we just had to abort our landing at SFO

pilot had to power up and pull up sharply to clear San Francisco airport.

Pilot later came on the PA and said there was a 747 on the runway where it wasn't supposed to be.

I've flown alot and this is a first.

It's still a little unsettling though.

pilot handled it cool though

that suddenly became a sharp ascent. Same thing -- another plane where it wasn't suppoed to be. I remember looking at the guy across the aisle and asking if we were really going up. Everyone was saying :wtf: but at least we were safe. It is a very weird experience.

eom

i flew into Manchester NH a few years back and there was a terrible rain storm, during the final decent the wind shear was unreal and it was so bumpy, the plane felt like it was just dropping and people were getting a tad panicky, the girl front of me started crying and for a minute or two i thought it was all over, this is how i'm going out. We finally landed and i wanted to kiss the ground. My Dad is a pilot and he listens to the weather station all day and he said "Bet that was some landing hah?"

I've been thru some major turbulence too. Its just when you're coming in for a landing and it turns into evasive maneuvers - that's a gut-check

never saw the pile, but he handled his business tonight.

Any landing where you can still use the aircraft is a great landing!

Turbulence at altitude isn't a problem for me. I kind of enjoy those sudden drops. It's just when start getting closer to ground that I don't appreciate getting tossed around.

Had a strange approach to SFO a number of years ago. Boeing 737, and we are on final coming from the north. I'd made this flight dozens of times. It's after sunset and we are descending through clouds so I had no idea of our altitude. All of a sudden, all the engines throttle up, the nose goes up and we are climbing at rate similar to takeoff. I'm not a pilot but my coworker sitting next to me was. I glanced over at him and he was completely white with his eyes closed. That didn't make me feel any better, but what can you do? We climbed for several minutes, and this is the weird part: we resumed final approach! No turns, no go around. Few minutes later, we were on the ground. I wanted to ask the crew, "What the fuck was that?" but the door to the flight deck was closed as we exited. My coworker suspected that it may have been a small private aircraft somewhere it wasn't supposed to be.

____________________________
I like Ron White's bit on flying:

I flew all the way from Flagstaff, Arizona to Phoenix, Arizona because my manager doesn't own a globe. We took off from the Flagstaff Airport, Hair Care and Tire Center there. The plane was really small, like a pack of gum with eight people in it, going -- (imitates sound of a tiny airplane) half the speed of smell.

On the way there, we lost some oil pressure in one of the engines, so we had to turn around. It's a 9-minute flight. Can't pull it off with this equipment. And they told us about it over the speaker system of the plane, which was stupid because they coulda just went (looks backward) "Hey, we lost some oil pressure."

(Ron gives a thumbs-up.) Heard ya! Sure did. Of course, I'd been drinking since lunch, so I was like, "Take it down, I don't care. Hit somethin' hard, I don't wanna limp away from this wreck."

The guy sitting next to me is losing his mind. Apparently, he had a lot to live for. He turns to me, he says "Hey man! (gasps for air) Hey man! (gasps for air) If one of these engines fails, (gasps for air) how far will the other one take us?"

So I was like, "All the way to the scene of the crash! Which is pretty handy 'cuz that's where we're headed! I bet we beat the paramedics there by a half-hour! We're haulin ass!"

The standard for a good landing is that the plane must be re-useable... :-)

It had been the flight from hell the whole way from Dallas. I was going to Houston for a conference for work. The clouds were roiling and nasty and the turbulence SUCKED. We'd waited at Love Field for hours for a plane to even get out.

When the pilot pulled up while we were "landing", I looked at the guy next to me and said, "wind shear." He pooh-poohed me saying everything was OK, but I was still freaking.

Then, the pilot came over the intercom and told us there had been some wind shear on the runway. :cry:

We circled and circled over Hobby for quite awhile, then had to divert to Austin to refuel. Turns out there had been a tornado over Pasadena not too far away during all that! Fortunately, my mom lived in Austin. I practically tackled the flight attendant getting off the plane. They kept telling me I'd lose my place, blah blah blah...but I couldn't stay in that seat one minute longer. Spent the weekend with my mom. I hate flying.

from http://www.disenfranchisedmusic.com

"Nation of Assholes, Nation of Assholes
I live in a country that's a Nation of Assholes
Idiots and morons, shitheads and jerks
I'm always amazed that anything still works"

http://www.disenfranchisedmusic.com/Lyrics/noa_lyrics.htm

The lyrics are pure genius. They sum up pretty much everything about our species, IMHO.

still have one 5 hr flight to take and was trippin a little bit.

I'll bet the folks in charge of the wayward 747 caught hell for that!

I've never had that happen, but I don't fly that much...

wish there was never a first time for everything

There was a craft on the runway where we were scheduled to land. It was a very obvious pull up and we circled out way over the ocean before trying again. Since SFO is my current home airport I knew that there was problem long before the pilot explained it. Still better than the times that I've been on a plane landing at the same time as one on the parallel runway. That feels like you're caught in a Grey Poupon commercial.

:-)

U don't get to do that at many airports

yes INDEED

No, we're not critiquing each other's performance on approaches to parallel runways.
One pilot is flying and the other is looking over to make sure he stays 'over there' and we stay 'over here'.

I usually told the passengers in my "bye-buy" PA before 10,000 feet that they might see another airplane off our left or right wing, depending on which runway we got. I'd tell the passengers that another airplane on the visual for the parallel runway might look extremely close (especially if it were a wide-body like a Boeing 747), but that it would be watched like a hawk by the pilot not flying.

Also, go-arounds are extremely commonplace. At certain airports, like LGA (LaGuardia) and DCA (Washington National) I was always spring-loaded for a go-around.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x7018167
:eyes:

And three "clunks" as they lock.

are a very, very bad thing. :scared:

http://tinyurl.com/2jrw5c

the plane (a 747) had really pretty graphics and I could tell from the wreckage it was the plane I took pics of.

:-(

...and was the result of a whole chain of circumstances going bad at once, but can still be directly laid at the feet of the KLM captain who took off without getting proper clearance. (It's intriguing to me that, even today, Dutch websites recounting the accident will try to find some way to blame anyone else other than their own countryman.

If it's any comfort, there's practically no chance that accident could happen today, as virtually all airports large enough to land a jumbo have ground radar that would allow the controllers to see through the fog.

There was one night coming into Newark in a violent wind/ice storm where the plane swung around and I found myself looking down the runway from the passenger cabin.

I was one of those instants where you're sure you're about to die. Somehow or another the pilot pulled us out of that one and aborted the landing.

The sonabitch next to me just kept bitching how he was going to miss his connection.

They shut the airport 5 minutes after we got to the gate. I hope that bastard spent the whole night waiting for his connection.

We were cruising down the runway when all of a sudden BAM!!! The engine backfired or did something weird,and the pilot powered down. We were stuck at the airport for three house while they lined up another flight.

...no real risk, but an expensive repair for the airline.

In this case, it probably just means that the jet landing ahead of you was slower than expected to clear the runway, and so you got within the margin of spacing.

Check out the "Ask the Pilot" columns at Salon.com for a lot of information on topics such as this. Although go-arounds may seem like an extreme, alarming maneuver to passengers (because the aircraft has to transition from landing configruation to take-off climb rate instantaneously) it's a maneuver that pilots practice all the time, and are fairly common, particularly at large airports with lots of traffic.

In the first instance it was shifting winds and we were practically on the ground when the pilot did the go around.

Second time there was air traffic too close (but still fairly distant) and visibility was poor, but we were not very close to the runway, probably a couple thousand feet in altitude.

In both cases, when we pulled out, we headed over the ocean like a normal takeoff, did a big circle and rejoined the line of descending air traffic.

We were on our approach to Sangster and I was sitting in a window seat with my face pressed up against the glass taking in the scenery when all at once the engines got louder and we took on a sharp upward angle. The pilot apologized and told us that an un-authorized plane had entered the runway

That is the one and only time I've ever felt air-sick. When that plane jerked upward it felt like my stomach hit the floor.

i think i was landing in frankfurt (i can't quite remember now). we were landing in fog and everything was fine until the pilot had to pull up and circle back around. turned out they'd overshot the runway a bit

i was surprisingly calm about it...normally that sort of thing would freak me out

:scared:

The other aborted landing, but this at Heathrow.