Posted on 12/18/2022 5:29:00 PM PST by algore
I did mountain wave soaring in my Tri-Pacer once. It wasn’t about to come down until I (slowly) flew out of it.
I was just thinking that. I was on a flight that had bad turbulence and I kind of was tossed upwards but my belt held me from going to far.
My buddy and I were on a 727 headed north off the Florida Atlantic coast.
We were looking landwards, and beyond the thunderclouds all the way up the coast, the sun was getting ready to set. We could see lightning flashes all over the place. I was enjoying it.
We had just all been served drinks, and they announced they weren’t going to serve meals they just finished preparing because it would be unsafe. (I recall it was either turkey or salisbury steak)
So, my buddy and I have our trays down with our drinks on them (I had a Seven and Seven...I think) and the plane hit a couple of pockets. Not too bad. My drink, which was right near the brim began to spill, so I put my mouth down and drank a mouthful without lifting it. Almost none spilled.
I thought I was mighty clever, chuckled, then we hit another, deeper pocket.
This time, some sloshed out. I picked it up, took a big mouthful, swallowed it and turned to my buddy.
As I turned, I was looking at his sloshing drink and saying “Hey, you better drink that, or you’ll be wearing it!”
Except I didn’t.
As I turned and my eyes fixed on his drink, the plane plummeted.
I had that entire comment already perfectly formed in my head, and it was just up to my mouth to finish saying it but all I got out of that entire sentence above was: “Hey...”
What is burned into my memory is astonishing, at least to me. As my eyes fixed on his drink, the drink suddenly leaped into the air.
It was like watching a cartoon. The cup seemed to stay where it was, and the entire volume of his drink shot out of it in the perfectly formed shape of the cup. I think it was only a minuscule fraction of a second, but my brain seemed to slow it right down to the “super slow motion bullet hitting the balloon filled with milk” speed.
Then everything sped right up to what seemed like hyper speed, and things began to happen really fast.
The plane plummeted far enough that my mind had time to completely form and process the thought: “I am not going to panic. Not yet. But if this plane keeps dropping...I just might.”
And then the plane settled out
One woman was injured in the bathroom, and another who was ejected from her seat into the overhead. I saw that only in the dark edge of my peripheral vision. I didn’t see it directly, but the speed and force at which she was ejected from her seat and violently smashed into the luggage bins above her was clearly evident in what my brain registered.
They made an emergency landing and carted them both off in stretchers.
One interesting side note was how people on the plane changed after that. All over the plane, people were talking to complete and total strangers as if they had known them their entire lives. It was amazing. The other detail is all the stuff that rained down on us for the remainder of that flight. All kinds of liquid, booze, beer, soda, brown gravy (from the galley) dripped down on us. There was a little river in the aisle area. It seemed like such a minor thing that at another time, people would have raised holy hell if one drop of gravy had fallen down to soil a shirt. But as everyone made their acquaintance with the strangers around them, nobody seemed to notice it.
While we drank our complimentary drinks, my buddy said to me that in that time as the plane fell, he also had time to process a thought (as I had) and when he hit the point where he might panic, he had a flash of a vision for a split second.
He said he envisioned himself in that split second, strapped into his seat in a section of fuselage at the bottom of the ocean with his hair swaying in the current, his eyes open. That was how he described it. Pretty gripping vision. Then, as if he had said too much, he made a deliberate and loud “Blub. Blub” sound as he gently moved his head side-to-side. We both cracked up and sucked down our complimentary drinks...:)
But I will say, he was dead serious as he initially described it. I think I saw it just as vividly as he did, but...of course, when I remember it now, it makes me grin rather than feel grim. When the memory pops into my mind now, before it has a chance to register as a corpse strapped in a watery grave, like someone who always screws up the punch line of a joke by skipping right to it, I always get to the face of my best friend with the “Blub. Blub.” that follows, and just cannot take it seriously!
This is fascinating. Thank you for posting!
Whoa!
My dad was a pilot for Braniff back in the day. We asked him if he ever flew in and around thunderstorms. He said “no” because he didn’t want to leave the cockpit and smell all of the puke from the “little old ladies” in the back when they landed.
> My wife and kids were glued to the ceiling in the back.
I still enjoy my toddler memories of flying in west Texas in back of the Cessna, bouncing all over while hanging onto the straps. My mom would yell at us to keep our hands away from the doors when they popped open. Then she’d look back and see me with my feet on the headliner and warn me we might have to skip Dairy Queen afterwards if I didn’t get back in my seatbelt Right Now Damnit!
My sister, a former TWA flight attendant, sustained serious injuries due to inflight turbulence. You MUST wear your seat belt at all times.
That’s what I was thinking as well. The airlines always encourage just keeping the seatbelt in place. Kind of gotta place the injured in this instance.
You tell great stories. Thank you.
I agree. And the wow factor on Post 43 is way up there.
“dropped 10000 feet over the Pacific”
Document that claim please
On top of your bad weather, that’s when the Lockheed Electras and de Havilland Comets were falling out of the skies with structural failures.
Flying from San Francisco to Tokyo in 1987 we encountered some turbulence.
It wasn’t even all that bad, but I was seated in the tail of a United L1011.
Looking forward, I could watch the restrooms, overhead bins and other parts of the plane moving in different directions.
I was sure the structure was coming apart when someone commented that “this must be one of those old Panam Lockheed L1011s that United acquired.”
How did he answer you? The pretty boys I’ve seen on planes probably said yes.
Can you post the airline flight number and date of that? Something that significant would have a verifiable record.
If you have to stay erect... (snicker) Make sure you walk around frequently, You are allowed to but you are not allowed to stand in a certain spot where other people are. It is a FAR requirement that all passengers must be within a certain distance to an oxygen mask. (Recovering aircraft engineer here.) Sometimes, you can have a good conversation and get so e free drinks just being kind to a resting flight attendees in the galley. BUT, if the attendant is resting move along and just amble up and down the aisle slowly.
Yep.
Turbulence is invisible and you hit it going hundreds of miles an hour. ALWAYS keep it on.
Source: went through turbulence while working a drink cart and hit the ceiling, drink cart came on top of me, people all over the cabin. Horrible to hear the screams. Emergency landing, they thought my leg was broken (it wasn’t) and other flights around us had similar injuries.
My first flight on a commercial airline was flying from St. Louis to Philadelphia for Christmas 1969. I was a freshman at college and starting mechanical engineering school. I could not believe how much the wings flapped up and down on that aircraft. I was sure that they were going to break off. After a few courses of structures, statics, dynamics, strength of materials, etc, I had a much better understanding of why wings were flexible. But I still remember being really unnerved by that sight!
That’s FUBAR. You should have your license revoked.
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