Pleated Jeans
One of the most common fears is fear of flying.
You’re so high up — what if something goes wrong? But there are also people who love to fly planes — it’s one of their major passions in life.
Whether they work for an airline or just fly for fun, pilots definitely have stories about experiences in the air.
On Reddit, pilots are sharing some of the most harrowing, terrifying moments they’ve had while flying — and I’m honestly shocked at how many birds almost ended up seriously threatening their lives.
1. Missiles
“My dad told me a story from a few years ago that happened while flying a 737 somewhere in Nevada I think on the way back to Toronto. It was later in the evening, so you couldn’t see too much, but all of a sudden to the left of the plane my dad saw a really bright ball of light I guess you could say, moving really fast across the sky.
My dad and his co-pilot had no clue what it was, and they could hear other pilots nearby calling it in over the radio and asking what it was. Eventually it flew pass and disappeared into the distance. A few days later my dad found out that what he saw was a missile launched by a USN submarine. I wonder how many passengers thought they saw a UFO lol.” — NAbbott_737
2. Skydivers
“A skydiver about 20 yards off my wing. Was flying a 172 into an uncontrolled field that I’ve flown into 100 times before, not knowing that after a 5 year ban in skydiving there, they were allowing it on a case by case request. While flying in, calling my position, I hear ‘skydiver in the air.’ My first thought was I hope they aren’t this direction and then there he was. I had this image of him going through my prop. After that thought oh god please don’t let me kill this guy then I turned to wtf just happened and how did the pilot not call this out better. He flew off completely. Come to find out the pilot was flying his friend to skydive to his local field then departed to his home airport where they came from. I never did find the guy.” — Theskidiever
3. Smoke In The Cockpit
“Smoke in the cockpit when I landed. Thankfully it was when I landed…Had to push the airplane (small cessna) off the runway. Almost had two mid air collisions. One due to a new pilot not being where he should be, another due to control telling me an aircraft was at me 11:00 when really it was at me 2:00. And the coolest was a meteor that burned up directly in front of me. Same altitude, straight ahead. I have no idea how far away it was, but it was bright, and so pretty. Went through a spectrum of colors as it burned.” — chrisbe2e9
4. Power Lines
“Power lines directly in front of me at night that weren’t charted and were exactly at helicopter grabbing altitude.” — helodriver87
5. Geese
“Not a pilot, but my dad is a former one. He once told me about how he almost crashed his Cessna because he hit some geese. He was actually preparing for a landing approach when he hit geese flying in a patch of fog. Windshield was completely shattered and he and his passenger were covered in blood and feathers. They landed safely, but my dad was pretty scarred from that! He didn’t quit flying because of that, but bird strikes remained a constant fear of his. Geese are large birds and they did significant damage to that little plane!” — robo-dragon
6. Bathroom Stuff
Not a pilot but I was in the bathroom when the pilot came over the radio with a quick announcement that we were about to have turbulence and to buckle up. Everyone sat down, including the stewardesses and buckled up. Everyone but me who was in the process of taking a massive sh*t. The kind of sh*t you don’t want to have during turbulence. Now I’ve been in turbulence. It’s rough. This was something else. I somehow, by all the was mighty, finished my sh*t and completed the post sh*t paperwork, and flushed (didn’t wanna chance it) when the turbulence hit. To say I hit everything is an understatement. I bounced off the ceiling, hit the floor, back up, face to the toilet. It was hell and I just kept my face covered and I protected my head as best I could. After a bit of luck, I managed to get myself wedged UNDER the toilet and I stayed there till the bumpy ride ended. I left the bathroom to some laughter, and a lot of concern. See for them in their seats it was fine, until they heard screaming in the bathroom, and loud crashing noises followed by dread silence. They all thought I died..haha.”
7. Hot Drinks
“I was on one flight where they announced ‘anyone with hot drinks, please pour them out on the floor, everyone else, cover your beverages with your hand.'”
8. Other Planes
“This actually happened on my first time flying with no instructor onboard, just doing a couple laps around the traffic pattern. Took off, laps #1 and #2 went just fine, nailed a couple radio calls, got that awesome feeling of ‘Yeah, I got this.’ But, lap #3 was fine until I was setting up my final approach to land, and the GTN750 (basically a fancy navigation/radio/pseudo-radar system) warned me about a Cessna 1 mile out at the same altitude. Ignored it, since I already had the plane in sight and verified with the control tower that he was landing on the runway parallel to mine. Lo and behold, this dude zips under me by about 200-300 feet, which sounds like a good amount of room, but is actually butt-clenchingly close in a busy airspace like this. I should’ve applied full throttle and circled back around to try again, but the other plane was clear of me before the startle factor even wore off. This was made especially dangerous by the fact that the plane I was flying was low-wing (can’t see under me) and the other plane was high-wing (he couldn’t see above him). So, neither of us could see each other and the tower yelled at the guy to get out of my way, and I landed safely.” — furry_anus_destroyer
9. Darkness And Rain
“I joined a squadron on deployment near Guam for a couple months one time. It had been about 6 months since I had landed on a carrier, so I had to do a few day and night passes to get current again. My first night with them, the plan was for me to get two traps. We would come down as the first plane in the recovery, launch again, and come back in as the last plane in the recovery. Nothing crazy, we do it all the time to keep both pilots current, the only thing different is I would fly both passes. This night was overcast, so no moonlight made it though to the surface of the ocean, making it very dark when you descend through the clouds. It’s also the middle of the ocean. It is so dark that you can’t tell where the water ends and the sky starts. Not that it mattered though because we were still in the clouds down at 1200 feet. As we are coming down first in the conga line of aircraft on 2 minute intervals, we hear Paddles (the pilots on the back of the ship who help guide you down) say ’99, the deck is moving.’ This means that the flight deck is pitching, rolling, and/or heaving with the ship’s motion more than it usually does. This happens occasionally, and it’s always a bit sketchy, but that’s what Paddles is there for. Anyway, as we are flying our needles down toward the ship, we pass 400 ft at about one mile and we’re still in the clouds in the dark. We get to the normal handoff point between the approach controller and Paddles at 3/4 mile. Approach says ‘show you on and on, 3/4 mile, call the ball.’ This is the point where we would look outside and confirm that we see the lights on the ship that guide you in on the correct glideslope. In carrier aviation, if you can’t see the ball or you don’t know where you are on glideslope for some reason, you say ‘clara,’ meaning ‘clarify my position’ (at least that’s what I always assumed it stood for), and Paddles will step in on the radio and give you some help. Well in this case, we can’t even see the ship, so we respond with ‘clara ship.’ Paddles comes back with ‘601, taxi light on.’ That means they can’t see us either and they need us to turn the taxi light on so they know where we are. We turn the taxi light on, and Paddles says ‘Paddles contact’ and continues to talk us down towards the deck. We’re probably passing though 150 ft here. Eventually, we finally break out and about 3-5 seconds later, we hit the deck and come to a stop. It was raining so hard we could barely see the taxi director on the deck. They taxi us to the bow catapults and we shoot off into the darkness to do it again lol. Luckily, the weather cleared a bit and the deck steadied a bit for the second pass. That still remains the craziest thing I have done in an airplane.” — Disownedpenny
10. Perceived Engine Failure
“Hearing a once per revolution thumping coming from the rotor head. Then on approach to land the torque gauges went dead, indicating a double engine failure. Luckily the engines were still running, unlike the gauges.” — auntyjames
11. Sailboat
“My airfield where I did my pilot training had a waterway at the approach end of the runway, and oftentimes there were sailboats heading out to sea as you were coming in to land. Usually came in a little high, since the runway was plenty long enough. One day, not long after I had completed my 1st solo, I was doing my run-up, waiting for one of the regular pilots to land his low-winged sport airplane. He obviously, didn’t see the mast of the sailboat crossing, and he hit it. The plane cart-wheeled down the runway and broke into pieces. I took my plane back to the tie-downs to clear the area, and then went to help him out of the plane before it caught on fire (which it didn’t amazingly enough). The pilot broke both of his hands at the wrists, and fractured a whole bunch of stuff. Unfortunately, he was a surgeon. Not sure if he was able to work again. Needless to say, I was always very careful on approach after that.” — mrbrad595
12. Blue Heron
“I was landing a Cessna 172 and this massive blue heron appeared out of no where and just barely missed hitting my windshield. I don’t think I’ve ever been more scared.” — kirkl3s
13. Las Vegas
“Not a pilot; but my dad is. That said, we were flying out of Las Vegas and upon take off we nearly collided with another aircraft. This other guy never radioed into tower, never mentioned anything about landing; just off in his own little world as if he owned the fucking air. He was in a twin engine Beech, we were in a single prop Cessna. We were literally within 200 feet of each other; enough that we could see one another (and could probably smell the shit we were crapping out). Except their pilot. Because that guy was so fucking clueless he probably didn’t even know there was a runway there. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was trying to land on the actual Las Vegas strip.” — AutumnAtronach
14. Thunderstorms
“Thunderstorms on either side when I was in a Cessna 152 (a bit smaller than a C172). They developed pretty quickly and we thought we’d have to turn back, but there was a big enough opening to fly through. The windshield got nice and clean too. Another one was seeing the engine start shaking when a part of the oil system blew. I thought it would die on me and I would have to land in some farmland or on a small road. Fortunately we ended up being stuck with one power setting (which was also pretty bad) and could fly it back to the airport.” — JustAnotherAviatrix
15. Another Bird
“A black dot right in front of me that was not moving. At the time I was working on my commercial license in a 172 on about an 8 mile final. I was checking my instruments while on approach and when I looked up I saw a black dot that didn’t show any relative movement and in a split second I realized that I’m going to hit it so I pushed the yoke forward as fast as I could. About 1-2 seconds later a bird went right above me.” — the_Sa1ty
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