Worst flight you've been on.

[JordanD]

I'm pretty bored so of course I had to make a thread.
Out of curiosity, what's the worst flight you've ever been on? Personally I've never been on enough commercial flights to have a really bad one, and I've never had any bad experiences really, but what about you people who have flown on airliners a lot? Were there any absolutely miserable experiences?

[PMN]

I had a pretty miserable experience on a British Airways (BA Connect) Dash 8 Q-300 earlier in the year flying BHD-MAN. I'm not the smallest guy on the planet, but as boarding was almost complete a guy came through the door who made me look like some kind of smurf. To my utter horror... Yup, you guessed it... He was sat next to me. He was a very pleasant chap and we had a nice little chat on the way to Manchester, but I had to spent the entire journey leaning right forward. It was... Err... Interesting.

Also had a rather irritating flight with Air Baltic where the cabin crew clearly didn't want to have anything to do with their fare paying passengers (well I say fare paying, the promotor taking our band to Latvia was footing the bill). That wasn't the best flight I've ever done!

Paul

[BA747-436]

BWIA (L1011-500) St Lucia - London 1994

[photoid=556397]

Apart from having an interior somewhat reminiscent of a 1970's cheap porn flick, the crew seemed to think it ok to make an appearance only at meal times. (I say meal times' in the loosest sense as we were dumped upon with one 'meal' and a 'snack' on the 9+ hour flight. Seemed to be two IFE screens for the entire plane. As you can imagine about half the aircraft were a good 60ft away from the screen which flickered intermittently and then just packed up altogether half way through a dodgy B movie no one was watching anyway. - Yeah not the best flight ever I have to say.





Air Pacific (B747-200B) Nadi, Fiji - Los Angeles 2001

[photoid=95415]

After arriving at the airport a good 3.5 hours early for checkin certain that I would secure a half decent seat for a flight that I knew would be anything but pleasant (One day ill learn not to take flights just to get on rare/hard to fly airlines/aircraft) I joined the lengthy checkin queue only to notice that there were just three desks open for the entire flight. Now you have to fly this airline to believe how many people they can cram onto a 747 in a 2 class config... The first desk was J only while the second and third were coach. It did not help that this poorly staffed and hugely inadequate airport also had an ANZ763 and another Air Pacific 763 departing around the same time. Also the fact that every b*stard seemed to be travelling with the entire contents of their house which lead to pretty much every person having an argument with the checkin staff over overweight baggage. (will people never learn?!) So a mere 3 hours later.....yes i did say 3 hours later, I get to the front of the queue only to be told that there are not only no window seats available but no aisle seats either. So im seated in row 58 middle seat for the 10 hour flight in between two lovely large tourists who felt the need to talk over me and move around for the entire fricking flight. Not to mention that at this point I was 500 miles off being AA Gold and therefore unlike all the other OneWorld Elite pax who got upgraded to Business I was stuck down the back. Not impressed lol. Im not even going to start about the in-flight service, food, or IFE (dont even think there was any!) as I feel the checkin process was enough of a nightmare to ruin any flight. lol

Ive had a few other 'not so great' flights but these two rank as my worst.

[B7772ADL]

I've had a few bad ones where i've missed connections or the aircraft has gone tech, but the worse for comfort had to be at Thomas Cook 757 flight flying Rhodes to Manchester a few years back.
28" seatpitch is really not my thing, especially when the flight is at 2am. Now when I get tired and don't get sleep I get really grumpy and agitated, so to be crammed in the back of a 757 I really wasn't happy. My legs were wedged against the seat in front, so the only thing to do was to put them up into the window. I was starving and since we were saving money at the time we didn't order any meals, so had to watch as the rest of the plane ate. The TV wasn't working so couldn't watch anything.
It was 4 hours of hell, and i'll try to avoid that one again.

[RingwaySam]

My worst flight was out last leg from Florida on a MyTravel DC-10. We had a 7 hour delay due to the plane diverting to Canada with a technical problem on the way to Florida so we was stranded at Sanford for a long time. We finally departed and it was pretty uneventful until we started our decsent into Cardiff where we had some of the worst turbulance i've experienced, but that only last for 5 minutes or so. We finally landed at Cardiff and most pax disembarked the aircraft but we had to carry on to Manchester.

2 hours later we still hadn't departed because we had a 'technical' problem, we wasn't allowed to leave the plane or anything. We finally rocketed out of Cardiff with a light load and again the turbulance was awful! People were screaming, throwing up, gripping on to seats and moaning.

Hopefully i'll get to fly on a DC-10 again

[Sam at MAN]

Havnt really had a really bad one...Scaryist was when the guy down our row had a heart attack and went a grey colour, that was quite scary. Britannia 767, G-BRIF i think. Kudos to the crew tho they looked after him and everything and he was ok...just went off in an ambulace at MAN...

And PMN about your Dash-8 flight..When i was coming back from Jersey this rarther 'large' man got on the plane...well wobbled on and had the front 2 seats, TO HIMSELF! So luckyly i escaped the fat man

Sam

[G-DALE]

It's probably gotta be a couple of years back flying Manchester to Dublin hungover. The flight duration was only an hour, but it pretty turbulent all the way through (especially coming into DUB) and the air conditioning wasn't coming through very strong at all so it was very warm inside the cabin. Several times I really thought I was gunna throw into the seat pocket infront of me.

I'm sure my two partners in crime can vouch for me on this one

[photoid=463773]
[photoid=463768]

Never again!....

Cheers,

Dale

[v1images]

I'm sure my two partners in crime can vouch for me on this one
Never again!....

Cheers,

Dale

Oh yes, that flight certainly tops my list at the moment. The only other time I felt the way I did that day was 3 hours out of LAX on a direct flight from LHR. It felt like a medical emergency was needed and a divert a certainty (in my head), until my next seat neighbour was having palpatations and they really were considering the divert! I remember talking to James and saying I felt like I was going to die just as the crew were setting up an Oxygen mask for the woman....how bad do I feel LOL!

It was only in August 2006 I figured out the following equations:

Lots Of Beer Night Before Flight + Lots Of Beer In-flight = Nasty Headache Midflight.

Lots Of Beer Before Flight + Lots Of Beer In-flight = Nasty Headache Midflight

Lots Of Beer Night Before Flight + Not So Much Beer In-Flight = No Headache!

I tested this theory out in November flying to LAX via ORD and it worked a treat, but when you cant take advantage of all that free alcohol there doesnt seem a point, so on my next trip this theory is going out the window!

[G-VEIL]

MyTravel DC-10.

Ah! That thing...I have memories of flying to Manchester to Barbados in it 3 years ago, it rattled, it shaked and the cabin crew were cretins. On top of that, the damn thing got stuck at Barbados for 3 days waiting for a spare part, and on the return journey, we were delayed at a stopover in Gatwick while First Officer was busy trying to hammer an emergency door back into place. Anyone got an pics of it being broken up, it would cheer me up haha.

[DAL767-400ER]

Now when I get tired and don't get sleep I get really grumpy and agitated,

I know what you mean with that. Once had an unpleasant flight on a DL 777 to CDG, though that was due to a snorring passenger, not DL's fault, and his snorring kept me awake the entire redeye. Had I not plugged in the headphones and listened to Giuseppe Verdi operas for 6 hours straight, sometime during the flight I probably would have snapped.

Another unpleasant experience was an AF flight on a 777 ATL-CDG. Things started of well when upon check-in at JAX, we were told that AF (for whatever reason) had just cancelled our confirmed seat reservations and kicked us off the flight. Thankfully (in hindsight, probably not), the DL employee got us back on the flight. But now, I was stuck in a row with no recline right beside the lavs, and one of those nice IFE boxes under the seat in front of me, so I had nowhere to put my feet. Of course, the quality of service was just as bad as the seat was, and the way the FA's acted around, you'd think all the people in economy were Germans that the FA's blamed for invading France during the two WWs. And if all that wasn't bad enough, flight arrived with plenty of delay at CDG, and while we did make our flight huffin' and puffin', our luggage, as on most connections through CDG, didn't make it. This trip was what finally broke the last straw, and let to me and my parents deciding that we won't ever connect in CDG again, so as to avoid airport and airline, even if it meant flying on a intra-European flight without earning miles on it.

[Cam]

http://www.jetphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?t=36901

[flyingbosshog]

United A230 IAD-PWM

The flight was supposed to take off around 420... we arrived at the gate at 415 due to a late flight out of TYS... We watched our bags get loaded on and we were not allowed to board because boarding was complete....... Thus began our over night stay at IAD..... The next morning we boarded a flight to PWM that ended up turning into a flight to BOS and a 3 hour bus ride the rest of the way...... yeah...

[a330340watcher]

PR 104 - 27 Apr 06

The route was MNL to SFO with flight time from takeoff to touchdown of 11 hours and 31 minutes on a boeing 747-400 registration number n754pr. It wasn't actually a bad flight but it sure could be much better.

My main complaint about it is the IFE isn't quite working. The crew had to do a live demo of the safety features instead of play a video. This aircraft was the only one in PAL's fleet to feature personal IFEs in economy class but the bad news... they were not working! The seat which my brother then later I sat on had no controls. No airshow was shown (I can actually live without PTVs featuring popular movies or programmes but the airshow, preferably with some music is the most important programme I need inflight).

To make matters worse, the flight was full so I can't sit anywhere else. Even the decent seats with white covers in the front right area which I thought were empty were actually occupied by the crew.

One of the very few things going for me was the friendly crew who sat directly infront of us. She even talked to me and we chatted about PAL's aircraft.

PAL should consider retiring this aircraft or giving it back to who gave it the lease at once.

[arifpal]

Worst for me was around three years back from EWR - LAX on Continental 737.
Just the plane got boarded on time and started taxiing when it just stopped and parked on the corner of the runway. Then we were told that due to a major storm on our route we're gona delay departure. Minutes turned to hours and the worst part was when the captain announced that we can't go back and get into the lounge coz no gate was empty!!

Finally the storm came over us and shook the plane like crazy and out of no where admist the rain the plane took off after being grounded for FIVE AND A HALF HOUR and just begain a 5 hr 10 mins journey! Boy that was hectic :S, and the fact that we weren't allowed to get off the plane still pisses me off !!

[BA747-436]

Oh I totaly forgot when i came back from SXM on American Airlines (757) Sat in 1A so the flight from SXM-JFK was nice..... until we got to JFK at which point most of the Eastern Seaboard blacks out. Leaving us and about 100 other aircraft stranded on the tarmac. 6 hours later (the flight was sched as 4.2 hours so add another 6 to it and your looking at 10.2 hours on a 752) we finally get assigned a gate. At which point i get jumped on by customs goons and interogated for 2 hours with no explanation. Retards. lol I finally get to the Waldorf in the city at 4am. 3 hours before I have to brave another day in blackout conditions trying to get a train to PHL. Yeah it wasnt fun haha.