Have you ever had an experience that will likely be once in a lifetime? Not a Yukon hunt or bucket list event - I mean something that was a total surprise that will likely never happen again in your life.

Here's one of mine:

About 6 years ago, the family and I boarded a flight from Orlando to Denver and 10 minutes in, while still climbing to altitude, the plane made a steep and abrupt bank to the South. We were no longer going to Denver. I scanned the cabin in front of me, looking for any sign of Muzzies or other nefarious characters. I saw nothing and leaned over to my wife and quietly said, "We're not going to Denver anymore". A few minutes later, the captain comes on the intercom and informs us we are diverting to Tampa/St Pete due to a warning light, but assures us everything is okay. We immediately begin to descend and we can smell smoke. The cabin lights start to flicker on and off - which added to our level of concern. after what seemed like an eternity, but was likely only 15-20 minutes we came in and landed, hard and HEAVY, at the Tampa airport, with all the passengers in crash positions. The plane rolled to a stop and everybody clapped. The captain came back on the intercom and said to stay in our seats and to not be concerned about all the firetrucks surrounding the plane (yeah - right). We sat there for about 4-5 minutes and then captain came back on again one last time and announced an immediate evacuation. The crew opened the doors and popped the slides. My boys tried to grab their backpacks and I told them to leave their chit and let's go. We headed up the aisle to the front slide and my family were the last passengers off the plane (we were dead center in the middle of the aircraft) and the crew came down after us.

The crew gathered the passengers and moved us a safe distance away from the plane. That was when I snapped this picture:



I talked with one of the flight attendants later at the terminal and asked her if she had ever had to pop the slides before - "Not in my 19 years flying", she said, "Only in training".

cool. glad it ended well.

Kids will have stories to tell at school now

Glad things turned out well with that.

Once is all you need of an experience like that... (and preferably never.)

I thought of this today, on Easter Sunday, because an event like this can make you think about where you are with the Lord. Not a "Lord Save me and I'll follow you", but more of a "Would I be right with the Lord if it had ended that day?".

Perspective.

Had one of those 'unscheduled' stops on a plane years ago. I forget even where I was going but we got suddenly diverted to Atlanta where we parked wayyy out on the runway and 'deplaned'....waiting at the bottom of the exit stairs for most of us was one or more cops. My two each grabbed an arm and gave the cryptic order " Run..."

" So whats going on?" I had to ask...


Not surpringly they answered " ohhhh....nothing..."

While working in Albuquerque. Sandia labs use to charter a plane to fly us to the Nevada Test Site. It was an old F27 Fairchild. About half way there, one of the windshields popped out. Luckily we were onlyat15K feet at most.

Then the same year, same charter company, only about ten of us had to go out between Christmas and New Years. They flew us out in ten passenger Queen Air Cessna.

As we were about to land at Desert Rock ( NTS air strip).The tower announced they didn't see wheels sticking out of the bottom of the plane. The was no cock pit, so we could hear the pilot say ,the light says they are down. So we circled over restricted air space, dumping fuel, while the copilot manually pumped the gear down and cautioned us that they didn't know if the gear was locked. We passed over the paved landing strip and landed on the graded sand past it with an all terrain fire trucks one each side of us.

That same plane crashed on take off at Kirtland AFB heading towards Los Alamos, killing all on board.

WyColoCowboy,

It sounds like your Southwest crew was a good one, and they handled the situation well.

In events like this, there is always one passenger who will make a big fuss because they are now going to miss a meeting or are delayed getting home to watch a football game.

Instead they should seriously thank the Lord and the crew that they are on the ground and safe in one piece.

Making a 150,000 lb. tube full of people fly thousands of feet into the air and go 500 miles per hour is extremely complicated and inherently very dangerous if anything goes wrong.

Mechanical, electrical, and electronic things can and do fail frequently. It is amazing that so many people take flying as a passenger so for granted. That they do is actually a huge credit to well trained crew-members and mechanics that deal with these sorts of situations everyday, somewhere in the country.

Happy Easter, and count your blessings, everyone.

Not that scary, but back in '70 when I finished AIT at Ft Leonard Wood, I was heading home, flying standby. I got a flight on Hughes Airwest (owned by Howard Hughes and long since out of business). Their planes were less than ideal. Between Vegas and Salt Lake, I was seated next to an Air Force Sgt. We were watching the panels on the wings bang up and down due to the loose rivets that were supposed to hold them together. There were lots of other strange, unnatural noises, too. The Sgt just looked out the window and said 'We use better planes than this for targets'.

RC. Sandia started chartering Hughes Air West after the Ross Aviation fiasco. They were a little bit better, and they were 727's. The crew was great, and they plied us with a lot of booze to keep us happy so we didn't notice the defects.

The experience that totally changed my life and absolutely will not happen again was the birth of our first child.

Tom aka rinkydink

The way the Obama administration has excelled I was thinking that America's first black president will be the last black president in my lifetime.

I just recently related this story to Ron T regarding one of my dad's experiences from WWII. Dad drew a coveted weekend pass and needed a ride back off the front. He was dug in on an emergency airstrip that damaged bombers flew into when they couldn't make it back to their bases. He hitched a ride back on a patched up B-17 that had been shot up on a bombing raid. A few rudimentary repairs, just to get it back to the rear, and it was deemed "airworthy". The going rate was a Luger and a bottle of booze, both of which Dad had. They put him amidships near the waist guns and told him if anything flew near them, it was Axis and to shoot it, as the Allied aircraft steered clear of these crippled Forts because they apparently had a penchant for exploding in mid-air. Dad noticed that there was a skeleton crew on board. Same reason.

They were up in the air about 20 minutes when things starting going wrong. Dad said the whole plane reeked of gas. Every line that held a petroleum product was leaking. He said he could see daylight through the sides where the plane had taken multiple hits. The top turret gunner had been killed in the battle it last flew, and the turret was all busted up.

One engine went out, and soon another. They found a pasture to put the plane down in, and did a successful belly landing. The MP's and recovery units started showing up. Dad's on a weekend pass, and now over 100 miles from his unit, with no transportation. In the commotion of everyone fussing over the plane, he stole an MP's motorcycle and headed back for his unit, dodging patrols now looking for the missing bike. He got as close to his unit as he dared, dumped the bike in a pond, and walked into his unit with about 20 minutes to spare. Luckily, because it was an "off the books" ride, the pilot didn't even have his name to give the MP's. He never got busted for it and figures that bike is still in that pond to this day.

I only ever had one rough flight. It was from Pittsburgh into Minneapolis. They came around and picked up the drinks, and the seat belt light went on as the pilot told us to prepare for some turbulence. It got a little sporty, but nothing close to the flight related by the OP.

In our squadron in Vietnam, you never knew when your last mission of the tour might be, schedulers kept it secret , you found out when you stepped off the aircraft to be greeted with fire hoses. Here's mine, April of 1969, truly a surprise and a once in a lifetime experience. Guess you can tell I was a little happy.

Mine involves a 39 year old woman and her 19 year old daughter. That one will never happen again.

What a great shot. Thank you for your service.

I took of from Kobe Japan in route to Okinawa 20 minutes before a 7.0 earthquake struck the city and killed 6500 people.

First time I got laid. Totally surprised me!

You went on a date and the daughter babysat the dogs?

I really never want to experience this again. It took me a long time to get back on a train after THIS

Got my motel and car blown up by a terrorist ( ANC- Mandela's gang...)car bomb in Windhoek, Namibia in 1987
I was in the motel, but thankfully not the car when it went bang(explosive car was two spaces away)
Motel on fire, a little shooting on the street, had to bail out into an exciting night.

Does that count?

Gets my vote!!

Linda,...from The Camelot Lounge,...1975.

Same here!

I watched my Dad die.

I had a bucketful of damn near LAST in a lifetime aircraft events, but won't detail them here.

Had one in a car just this morning. Had y wife, daughter and granddaughter in the car and was approaching a red light just a few blocks from our house, on the way to our other daughter's house.

The light turned green for me when I was about 100 feet from it. I was already on the brakes, of course, and when I looked left, there was a car coming towards his now-very-red light - accelerating hard. He blew through that light at least three seconds late. Had I gone from brake to gas for the green... well, I probably wouldn't be typing this now.

East or West??

Great pic Jerry, know exactly how you felt which was "guess I'm going home now"..I didn't get hosed just walked into Ops didn't see my name on a crew roster but knew it was over..

walked into the middle of a pack of 17 wolves with only 6 rounds of ammo. that will never happen again!

been a couple of handfuls of them and the majority I pray they're a once in a lifetime experience

I stood on the bottom step of a Mercedes passenger bus filled to the gills with a mix of green and desert tan US Marines.

The bus stopped at a bench along the street in a middle eastern city, I forget exactly where we were.

The door flopped open, I almost fell out. There was a guy on the bus stop bench, he was dead, real dead. Of course, almost everything was dead, dead and or burning.

Dead guy had been there a while, iraqi solder. He had a pair of crappy sun glasses placed crooked on his bashed in dead face, his arms were down by his sides, right arm slightly out with a small american flag rigged in his F'd up hand, the type that are on a 1/4" wooden stick. The other hand had a coca cola can rigged into it.

He was all American'd up.

I guess it's the little things, that leave an impression.

He obviously pissed one of us off pretty bad. Or maybe somebody was just plain pissed off... Yeah I dunno.

The thing is, it made perfect sense at the time. It seemed "normal".





I've never seen anything like that on a bus stop bench since, just that one time.

When we were back at the terminal, they brought in a EMS crew to check anyone out that got bumps or bruises (one big fat dude didn't do well on the slide and got a nice rash when he hit the pavement). As they started to work through the crowd and an announcement was made that there were medical personnel there to provide aid for anyone needing it. I happened to be watching this black woman who was sitting on a chair and when she heard the announcement, she dropped to the floor and started wailing like MLK was dead all over again and kept screaming about her heart. Mind you this was an hour after we landed. I rolled my eyes, and walked over the Southwest manager addressing us, told her what I witnessed and gave her my name in case they got sued by this black b!tch.

NICE!

Landed at Stapleton after nearly crashing into the grass after clearing the low clouds on a flight from Montana after a hunt during a blue norther. My brother and i had been consoling a woman hysterical during the turbulence on descent. I had told her not to worry as they would have diverted the flight if it werent ok. Then looked out the port window as we broke through clouds to see grass and no runway 30 yards below. Plane jerked and tilted hard right and then leveled just before hitting the runway.

Got off the plane and noticed the quite of terminal personnel. Only passengers were acting normally. Told my brother chit happend. No airport personnel were talking. Spooky. Asked a girl at a terminal what happend. She started crying. Our sister flight had just crashed.

I still think our jets turbulence drifted over into the takeoff path of flight 1713 due to the norther. We were flight 1714.

So..how many did ya get?

Rockies vs Padres play-in game in 2007 at Coors field. Rockies won 9-8 in the bottom of the 13th, coming back against the then untouchable Trevor Hoffman. I was in the rightfield mezzanine. I will never in my lifetime experience another sporting event so emotional and intense, unless perhaps the Rockies or SJ Sharks win a game 7 in extra innings or overtime....

I hugged Ronald Reagan when I was 5 years old, in 1980.

I watched a plane crash right in front of me at an airshow in Chico, CA literally 10 seconds after my sister asked if planes ever crashed at those events and I told her "only on TV". The pilot of a little Coors Silver Bullet jet didnt even come CLOSE to pulling out of a loop and lawn-darted into the field right in front of us.

My first duck (drake mallard in Butte County, Ca)

My first Deer (little cow-horned runt, South Carolina)

My first Pronghorn (respectable buck in unit 87, Colorado)

My first turkey (Butte Co, Ca)

My wedding and how my wife looked that morning before we parted ways to get ready.

Beating the ever-loving CHIT out of a hardened body-by-prison scumbag 3x my size who was assaulting (attempting to rape) a woman in an alleyway in San Francisco, CA. After bending his elbow 180 the wrong direction (cool noise!), breaking a few ribs, and leaving him in a heap, the gal tells me, "I didn't ask for your help!" Go figure.

unfortunately it was two years before they were delisted.
we chased them off the range for 2 years until they opened the season on them then we got 2 before they left town.

My father died in my arms and I closed his eyes. And cried.

Rest Well With God, I will see you soon, very soon.

Steve

On the down-wind leg, I was cleared to land behind a
passenger jet. Had to extend the down-wind leg.
Jet was already parked at the terminal when I finally
came over the fence. The day was clear and hot but dead
calm, so as usual, severe wake turbulence still swirled
invisibly on the runway. The moron on the tower mike
said nothing about it. (And I wasn't thinking about
such a thing at the time.)

Flaring to touch the rubber to the concrete, I suddenly
found myself starboard-wing-down and port-wing-up, dead
vertical, with the starboard wing so close to the
concrete that I was amazed that I wasn't cart-wheeling
down the runway.

I cranked the little ship back into regular horizontal
landing attitude and continued the landing. Then the
swirl tipped me back into the same vertical
attitude. "This is entirely too much variety for this ol'
country boy!" I cranked her back to "normal,"
rammed the throttle as far forward as it'd go,
and went around for another approach.

And got summoned to the tower to be reprimanded!

My sister and I watched as the VA doctors tried to take Dad off of life support on Father's Day several years ago. His eyes opened wide and his heart rate went to 220 bpm. They immediately re-intubated him. They successfully removed it 10 days later. He actually remembers the first attempt with a smile. He said God came to him and told him his job here wasn't finished yet. Still chills me to the bone.

I was at this game as well! I was straight up from third base field level and got to see Holliday do his-head-first dive into home plate to win it. I was also at Game 4 NLDS (sweep game for the Rox), Game 4 NLCS, (sweep game for the Rox). And I also went to game 4 of the World Series, (which didn't turn out that well) - but it will likely be the only World Series game I'll ever see.

I got blown by Joan Jett post concert in 87.
She's about 5' tall and has bad bad skin, but the mouth of a godess.

First Kidney Stone.

Was living alone in N. Texas when it hit in the middle of the night. Strongest Opiates I had didn't hardly make a dent in the pain. Couldn't wait for an ambulance, drove hunched over the steering wheel, 15 miles to the Waxahachie, TX ER,...thought I was dying for sure.

There have been many more since that initial one, but the pain of the first will always be remembered...

When I was 18 I found two kids, 9 years and 7 years old, Sister and Brother who had drowned in a creek. The water was clear enough to see them underwater stuck in a fence. My buddy and I didn't know how long they had been under so began CPR. An hour later a Doctor relieved us and pronounced them. They had been missing about an hour when we found them.

This may run a little long. My father and I used to haul High end dealer trade cars all over the country back in the early 90's. We usually ran seperate trucks going different places. But we did a lot of trips together for customers that were in a hurry that way we could drive 24/7. So we spent a lot of time together driving. My dad passed in 2005.
Fast forward to Sept 2010 I was in Colorado on my annual Elk Hunt. For the first time ever our crew took 2 trucks out so we would have more room and a extra rig if needed. First day of the hunt we were back at camp making plans to go haul out a bull one of us had shot. A stranger pulled up on a four wheeler and asked for me. He said you have to call home and handed me a Sattelite phone as we didnt have cell service. Turns out I had a family emergency and I needed to get home quickly.

I threw my stuff in my truck and headed home. I pulled our of Paonia Colorado at 4:30 Missouri time. I hauled ass east thru the Mountains, Denver and into Kansas. I only stopped for gas. Sometime that morning I remember going through Salina Ks. I dont remember nothing else until I got to Junction City Ks. I remember waking up and hearing my Dads voice say "Son you better drive now". That is what he always said when we were hauling cars and he was getting tired. That really woke me up.

Im not much of a believer in ghosts and such but something happened that night. Regardless I made it home at 6:00 am and after a few hectic days my Family emergency got worked out and everything was fine. I dont know if I really fell all the way asleep that night but I know that I dont remember a thing of that 50 miles of the trip.