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<p> </p><h2>Planes are safer than cars, right?</h2><p>People fly so frequently that it has become something we take for granted when actually we are suspended in air inside a metal tube. Planes are really a wonder of human engineering if you think about them too much. And, while plane crashes do happen very rarely, what about the mid-flight problems that don&#39;t end in tragedy? It&#39;s probably best to just surrender to not knowing about the potential disasters while throwing back a mini bottle of plane wine and a rom-com that came out in 2004.</p><p>When a recent <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/6w2h1g/pilotsflight_crews_of_reddit_what_went_wrong_on/">Reddit </a>user asked, &quot;Pilots/Flight Crews of Reddit, what went wrong on your flight that the passengers never knew about?&quot; sky-experts everywhere were ready to weigh in. Word to the wise: don&#39;t read this one before you&#39;re about to get on plane...</p><div className="ad-splitter"></div><p> </p><h2>1. Flying ducks! &quot;RedditGotWings.&quot;</h2><blockquote> <p>A colleague of mine was flying with a Captain who couldn&#39;t stop giggling since he got onboard his 737. Only when they were cruising that the Captain took out a yellow live baby duck from his flight bag. Couldn&#39;t believe the story but the dude recorded a video of the little duck chilling in the sun on top of the mode control panel!</p> </blockquote><h2>2. Stop trying to join the mile-high club! &quot;normanlee.&quot;</h2><blockquote> <p>Girlfriend is a flight attendant, so I asked her for a few stories.</p> <ol> <li> <p>Upon landing, one of the tires blew out. It pretty much just resulted in a bigger jolt than usual, and although a few passengers commented on it, the crew just played it off as a more or less regular landing. Girlfriend: &quot;What are you gonna do, tell everybody a tire just blew and get them all panicked?&quot;</p> </li> <li> <p>At least once a week, there&#39;s an armed, plainclothes federal air marshal riding on the plane, usually in first class. They&#39;re there as a security measure, in case the cockpit is breached or something. Even if people are aware that air marshals are a thing (usually portrayed in Hollywood as escorting a criminal), they don&#39;t realize the frequency with which the marshals ride along on planes.</p> </li> <li> <p>A guy on the plane was from a connecting flight from a Eurasian airline, with a boarding pass under some other woman&#39;s name. The woman happened to be on the flight as well, so he obviously didn&#39;t belong. The guy could&#39;ve stayed if he had just gone through TSA again, but he refused to go through the process and was very strongly insistent on talking to the captain directly (big red flag right there). No idea what the real story was--she believes that it was a foiled terrorism attempt--but the crew treated it as a simple duplicate boarding pass problem. Again, the problem was dealt with and you don&#39;t want to unnecessarily worry the passengers.</p> </li> <li> <p>A lot of people try to join the mile-high club. Like, a lot.</p> </li> </ol> </blockquote><div className="ad-splitter"></div><h2>3. Ha, &quot;[deleted].</h2><blockquote> <p>My dad had a wasp in the cockpit with him once, he said his first thought when he noticed it right after taking off was &quot;oh, so this is how I die&quot;</p> </blockquote><h2>4. Gross! &quot;MayDaze.&quot;</h2><blockquote> <p>Cockroach in the cockpit. Redeye from LAX. One of us was strapped in while the other one hunted for the little fucker.</p> </blockquote><h2>5. Definitely a good move, &quot;Whatsupwiththizat.&quot;</h2><blockquote> <p>I was flying a Piper Navajo that seats 8 passengers out of a small airport, we were making all of our required radio calls, but because this was a small uncontrolled airport some people in small airplanes will operate without radios or just don&#39;t care enough to broadcast their position. Anyway we were doing our due diligence but not long after take off and while leaving the traffic pattern my FO says &quot;shit!&quot; And takes control from me and make a relatively aggressive (for passengers at least) turn to the right. As he does this i see a cessna out my left window no more that 150 ft below us. We essentially climbed through the altitude he was cruising at and turned to avoid him. Only one passenger noticed when we got to the destination and he told us it was a &quot;good move&quot;.</p> </blockquote><div className="ad-splitter"></div><h2>6. Hawks are strong, &quot;deckle420.&quot;</h2><blockquote> <p>It was a flight from Kansas to Oregon, and as we were mid-flight, a hawk fucking dive-bombed the wing and DENTED it. The pilot announced the subtle thud as minor turbulence, but the crew knew what had happened. No one knew how the hell the hawk was flying so high. It was a smaller plane, so we only had one and a half dozen people(not counting us crew members). The dent didn&#39;t actually meds with flight too much, but it&#39;s a hell of a story to tell.</p> </blockquote><h2>7. This is terrifying, &quot;Kdog0073.&quot;</h2><blockquote> <p>I was giving my sister and a friend a tour of the Chicago skyline over Lake Michigan. We are all having a good time. Suddenly, the engine goes quiet... a nightmare especially because I only have one of them. The silence was noticeable and my sister starts looks at me and starts to panic. The engine comes back within about 3 seconds alive and well, and I head for the nearest airport.</p> <p>In a small propeller plane, it is hard to hide the silence of the engine, but since it came back, I acted like nothing happened. I don&#39;t think they realize how critical of a situation it almost was.</p> <p> </p> </blockquote><div className="ad-splitter"></div><h2>8. Damn, &quot;Scubamane.&quot;</h2><blockquote> <p>Landed on the wrong runway. (it was night time, and tower didn&#39;t inform me of my misjudgment until less than 1/4 mile away.) I was a young Private pilot and had a few passengers, so it wasn&#39;t too big of a deal</p> </blockquote><h2>9. Scary! &quot;missem_90.&quot;</h2><blockquote> <p>Former flight attendant here. I lived through 2 different total engine failures. That were never announced to the Passengers. Turns out one was because the aircraft mechanics had left a screwdriver in the engine. The other I never learned why.</p> <p>And a few times we had to declare fuel emergencies. Meaning that the plane almost didn&#39;t have enough fuel to land correctly.</p> </blockquote><h2>10. Wow, &quot;tillerman35.&quot;</h2><blockquote> <p>I took a bunch of friends up at night to see the city lights. Unfortunately, the PCL (pilot controlled lights) of my home airport (a tiny little airstrip, really- but they did have runway lights!) decided that was the night they weren&#39;t going to work. The airstrip was in the middle of a decent sized patch of woods &amp; really only identifiable by the <em>absence</em> of light on a moonless overcast night like that one. Which made it totally impossible to find. Effectively, I was lost in mid-air! I knew the airport&#39;s bearings from two VORs (radio navigation aids), so theoretically if I went to the intersection of the two compass headings, I <em>should</em> be able to see my airport directly beneath me. But when I did, it was still so damn dark that the ground might as well have been invisible.</p> <p>I had plenty of gas, and there were three or four airports in the area that I could have gone to. But it would have been embarrassing as fuck to have to catch a cab back to where we&#39;d left our car. So I criss-crossed the area a few times at low altitude with the landing lights on. To eliminate all glare, I turned off all the interior lights, leaving my passengers in the dark without explanation.</p> <p>Finally, I caught just the barest glimpse of the runway &amp; took a mental picture of the setup. I flew an abbreviated landing pattern &amp; lined up for final. The landing lights showed me as being slightly off, so I slid left every so little and then set her down nice and easy.</p> <p>I turned to look at my friends. They were as white as sheets. To them, it had been so completely dark that they didn&#39;t know whether they were 10 feet or 1,000 feet above the ground. They had no idea why I&#39;d turned off all the lights and pulled power from the engine, and the bump of landing came as a total surprise.</p> <p>I laughed it off and said that I&#39;d gotten lots of practice landing at airports with no lights back when I used to run drugs across the Mexican border. For the longest time, I think they actually believed me!</p> </blockquote><div className="ad-splitter"></div><h2>11. This is reassuring, &quot;CorgiButter.&quot;</h2><blockquote> <p>I fly giant airlines as well so here is my take.</p> <p>Had a flight control failure over the ocean. Autopilot and autothrottles disconnected but after rubbing checklists for nearly an hour we were able to correct it and get them back, avoiding a non-standard configuration landing.</p> <p>Another incident over the south China sea. Blew a pressurization valve and had to make an emergency return to Japan. We landed and I guess some passengers didn&#39;t really notice. Many were surprised to wake up back in Japan. I guess we should have expressed that emergency notification a little better.</p> <p>Someone mentioned redundancy. This is true. Our aircraft has quite a few. Very often we get random issues that make us keep an eye on them but nothing too serious.</p> <p>For the most part if something is wrong enough to be serious, the passengers will know eventually. If it&#39;s nothing too serious then there&#39;s no point in anyone else knowing. Flying is pretty safe.</p> <p> </p> </blockquote><div className="ad-splitter"></div><h2>12. What! &quot;Pilot-Panda.&quot;</h2><blockquote> <p>We were struck by lightning (twice) in a small computer turbine and ended up writing off the engine due to magnetization.</p> <p>I advertently climbed into a storm low level. Hardly any turbulence like you&#39;d expect and other than engine parameters dropping off for a split second nothing else was amiss.</p> </blockquote><h2>13. NOPE NOPE NOPE, &quot;hotcakesinmytummy.&quot;</h2><blockquote> <p>I was flying myself and 2 friends in a near new C172 hired from my flying school I was training at. We were doing a 1 hour scenic flight and I was step climbing through 1000ft increments to 4000ft. Everytime i would nose down at the 1000ft mark to check for traffic and let the trim bring the nose back up again the engine would run rough, cough a couple of times and keep going ok after that. I ended up leveling at 4000, cut the trip short and turned for home. It was fine on the way back in and the landing was uneventful, however it was coughing at low rpm at taxi.</p> <p>I informed the mechanic and the next week he advised me the fuel filter was so clogged with sediment it had been pushed into a valve and everytime I climbed it restricted the fuel flow. He reckoned any higher than 4000ft and it likely would have stopped completely and with no readily accessible landing spots close by it would have been interesting.</p> <p>Not as exciting as some on here but I still shit my pants. Passengers were none the wiser.</p> <p> </p> </blockquote><div className="ad-splitter"></div><h2>14. This is lucky, &quot;Wise-Old-Man.&quot;</h2><blockquote> <p>I was flying my stepdaughter back to her mother&#39;s, a city about 80 miles away, in a Cessna 172. It was semi-stormy but I really wanted to fly and being young...er, a very inexperienced pilot (less than 80 hours at the time) and pretty foolish, we went anyway. My girlfriend came along too.</p> <p>We got about 30 miles in to the flight and ran in to a cloud bank. In the mountains. I am thinking &ldquo;Hmmm, we can fly through this to clearness I am SURE is only a little bit away&rdquo;. So we fly in to the cloud and in to zero visibility. My first time in zero vis. As a pilot. All the experienced pilots here know what happened in the following minutes and they are rolling their eyes and shaking their collective heads.</p> <p>We are cruising along and I am hoping to see some clearing out ahead soon. I casually check the instruments because that&#39;s what one should do when one is flying blind and I notice we are in a steep climb and losing speed rapidly. In my mind I am thinking &ldquo;HOLY SHIT!!!!!&rdquo; but I try to remain clam and get the plane back in to level flight again. While doing this I am thinking to myself &ldquo;Wow. You really can&#39;t tell by feel what altitude your plane is in when you are in a zero visibility situation&rdquo;.</p> <p>I decide it just might be a good idea to turn around and get out of this mess before something really bad happens. I put the plane in to a gentle level turn to head back the way we came. I am keeping an eye out for obstacles like mountain sides and trees. About half way through the turn I check the instruments again. HOLY SHIT!!! I have one wing pointed to the ground and I am losing altitude at a prodigious rate. I level the plane back out &hellip;.. again... and fly with my eyes pretty much glued to the instruments to keep the plane flying the way I THINK it&#39;s flying with the occasional brief check for mountainsides and such.</p> <p>We finally exit the cloud and I tell the girls we should probably head back because I don&#39;t think we can safely get to our destination given the current weather conditions. They were completely clueless the whole time of the danger I had stupidly put us in. Many unforgettable lessons were learned that day.</p> <p> </p> </blockquote><div className="ad-splitter"></div>

14 pilots and crew share mid-flight disasters that passengers never knew about.

 Planes are safer than cars, right?People fly so frequently that it has become something we take for granted when actually we are suspended in air inside a metal tube. Planes are really a wonder of human engineering if you think about them too much. And, while plane crashes do happen very rarely, what about the mid-flight problems that don&#39;t end in tragedy? It&#39;s probably best to just surrender to not knowing about the potential disasters while throwing back a mini bottle of plane wine and a rom-com that came out in 2004.When a recent Reddit user asked, &quot;Pilots/Flight Crews of Reddit, what went wrong on your flight that the passengers never knew about?&quot; sky-experts everywhere were ready to weigh in. Word to the wise: don&#39;t read this one before you&#39;re about to get on plane... 1. Flying ducks! &quot;RedditGotWings.&quot; A colleague of mine was flying with a Captain who couldn&#39;t stop giggling since he got onboard his 737. Only when they were cruising that the Captain took out a yellow live baby duck from his flight bag. Couldn&#39;t believe the story but the dude recorded a video of the little duck chilling in the sun on top of the mode control panel! 2. Stop trying to join the mile-high club! &quot;normanlee.&quot; Girlfriend is a flight attendant, so I asked her for a few stories.   Upon landing, one of the tires blew out. It pretty much just resulted in a bigger jolt than usual, and although a few passengers commented on it, the crew just played it off as a more or less regular landing. Girlfriend: &quot;What are you gonna do, tell everybody a tire just blew and get them all panicked?&quot;   At least once a week, there&#39;s an armed, plainclothes federal air marshal riding on the plane, usually in first class. They&#39;re there as a security measure, in case the cockpit is breached or something. Even if people are aware that air marshals are a thing (usually portrayed in Hollywood as escorting a criminal), they don&#39;t realize the frequency with which the marshals ride along on planes.   A guy on the plane was from a connecting flight from a Eurasian airline, with a boarding pass under some other woman&#39;s name. The woman happened to be on the flight as well, so he obviously didn&#39;t belong. The guy could&#39;ve stayed if he had just gone through TSA again, but he refused to go through the process and was very strongly insistent on talking to the captain directly (big red flag right there). No idea what the real story was--she believes that it was a foiled terrorism attempt--but the crew treated it as a simple duplicate boarding pass problem. Again, the problem was dealt with and you don&#39;t want to unnecessarily worry the passengers.   A lot of people try to join the mile-high club. Like, a lot.   3. Ha, &quot;[deleted]. My dad had a wasp in the cockpit with him once, he said his first thought when he noticed it right after taking off was &quot;oh, so this is how I die&quot; 4. Gross! &quot;MayDaze.&quot; Cockroach in the cockpit. Redeye from LAX. One of us was strapped in while the other one hunted for the little fucker. 5. Definitely a good move, &quot;Whatsupwiththizat.&quot; I was flying a Piper Navajo that seats 8 passengers out of a small airport, we were making all of our required radio calls, but because this was a small uncontrolled airport some people in small airplanes will operate without radios or just don&#39;t care enough to broadcast their position. Anyway we were doing our due diligence but not long after take off and while leaving the traffic pattern my FO says &quot;shit!&quot; And takes control from me and make a relatively aggressive (for passengers at least) turn to the right. As he does this i see a cessna out my left window no more that 150 ft below us. We essentially climbed through the altitude he was cruising at and turned to avoid him. Only one passenger noticed when we got to the destination and he told us it was a &quot;good move&quot;. 6. Hawks are strong, &quot;deckle420.&quot; It was a flight from Kansas to Oregon, and as we were mid-flight, a hawk fucking dive-bombed the wing and DENTED it. The pilot announced the subtle thud as minor turbulence, but the crew knew what had happened. No one knew how the hell the hawk was flying so high. It was a smaller plane, so we only had one and a half dozen people(not counting us crew members). The dent didn&#39;t actually meds with flight too much, but it&#39;s a hell of a story to tell. 7. This is terrifying, &quot;Kdog0073.&quot; I was giving my sister and a friend a tour of the Chicago skyline over Lake Michigan. We are all having a good time. Suddenly, the engine goes quiet... a nightmare especially because I only have one of them. The silence was noticeable and my sister starts looks at me and starts to panic. The engine comes back within about 3 seconds alive and well, and I head for the nearest airport. In a small propeller plane, it is hard to hide the silence of the engine, but since it came back, I acted like nothing happened. I don&#39;t think they realize how critical of a situation it almost was.   8. Damn, &quot;Scubamane.&quot; Landed on the wrong runway. (it was night time, and tower didn&#39;t inform me of my misjudgment until less than 1/4 mile away.) I was a young Private pilot and had a few passengers, so it wasn&#39;t too big of a deal 9. Scary! &quot;missem_90.&quot; Former flight attendant here. I lived through 2 different total engine failures. That were never announced to the Passengers. Turns out one was because the aircraft mechanics had left a screwdriver in the engine. The other I never learned why. And a few times we had to declare fuel emergencies. Meaning that the plane almost didn&#39;t have enough fuel to land correctly. 10. Wow, &quot;tillerman35.&quot; I took a bunch of friends up at night to see the city lights. Unfortunately, the PCL (pilot controlled lights) of my home airport (a tiny little airstrip, really- but they did have runway lights!) decided that was the night they weren&#39;t going to work. The airstrip was in the middle of a decent sized patch of woods &amp; really only identifiable by the absence of light on a moonless overcast night like that one. Which made it totally impossible to find. Effectively, I was lost in mid-air! I knew the airport&#39;s bearings from two VORs (radio navigation aids), so theoretically if I went to the intersection of the two compass headings, I should be able to see my airport directly beneath me. But when I did, it was still so damn dark that the ground might as well have been invisible. I had plenty of gas, and there were three or four airports in the area that I could have gone to. But it would have been embarrassing as fuck to have to catch a cab back to where we&#39;d left our car. So I criss-crossed the area a few times at low altitude with the landing lights on. To eliminate all glare, I turned off all the interior lights, leaving my passengers in the dark without explanation. Finally, I caught just the barest glimpse of the runway &amp; took a mental picture of the setup. I flew an abbreviated landing pattern &amp; lined up for final. The landing lights showed me as being slightly off, so I slid left every so little and then set her down nice and easy. I turned to look at my friends. They were as white as sheets. To them, it had been so completely dark that they didn&#39;t know whether they were 10 feet or 1,000 feet above the ground. They had no idea why I&#39;d turned off all the lights and pulled power from the engine, and the bump of landing came as a total surprise. I laughed it off and said that I&#39;d gotten lots of practice landing at airports with no lights back when I used to run drugs across the Mexican border. For the longest time, I think they actually believed me! 11. This is reassuring, &quot;CorgiButter.&quot; I fly giant airlines as well so here is my take. Had a flight control failure over the ocean. Autopilot and autothrottles disconnected but after rubbing checklists for nearly an hour we were able to correct it and get them back, avoiding a non-standard configuration landing. Another incident over the south China sea. Blew a pressurization valve and had to make an emergency return to Japan. We landed and I guess some passengers didn&#39;t really notice. Many were surprised to wake up back in Japan. I guess we should have expressed that emergency notification a little better. Someone mentioned redundancy. This is true. Our aircraft has quite a few. Very often we get random issues that make us keep an eye on them but nothing too serious. For the most part if something is wrong enough to be serious, the passengers will know eventually. If it&#39;s nothing too serious then there&#39;s no point in anyone else knowing. Flying is pretty safe.   12. What! &quot;Pilot-Panda.&quot; We were struck by lightning (twice) in a small computer turbine and ended up writing off the engine due to magnetization. I advertently climbed into a storm low level. Hardly any turbulence like you&#39;d expect and other than engine parameters dropping off for a split second nothing else was amiss. 13. NOPE NOPE NOPE, &quot;hotcakesinmytummy.&quot; I was flying myself and 2 friends in a near new C172 hired from my flying school I was training at. We were doing a 1 hour scenic flight and I was step climbing through 1000ft increments to 4000ft. Everytime i would nose down at the 1000ft mark to check for traffic and let the trim bring the nose back up again the engine would run rough, cough a couple of times and keep going ok after that. I ended up leveling at 4000, cut the trip short and turned for home. It was fine on the way back in and the landing was uneventful, however it was coughing at low rpm at taxi. I informed the mechanic and the next week he advised me the fuel filter was so clogged with sediment it had been pushed into a valve and everytime I climbed it restricted the fuel flow. He reckoned any higher than 4000ft and it likely would have stopped completely and with no readily accessible landing spots close by it would have been interesting. Not as exciting as some on here but I still shit my pants. Passengers were none the wiser.   14. This is lucky, &quot;Wise-Old-Man.&quot; I was flying my stepdaughter back to her mother&#39;s, a city about 80 miles away, in a Cessna 172. It was semi-stormy but I really wanted to fly and being young...er, a very inexperienced pilot (less than 80 hours at the time) and pretty foolish, we went anyway. My girlfriend came along too. We got about 30 miles in to the flight and ran in to a cloud bank. In the mountains. I am thinking &ldquo;Hmmm, we can fly through this to clearness I am SURE is only a little bit away&rdquo;. So we fly in to the cloud and in to zero visibility. My first time in zero vis. As a pilot. All the experienced pilots here know what happened in the following minutes and they are rolling their eyes and shaking their collective heads. We are cruising along and I am hoping to see some clearing out ahead soon. I casually check the instruments because that&#39;s what one should do when one is flying blind and I notice we are in a steep climb and losing speed rapidly. In my mind I am thinking &ldquo;HOLY SHIT!!!!!&rdquo; but I try to remain clam and get the plane back in to level flight again. While doing this I am thinking to myself &ldquo;Wow. You really can&#39;t tell by feel what altitude your plane is in when you are in a zero visibility situation&rdquo;. I decide it just might be a good idea to turn around and get out of this mess before something really bad happens. I put the plane in to a gentle level turn to head back the way we came. I am keeping an eye out for obstacles like mountain sides and trees. About half way through the turn I check the instruments again. HOLY SHIT!!! I have one wing pointed to the ground and I am losing altitude at a prodigious rate. I level the plane back out &hellip;.. again... and fly with my eyes pretty much glued to the instruments to keep the plane flying the way I THINK it&#39;s flying with the occasional brief check for mountainsides and such. We finally exit the cloud and I tell the girls we should probably head back because I don&#39;t think we can safely get to our destination given the current weather conditions. They were completely clueless the whole time of the danger I had stupidly put us in. Many unforgettable lessons were learned that day.   

Planes are safer than cars, right?  People fly so frequently that it has become something we take for granted when actually we are suspended in air inside a metal tube. Planes are really a wonder of human engineering if you think about...