother.
   — TangoFoxtrotSierra


3. I'm a Flight Attendant on small 50 passenger planes (CRJ100/200's). When there was about 40 minutes left in the flight, I get a call from the flight deck that they have an indicator reading that my passenger door is not locked. So I double check the physical deadbolt indicators on the door and two out of the eight indicators were a little misaligned. So to be safe, I stopped service and sat down for the rest of the flight, directly next to the door praying that it was an issue with the indicator up in the flight deck. I'm sure that my face was flushed for a little bit. For the rest of the 40 minute flight, I was cracking down on every person that attempted to stand up and every seatbelt that I heard being undone. I didn't want any unlucky people being sucked out if the door happened to suddenly fly open. People started getting annoyed and started asking questions why the seatbelt sign has been on for so long, and I just told them that the pilots think there might be some major turbulence soon. Thankfully all was well and we landed with no issue. A few people getting off the plane were telling me how terrible the experience was and how badly they had to go to the bathroom and I wouldn't let them. If only they knew....C'est la vie
   — Nitropig






4. The scariest experience I've had while flying would have to be when one of my instructors ordered a go around maybe five feet above the runway for practice. Stupid me took out the flaps first, and then put in power. Let's just say I'm surprised that the thing didn't slam into the ground!
   — KAXNpilot


5. We almost crashed coming into O’Hare. The copilot was pretty inexperienced and tried to touch down during an insanely fast moving crosswind. He should have circled around again. I was seated in the back of the plane (CRJ900). Both passengers next to me had a death grip on my hand or knee. Was covered in bruises. I’ve never seen a pilot so pissed off. He was cussing out the copilot the whole way to the hotel.
   — lafleurcynique


6. I was a flight attendant for three years, back in the late 2000’s for Northwest Airlines (now merged with Delta Airlines). I will never forget my last flight from Minneapolis to Detroit in October, 2009. For starters, we had a self-proclaimed psychic on board who informed everyone that “this plane is going to crash and we’re all going to fucking die” by screaming it at the top of her lungs as soon as we reached cruising altitude. We ended up having to move her to a private section of the plane to try to calm her down and ease the minds of the panicked passengers. Sure enough, we hit extreme, unreported turbulence as soon as beverages were passed out. Drinks were flying through the air, luggage hit a few of the overhead bins open and people were screaming and terrified (mostly due to the psychic in my opinion). A couple other flight attendants couldn’t help but crying. It was a horrible scene. After an eternity we reached Detroit. Of course the runways were iced over and we slid nearly sideways after touching down (Again, everyone was screaming). I’m honestly surprised the plane didn’t flip over. When we landed everyone let out a roar of applause. Airport security boarded the plane and detained the “psychic”. I was so shaken up that I quit as soon as we unloaded. The experience was so awful that the passengers AND crew members all received a flight voucher (the crew got a check for the same value). I think it was worth about $350.
   — MysticCurse






7. I was flying with a student on a nice, clear day. We were doing ground-reference maneuvers (flying fairly close to the ground and snaking over roads, etc). I was pretty pleased with my student's execution of the maneuver when out of the coroner of my eye I saw movement above the treeline. On second glance it turned out to be a mother fucking stunt plane flying directly into our path. I punched the throttle, pulled the yoke back and climbed outta there like a homesick angel. I checked the Multi-function display (Moving map), and there was no indication of another airplane with his transponder on, there were no radio calls to the area. Fine, I thought, he doesn't have to do any of those, despite the fact that they are the smart thing to do. And then this asshole starts shadowing us really really closely. I couldn't descend to redo the maneuver for fear of getting too close to this hotdog.
   — CaptValentine


8. I'm not an airline pilot, but I fly small planes as I build my hours to get to that point. Me and a copilot were hired to fly a Cessna from Arizona to Florida. We stopped for fuel in New Mexico and on takeoff we got to only about 100 ft when the plane stopped climbing and started doing the exact opposite of that. We turned and lined up with a different runway but we were still coming down very hard and very fast. The plane hit the runway and then went off the side into the dirt and stopped only 70ft from where it first hit the ground, which isn't much considering we were going at highway speeds. I broke 8 bones in my body including 3 vertebrae and was in the hospital for about 3 months as well. But despite this I still want to get back in the plane and fly again though.
   — Aviator506


9. Was training for my private license and had to do what I believe was ten stop-and-gos (this was nearly ten years ago) at Port Columbus. All was well and going nicely until on one of the stops, the wind shifted a little right as I was floating before touchdown. Lifted one of my wings up and I was cruising on one tire and my wingtip had to have been inches away from striking the ground. Definitely a piss in my pants moment.
   — darrylmacstone






10. Was doing my first solo cross country in a 1975 PA28-151 when at 3500 feet no more than 20 feet off my nose a happy birthday balloon shoots up at probably 1500 fpm, definitely caught me off guard.
    — Derpyfingers


11. Couple years back I was flying an instrument approach down to Melbourne, Florida. I forget the name of the approach exactly but we were supposed to circle to 09R. Coming down ATC hits us up about a storm cell thats making its way to the field and asks if we still want to continue the approach. Anyone familiar with Florida in the summer knows these types of storms arent exactly rare. SIC and I figure we can beat it in (we could see it painted on our radar) so we continue. About 600ft above minimums it has become VERY clear that its moving faster than both we and ATC thought. Not 5 secs later ATC hits us up again to tell us just this and mentions the winds have flipped. We ask if we can just circle to 27L instead which he approves. We get in the thick of it and _barely_ broke out of the clouds above minimums before touching down into a wall of rain after battling some of the craziest winds I have flown in to date. Palms were definitely sweaty after that one.
    — DemHooksOP