WingColors

There have been some really strong wind guts lately here in Europe. Now that the storm is over, instead of spring time we are going to get snow and ice.

But that plane incident..scary, no wonder I hate flying. I'm always worried sick when traveling trans atlantic, 9 hour form Amsterdam to Aruba.

I never want to fly. Sadly, I do somewhat often.

Last year I was about to head to San Francisco. As we were pulling away from the gate the captain comes on and says "Sorry folks, we have to go back to the gate for a minute and hook up to their power. Our aux. power isn't working so we can't start our own engines."

O.O

I took another dramamine so I would pass out.

I fly a lot, or used to. I always take Ativan. That thing could crash into a mountain and I'd be content.

I had a creepy landing (but he stuck ours) in Lincoln, NE about 20 years ago where we hit at an angle and slid because of ice and high winds.

I don't mind flying.

Hehe... I'm an air traffic controller here in Colorado Springs. With our altitude and proximity to the mountains we get some pretty hairy winds, wind-shears and microbursts. About every other week my heart almost comes to a complete stop when I see a light civil come within inches of landing wing first.

Of course some of the other things I've seen would make you take the bus every single time you traveled.

If you really want to scare the crap out of yourself take a trip to your local airport and watch the tower mix air-carriers and general aviation traffic together. 99.9% of it is perfectly safe but it sure looks scary.

The pilot in this case was brave enough to admit defeat, make the call and pull up for another go. That is admirable and actually boosts my confidence in the handful of people who take the lives of thousands of people in their hands each and every day of of the year.

Last year my better half and I took a short flight from Barcelona to Florence. As we came close to Florence a staffer came on the tanoy explaining that we may get diverted to Pisa due to strong winds coming down from the mountains surrounding the airport. A collective groan was heard throughout the plane. About ten minutes later the pilot came on the tanoy and said he had absolute confidence he could land at Florence, despite the warnings, and had a date that evening he didn't want to miss. I wondered what his priorities were, but chose to trust rather than panic.

The landing was fast. Very fast. I've never experienced a plane coming down as quick as that. It shook around, almost twisting with the forces put against it. The sensation is quite weird. As the wheels touched the actual speed became even more apparent. The plane came down fricking fast. I don't know if that's a tactic that helps or if that was just the way it was that day, but the pilot struggled to slow down as we travelled down the runway.

I've landed a few times at Florence Peretola and have got used to where the taxiways are (I know, I'm sad). The plane overshot every single one of the exits. We eventually stopped to a halt, then after a short pause we u-turned and went back up to the last exit.

It wasn't scary, I wasn't afraid, but I do understand why the pilot got a round of applause from the other passengers. I smiled for him and wished him good luck in his quest to get laid. I'll never forget his announcement: "ATC recommend I divert to Pisa but I know I can land; I've got a signora waiting who needs to be taken to dinner."

It probably wouldn't make you feel any better to fly in America when I tell you this. Four out of seven of the flights my boyfriend and I were on in the States had maintenance issues. One of them ended in our staying the night in Atlanta. We've yet to be refunded certain expenses we incurred, due to the Atlanta airport and Delta's negligence of traumatized passengers (we lost an engine on a two-engine plane and had to turn back; the way the plane was flying, we all wondered if "that was it").

In the four weeks we were there, we experienced four--and heard of one other--CRJ model plane having maintenance issues. It's a scary enough plane to be on, a 50-seater, but you know they use them in some areas quite a bit. When I mentioned this to some of the airport workers, I was told that I needed to remember that caring for a plane was just like caring for a car, that they had maintenance issues. I reminded them that you can't pull a plane over onto the shoulder of the road, just whenever the hell you feel like it.

The only good flights I had, and they were excellent, was with Qantas (Australian carrier), internationally.

After reading all of these comments and imagining all the thousands of other people who have had negative flying experiences completely turns me off and away from flying. My flying experiences has been quite pleasant in terms of landing and such, but I've had some intense mid-flight scares with wind and bad weather.

I really hope that airplane and airport technologies get better and better over time to help improve the safety of flying, and so forth. It's also important to have very well trained pilots, as exemplified from the posts above.