Scary flying stories

[Gravedigger]

I know Clearedhot posted a thread to get people's best moments in the jet, but I think it would be cool to hear about times where you wished you were somewhere else. I asked this same question to MajGen Wurster at USSOCOM, and he had some stories that made me question whether or not I could handle military flying. :(

[Guest Wxpunk]

Not really scary and not military but kinda funny:

I was ferrying a C-172 from Lexington, KY to Russell Co. for this local flight school. I had never flown to Russell Co. before and it's a pretty small strip with almost no hangers around it.

I look down at my GPS and I'm thinking "okay, it's right in front of me." Sure enough, I look around and see a long, level strip of concrete.

As I approach I start seeing lot's of black tire marks at the approach end. I'm thinking "man what the hell do they fly into this little ass airstrip that would make that heavy of tire marks."

At this point I'm within a mile or so when I think I see a wall or something right down the middle!

Good thing I was paying attention to the map and landmarks in the area! I remembered seeing "Drag Strip" somewhere on the map near the airfield. Sure as hell, it was the drag strip that I was lined up on!

I throw in full power, bring up my flaps, look 1/4 mile up and slightly to the right and guess what I see...the airfield! Damn thing is parallel and within nothing of the drag strip!

Anyway, it really didn't scare me, just dropped my ego a peg or two.

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Wxpunk

[Container STS]

well, in my limited aviation experience i have become VERY WARY of other a/c around me...i just don't like dumbasses trying to kill me.

i was doing IFT in Miami in a 152, on departure to the trng area climbing up. tower advises a low wing complex (good vis you would think) i am at his 12-hi, he visuals. i keep this in mind as i level out at 3k looking for him, but especially off to my right rear (far pass rule). no visual, and i assume he got stupid and didnt follow the overtake rule. i turn 5 degrees left and sure enough 30 sec later this jackass overtakes me climbing up through my former position 5 degrees off to my right 200' feet away from me.

then once out in the middle of nowhere on a dual xcntry i was 300'-400' vertically seperated from a piper that would have hit me at a 90-deg intersection

i always fly at a goofy altitude, ie 3470, not 3500. most people will round to something easy and if 2 people do that in common airspace it can be the last time they do.

TCAS ALERT....RETARDS (far's there for a reason)

[FreudianSlip]

It was hot, I was slow and trying to climb over some Mts when my MWS went off and flares kicked out....didn't scare me till 5 minutes later though.

[Beaver]

I was 14,000 ft at night in the Wx east of Baghdad on the 3rd night of OIF. I was trying to fly formation and take a HARM shot on time. The clouds were flashing around us, which I hoped was lightning. I was spiked by a roland, and I had the giant hand pushing me toward my flight lead. I finally got so f*cked up I just set my wings and pulled away from 1. I didn't know if I was pulling up, down, or sideways. I got right back in formation, though, because I didn't really want to be out there single ship.

[Spartacus]

These are just civi stories, but here I go.

I'm on my first solo x-country. I check the NOTAMs and file my flight plan. I scheduled two airports and then back to base. I land at airport #1 and then head to #2. As I'm on short final for airport #2 I notice some crap on the runway. I kept bringing it in but kept a close eye on the runway. I'm at about 100' agl and notice that there are three men on the runway and further down it is a bug truck. I think to myself WTF? I went around and buzzed 'em at about 50'. Turns out they were filling in the cracks in the runway and no one had bothered to notify anyone about. Really sucked because it was my first solo x-country. I always check notams and also get really wary of stuff going on even if it's not published.

I'm on my second solo x-country flying into Pocatello, ID. I'm flying through the canyon just east of the field and suddenly had a hanglider fly right in front of me. It scared the crap out of me and I could see the dudes eyes get really big. I was dang scared threw it into a 90 degree+ bank. That whole flight sucked because I was in a 152 and had verga most of the flight. Bumpy as heck!

So there had been a mid-air along my route of flight and it had happened about an hour earlier. Suddenly I see smoke up ahead and sure enough it was coming from the plane on the ground that had spun in. The second plane made it to the nearest field, which is where I was headed, and I had been handed over to the tour for the landing. I'm now on base, cleared final and full stop. As I'm turning base to final I suddenly hear a guy come over the radio saying that he is taking evasive manuevers. I look up and at 12 o'clock there's 182 showing me his belly about 300' feet ahead. I bank hard right and pack my shorts. I went around and was again cleared to land. I get on the ground and go up to the tower to see what the heck was up. Turns out the controllers were dealing with a lot of crap from the mid-air and had forgotten about the second plane. WTF!!!

Last story! I land in North Las Vegas for a pit stop. I'm in a 182 and take off again to the south. It was so hot that day and the density altitude was so high that I couldn't climb worth a mother. I was getting about 400' per minute at best. (We were heavy.) The controller keeps on telling me to go to best climb and I keep telling him that I'm at it. He gets pissed and ends up vectoring me all over Vegas to avoid other planes. I ended up flying right over the strip at about 800' AGL. That was pretty fun!

[Hacker]

10K over Karbala on the 2nd week of OIF when I was shot at by two ROLANDs. Both of them detonated less than 100 feet behind my tails.

There's not enough $ in the world to make me go back to that place/time again -- EVER.

[FourFans]

While getting prepped for my solo cross country during PPL training, my crusty old instructor (learned how to fly in 1950) and I are in our 172 over Pueblo CO at about 11 at night. While flying back toward Coloardo Springs, we encounter heavy clouds all the way down and a snow storm. So here's me with less than 20 hours just trying to stay right side up in the weather and we finally landed after 45 minutes of vectors and an approach that broke out about 400 AGL. When we got back to parking, we chipped the ice off the wing and prop and measured about an inch of ice.

It's a good thing I didn't know then what I know now.

[Guest Rainman A-10]

I have a good friend who was shot down in DS who's motto was..."If you're scared, say you're scared." Great advice. Moral of the story, fear teaches, but only if you are aware of it, admit to it and learn from it.

Weather and fuel are a trend item ref fear for me. I have learned the lesson that you have to have a plan for both those things if you can. Most of it probably seems either stupid or boring but it was scary to me and I'm just glad the cost of learning those simple, timeless lessons wasn't my life or an aircraft.

I was pretty scared during a Red Flag recovery when I was a young hair on fire Captain. I was gliding past Indian Springs with 600lbs of gas (total) and decided to press to Nellis because I was the Msn CC and I thought I had to be there for the debrief. I decided during my idle descent that I could still pitch out because doing a straight in would mean I was a or a dead man. What an idiot.

I lost an engine in a UH-1F in the mountains between Pueblo and Taos back when I was a Lt. Those next few seconds (seemed like an hour but was probably less than 20 seconds) of autorotaion time into a 110' wide hole in the trees was pretty eye opening.

I had to recover emergency fuel in the desert into a field with no instrument approach and broke out at 50 feet on the RADALT (10' is gear on the ground). I had to sit in dearm for 10 minutes after I landed because my legs were shaking too much to taxi.

I was scared the night we were covering a downed Pave Low and the team in NE Afghanistan. MSA was 18.6 MSL and we were holding over them in a valley at 4K (1500' AGL). I eventually route aborted the flight into the T-Storm when I couldn't see the helo anymore from 2nm. A couple lightning strikes had started several fires causing serious spatial D issues with the goggles at low altitude. 10 minutes of lightning, hail and cranium to canopy bashing turbulence later and we were in the clear. I clenched a little seat cushion that night.

I was scared shitless the night we picked up the Tomcat guys during OIF. I was afraid I was going to do something wrong and either get the helos shot down or get the guys captured.

I was scared everytime I put ordnance down inside 200 meters from the friendlies at night.

My Lt wingman combat pair was scared the second night of OIF when I accepted tasking into the so-called "Super Mez" under a 3000' ceiling to hit a compound, 480nm one way, no tanker, shit flying everywhere and 118 knot no-shit direct headwind on RTB. He pulled off tgt twice into the wx and had to do an unusual attitude recovery as part of his SEM. He was a shit hot wingman and waited until the debrief to let me know he was scared. He had the biggest secondaries I have ever seen on one of his passes and he didn't even know it until I showed him the TGP video in the debrief...then he was stoked and wanted to go do it again that very night. It was his first combat sortie. That night erased 90% of his combat fears and he was a nearly fearless killing machine after that.

[Scooter14]

I had a copilot (in my nav days) try to level off at 4000 ft (3000 AGL) with idle power and speedbrakes out in a -135 at about 0300 on our way back from a 12 hour OEF mission. It was the crews first one in the AOR, since we flew over commercially then sat for a week waiting for a jet that didn't have a red X on it.

Instead of adding power and putting the boards down, he just kept pulling back on the yoke. It got quiet, then it started to rumble. The AC threw the throttles forward, and we all channelized on the airspeed and AOA because the WTF factor was high and we wanted the airspeed higher and the AOA lower. Finally, the speedbrakes were retracted, and the plane began to accelerate back to a comfortable airspeed after that.

We landed and I went back to the tent and thought about the fact that we had just flown for 8 hours over bad guy land, and the most dangerous part of the flight occured within 20 DME of the base and I was too busy jaw jacking on the radio trying to get a parking spot from command post to realize that we were about to stall an aircraft with 20 people on board.

[ 08. June 2005, 22:32: Message edited by: PAB ]

[Guest Flyingblind311]

In my former life as a Nav on KC135s I was over for OIF supporting AFSOC missions we had an all around bad night. Driving up the Gulf, we had a 2-ship of 15Es fly across our nose 100 low and not much farther in front of us...all we saw as a windscreen full of position lights from the formation as they hit a turn point going from directly infront of us to our left.

Later, with a AC130 on the boom...as an undisclosed lower alt, our cockpit became daylight. About 2-3 seconds later we were in what appeared to be a cloud. By this time, the light is a greenish white and we can't see anything thru the smoke! Yes smoke. As we clear out of that, we quickly realize that some towel head is shooting sh*t at us. The missile continues up to about our 2-o'clock peaks 1-2,000 feet above and burns out. My boom operator, who says f*ck quite regularly, asks "what the F was that light?" The Gunship crew starts laughing asking us if people are shooting at us. At this point my co-pilot and I are laughing pretty hard, our AC is looking at us in disbelief, not yet grasping what had happened. My co takes the airplane and continues the AR as he and I are debating who is going to tell the boom what really happened. Our somewhat confused AC takes the honors and gets a well deserved "Are you F-ing kinding me?" from the boom, who is obviously pissed at this point. At this point, knowing we are now a few more miles away, and the gunship needing every pound of gas we can give them, we elect to continue the AR. Luckily nothing else happened or hindsight would have been tough to deal with.

It never really hit us until we were driving home over the Gulf how close we came to being a flaming ball in the sky that night. Later, our amazing Intel folks concluded that it was a balistic surface-to-surface missile intended for us...comforting! With no RWR gear on the tanker, and the gunship guys not getting any warning, we were sitting ducks for a well aimed shot. Whoever that was sure got a good show of how we do air refuelings! I hope they died soon after that.

[Guest Wxpunk]

PAB,

Your cute picture is exactly what I have pictured. Only problem is reality...doesn't match. The physics of this attack is buggin' me.

Seriously, who can visually spot (no radar on s-s not to mention the bells and whistles if painted) a blacked-out, low-level refueling...spin up a surface-to-surface...approximate a launch time and fire...yet still come within feet of the approaching aircraft?

???????

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Wxpunk

[Hacker]

All right guys, calm it down a little bit. We're getting wrapped up in some minor terminology issues here that, obviously, don't make sense.

The problem is, boys, an airplane does not get a RWR indication for a surface-to-surface anything. If it was a SCUD, a Seersucker, a FROG, an ABABIL-100, or BM-21, any airplane out there would have had zero indications outside of the visual acquisition of the smoke trail at launch. These weapons are not radar-guided, so they would not have some kind of radar pointed at an airplane to aim them prior to launch.

The other problem is that outside of the BM-21 rockets I don't know of any S-S missiles being used against aircraft over in Iraq.

So are we really talking about that...or was FB311 actually trying to describe a ballistic SAM launch, which happened a sh*tload of times in Iraq because the SAM operators were scared of the HARM.

EDITORIAL COMMENT: Thanks, Weasel Dudes!!

So...to translate the post -- there was a ballistic SAM launch at the 135 and 130, they got no RWR warning, it flew out in front of them, and they flew through the smoke trail after the missile passed. The boomer saw the launch and was scared because the guys up in the front office did not maneuver. The 135 co-pilot had all the SA while the pilot was scared and whizzing his trousers. The grizzled Gunship crew laughed about it.

[Guest Pilot135]

To get back on topic about a scary event...

I was flying OIF refueling on a night the nothern air war should have been called off due to wx. all AR tracks were totally unusable at all altitudes, so they put everyone in one area designed for a max of 3 tankers spaced at 4000' intervals. We fit a tanker at every 1000' and instructed the recievers to join at each tankers' altitude -500'. We all were using TCAS and AWACs to pull some wicked rendevous out of our butts that night. The recievers couldn't find the correct tanker because their radars were filled with targets and they didn't know who was who. I know what you are going to say... why din't you go in formation... But formation was not possible because each tanker was trying to find the one VMC pocket at their own altitude to get the gas off. That night was one of the few times the AWAC guy (usually Airman snuffy with the least experience) earned his money and did a great job keeping 6 or 7 tanker crews and countless recievers from hitting each other. Goes to show that during contingency ops you try to follow the regs, but sometimes you have to make the s@*& up as you go allong. Gotta love TCAS...

[fastnumber15]

Couldnt reach the relief tube. Airmet for moderate turbulence had me about to pass out. Luckily, I downed a half gatoraid bottle in my map case and filled er up. Close call.

[arg]

One time when the stewardess said "Sir, I'm sorry but we're out of chicken, all we have left is fish.

[slacker]

Pisser froze solid and started to overflow. 4 hrs to St John's with 45 pax on board, no where to go.

That was worse than getting shot at or flying thru a hurricane.

[HerkDerka]

Box lunch was late.

[BQZip01]

Pisser froze solid and started to overflow. 4 hrs to St John's with 45 pax on board, no where to go.

This one's got me beat by a mile.

I was in IFT and nearly had a head-on collision with some dipstick over Easterwood Airport in College Station, Texas. The jackhole was supposed to report in when he was 5 miles from the field. The idiot was at 5,000 feet over the approach end when I passed him going the opposite direction missing by about 20 feet. A total of 3.6 flight hours and already I had my scariest moment.

But 45 pax and 4 hours without a urinal, DAMN!

[contraildash]

Hoss: did you even know at the time? Or was it an after the fact "oh sh*t!"...those suck.

For me it was going off the end of the runway at a little place called Gila Bend (E63) in a Cessna 310 full of gas after our brakes failed on landing. Stopping before the ditch was nice though.

[OverTQ]

Flying at night under crappy FLIR and hearing my front seater gasp "wires" Then looking up to see them.

Edited due to memory repression.

Edited January 28, 2010 by OverTQ

[sky_king]

C4002

[brabus]

Hoss, are you willing to tell the whole story on here? I'm wondering what lead to you being where you were and your wingmen being where he is while pulling the trigger.

My scariest: near midair with another 2 ship during an LFE. Blocks just may or may not have been severely emphasized in the debrief.

[stick]

C4002

For you or your IP?

[afnav]

That's a tough one. I've had a few, but two come to mind:

1. Getting dragged by a tanker into a convection cell. As soon as we hit the wall of cloud, we pitched up and I could see the boom compartment in my EVS screen. The camera for it is under the nose of a BUFF.

2. Hearing the sound of a TTR through the interphone system and knowing there was little we could do about it because of system limitations.