Best and Worst Experience Flying on a Commercial Flight?

Codz

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What was the best and/or worst experience you've had on a commercial airline flight? It can be any flight, international or domestic.

My best was probably a flight from Tucson to Atlanta. It was a nice and new Delta Airlines B737-8 and the whole flight was rather nice.

One of the worst was probably a flight from Seattle to Detroit that left at about 11:30PM and arrived in Detroit at 6:00AM. It was an older Delta B757-3 and I was stuck in the seat right in front of the back row, you could feel every bump and creak. To make it worse, the person in front of me decided to lean her chair as far as it could go, laying on my knees the entire flight. I ended up sleeping on top of my food tray and woke up as we were decending into Detroit, where a large thunderstorm shook the plane rather violently. I nearly vomited.:sick:
 

MattBaker

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I can only remember two really bad events during a flight:

First was on a flight from Germany to Madeira, there were turbulences over Southern France, while everyone got his food served. Since it was something like 8 AM the woman next to me drank a coffee, which was of course hot in the beginning. With the turbulences, we had a nice example of Newton's First Law, spilling her HOT coffee all over my pants...

Second one was just a few days ago with Turkish Airlines from Istanbul to Munich on a Boeing 737-800. During the approach there were heavy crosswinds so just a few hundred meters away from the runway the pilot decided to play with the roll axis, like 20° in both directions...


But beside from that I can't remember bad moments during flights, prooves that there must have been a lot of good times.:thumbup:
 

ky

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My best experience was on an Air Jamaica flight in 2009 from Fort Lauderdale - Hollywood international to Norman Manley International in Kingston, Jamaica. I was on an A320, and the flight was rather smooth, though there was a 15 minute delay before takeoff.

My worst experience was on an American Airlines flight in 2003 from Fort Lauderdale - Hollywood international to Sangster International in Montego Bay, Jamaica. I was on a 737, and there was moderate turbulence, I had a seat close to the back, and I vividly remember being sick and vomiting.
 

Codz

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Actually, there was another landing in Atlanta where we hit some really bad turbulence as we were decending, and after we landed everyone started clapping and I heard several sighs of relief!
 

Eli13

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Well my worst experience was also my best one.

I'm unsure what plane I was in (I was quite young, you see. It was 737 sized, IIRC) flying from Salt Lake City to San Francisco. And somebody just kept stinking it up. Bad. Like they were sick and in dire need of a doctor bad. And it kept persisting.

So the friend of my dad (whom I had become accustomed to calling 'Uncle Harley') got sick of it. So at the top of his lungs he yelled "Who crapped their pants!?!?". This was met with much laughter and applause. It made that whole flight worth it.
 

Andy44

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Worst experience...tough one. Once I took advantage of a free happy hour at a hotel I stayed at in Los Angeles the night before I was to fly home. I had no more work to do so what the heck, have a good time, right? The ride home the next day was the most horrible flight ever, even worse than the one where I was sick from mild food poisoning.

Getting drunk on the plane = okay.

Getting drunk and still being drunk when you wake up to get on the plane = lesson learned the hard way.
 

Codz

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Getting drunk and still being drunk when you wake up to get on the plane = lesson learned the hard way.

Ouch. I've seen a few people do that. On one flight, the person sitting next to me was badly hung over and then the person next to him got an open cup of beer. From the look on his face, I think he wanted to vomit.:lol:
 

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Best = United Airlines Melbourne (AU) to SFO via Sydney. Super-friendly, funny and attentive service.

Worst = US internal flights. The rule that anything you take on board that can't be stored overhead gets checked for free inspires some appalling behaviour by American passengers.

Qantas service on international flights is a close runner-up for worst. Finn air is a close runner up for best service.

---------- Post added at 06:25 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:51 PM ----------

I'd just add - as for flight handling, I've never had anything really worrying happen. I reckon a little turbulence is a nice reminder you're in the air and the laws of physics apply :) . It only makes me slightly uneasy when it decides to assert itself on landing.
 

Urwumpe

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I have never been on a commercial flight, so I can't talk about good or bad. But my personal flying experience is mostly bad.
 

Artlav

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Best is when i flew business class, to Hainan.
9 hours long flight is nothing when you have a chair that retracts to a sleeping position and have enough leg space even for my length.
And Air China have great service.

Worst is harder to pick, nothing really stands out.
I once flew on a soviet vintage Tu-154, which started falling apart at take-off. Scary, but it carried on like a possessed T-Rex, and is still the fastest plane i've been on.

The flight to Australia was the longest i've been on - 6 hours to Abu Dhabi, then 15 hours straight to Melbourne.
In economy class, on a regular-ish seat - i asked for an emergency exit one, but they botched the second leg. It was a long flight.
On the plus side, i feel asleep the moment i laid down at the hotel, and woken up at the right time to be mostly free of jet lag.
 

80mileshigh

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On the plus side, i feel asleep the moment i laid down at the hotel, and woken up at the right time to be mostly free of jet lag.

That's interesting - you defied the common experience of jet lag which is worsened when travelling east.

From an Australian government website:

Flying east or west makes a difference to jet lag
Your circadian rhythm (body clock) is less confused if you travel westward. This is because travelling west ‘prolongs’ the body clock’s experience of its normal day-night cycle (the normal tendency of the body clock in most of us is slightly longer than 24 hours). Travelling eastwards, however, runs in direct opposition to the body clock. If you suffer badly from jet lag, it may be worthwhile considering a westerly travel route if possible.
 

garyw

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Worst experience - flying on a little BAE-146 on a very short flight. We took off from gatwick about 15 minutes after a thunderstorm had passed over the field. Take off was normal, rotation was good then we hit an airpocket left behind by the thunderstorm and dropped what felt like 10,000ft but wasn't more than a few hundred.
 

george7378

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Worst - flying Ryanair to/from Italy. The flight there wasn't bad, but on the way back, we were delayed a few hours, then we got on the plane (737), taxied out to the runway, and just as we were about to take off, the pilot told us that 'a light has just flashed on in the cockpit, and I don't like the look of it, so we're going back to the terminal'. We were all offloaded into the small airport, where we had to wait until about 04:00 in the morning for another plane to be found. What made it particularly memorable (in a bad way) was the fact that it was the night Italy won the world cup, and the airport was full of school kids screaming and shouting during the entire delay and onward flight. Then, when we finally landed at East Midlands, the pilot slammed the brakes on after the rollout, giving us all a nice jolt to wake us up.

Hmm, I can't really choose a best experience - most have been excellent. The most enjoyable commercial flights I've had are probably the floatplane transfer flights I've been lucky enough to experience in the Maldives. About 20 people in a DHC-6 which cruises at a few thousand feet over the thousands of desert islands in the Indian Ocean - aviation heaven!
 

Codz

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Worst - flying Ryanair to/from Italy. The flight there wasn't bad, but on the way back, we were delayed a few hours, then we got on the plane (737), taxied out to the runway, and just as we were about to take off, the pilot told us that 'a light has just flashed on in the cockpit, and I don't like the look of it, so we're going back to the terminal'.

Eh, better safe and late than sorry and dead.
 

george7378

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Eh, better safe and late than sorry and dead.

Oh yes - I agree! I'm sure you can imagine how annoying it was though, just as we were prepared to go home! It also made me miss a day of school (I was devastated, of course :p)
 

Artlav

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That's interesting - you defied the common experience of jet lag which is worsened when travelling east.
I didn't sleep for about 28 hours through that flight and associated waiting times, and arrived to the hotel in the local evening.
Thus, i slept through the proper night, keying in the proper cycle from the get-go.
Maybe that's what helped.

Now proper jet lag feels different - when i flew back home from Cuba a few years earlier, it was only a 12 hour flight or so, but the similar 8 time zones eastwards. For the next few days i had troubles falling asleep at the right time or getting up in the morning.
Much worse than the light sleepiness i felt in Australia for a day or so.
 

Andy44

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I once flew on a soviet vintage Tu-154, which started falling apart at take-off. Scary, but it carried on like a possessed T-Rex, and is still the fastest plane i've been on.

Maybe they are built to fly so fast so you can get to your destination before you have an accident?:tiphat:
 

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Best experience: being in the cockpit of a 757 for an entire flight (except take off and landing).

Worst experience: hard landings basically.

---------- Post added at 02:39 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:25 PM ----------

I once flew on a soviet vintage Tu-154, which started falling apart at take-off. Scary, but it carried on like a possessed T-Rex, and is still the fastest plane i've been on.

As far as I know the Tu-154 is the fastest commercial jet these days. It can climb to its maximum flight level, fully loaded, within only ten minutes :)

Russian quality. Although people often claim it's bad technology, which is nonsense. That some Tu-154's are in a bad condition is due to a bad maintenance philosophy, not due to bad technology. The Tu-154 actually is more advanced than the 727 for example. Especially the auto pilot and flight controls. And it is designed to land on unpaved runways also, beside a few other advantages.

Enjoy:

 

Andy44

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I forgot my best experience: getting to go into the cockpit and meet the crew, getting little plastic toy jets from the stewardess, eating food, getting to fly on cool DC-8s and 727s with lots of room (and a dress code so no fat people in sweat pants allowed), not getting treated like a criminal just for trying to travel, and experiencing air travel the way it used to be when I was 10 years old. Those days are gone forever it seems.

Being a kid on a jetliner was the coolest thing ever. Watching the wings flap and engine nacelles swing wildly back and forth on a DC-8 in turbulence was a joy for me, who already knew it was designed to do that and it was making our ride smoother. Too bad the other passengers didn't see it that way!

And jetliners were so much cooler back then, they all had character. Now they all look the same. The DC-8 in 70s Delta paint scheme is one of the most beautiful things to ever fly, I miss them so much.

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