if your flying over or anywhere near the usa, you are never going to get onto the flightdeck, which is understandable i supose.  however, i have heard of people getting onto the flightdeck over other countries quite easily.  just ask a flight attendant to ask the captain.  i have never tried it myself so i dont know if it is actually that easily, or if people just tell me these things coz they know i would really like to visit the flightdeck myself!!

Those damn placards...I thankfully never got one...but I guess it must feel like you're standing in the middle of a huge spotlight..No thanks...I am fine on my own

Flight from Monastir to Brussels ( Citybird 737): I was seated next to this BIG Arabian looking guy, expensive suite, dark designer sunglasses, suitcase attached to his arm... Turned out to be a diamond-trader un route to Antwerp. Nice fella, but at first I thought it was a mob-guy... 

Scary moment: Virgin Express flight from Rome Fuimicino to Brussels: moments after take-off, I noticed a sudden loss of power and a sinking feeling, accompagnied by some sort off buzzer sound... freaked me out completely! Only a while back I learned on a website by a female pilot, the sinking feeling is pretty normal. It's when they start retracting flaps and set everything to do the climb-part of the flight... but at that moment... Jeez...

Well, Ive had a few, but my most interesting was when I was going to Charlotte to visit my aunt.  I was one of those 'unaccompanied minors' at the time, but by then I had flown so much and already fallen in love with flying and aviation that I wasnt at all scared.  Bad weather was looming over Charlotte, so first we were diverted to Charleston, SC for about an hour.  That was pretty crappy cause at first they wouldnt let me and another minor leave the plane, but finally one stewardess took us to get ice cream.  Then we finally got airborne again and when we were approaching charlotte, the weather was horrible.  As we descended through the clouds, the plane shook with turbulence.  I ddnt like it too much, but I was okay.   The same cant be said for the large African American woman in the seat next to me.  She was gripping (I mean death grip) the armrests and screaming "Oh Lordy, Lord!" for the whole decent.  I found it hilarious, but didnt laugh cause it wasnt funny.  We made it down safely, and all in all it was an interesting flight.

I haven't had many hair-raising flying stories so far, but I can think of one (which isn't really that scary either )

It was a flight from LPFR - EGGD, in an A321 (I think.) We were on final, and it was rather windy, so the aircraft was being rocked about a bit. As we corssed the threshold, I noticed one of the wings drop slightly and a very small flare. Then we hit the tarmac with a thud, and we came in so hot that I slid along my seat (and I had the seatbelt on).

And about the flightdeck business, yea, if the pilot's nice enough and the flight's ended, he'll let you on. I remember on a flight from EGLL - YSSY, and we were halfway to our first stop for fuel (Singapore) when we (my brother and I) were allowed into the flightdeck, and as you can imagine for an 8 year old who liked flying that mwould have been quite an amazing sight

Kind of sounds like a compressor stall. I mean, I've never heard one myself, but I imagine that's what they would sound like.

EGNX and Jake reminded me of a couple of stories from when I was flying.  For my aerospace class in high school, two other students and I along with an instructor were taking a three legged cross-country flight, and right in the middle of one of the legs, the instructor turned to us and asked if we'd ever been zero-G, and we all said no, so he took control of the airplane and quickly pushed the yoke forward, and we dropped like a stone.  It was an intersting, and exhilerating experience, to see the maps and pens and things around the cockpit start floating in front of your face for even a split second.  Ever since then I've wanted to try that again, but I don't think I could ever do that to myself in an airplane, at least not until I get a few hundred more hours.

Another experience I had, was when it came time to do my night cross-country flight.  During that day, there had been some rather nasty storms all around the area, but by that evening, the last storm had started to move off to the east.  Coincidentally, the airport my instructor and I were flying to were off to the east also.  So I got to the airport around 8 PM and we talk about whether or not we fly with the storm still relatively close.  We decided to go as the storm was moving more north-east, and would probably be out of the area by the time we were airborne.  So we took off, and got a flight-following from Madison ATC.  As we were flying, we could see distant lighting flashes way to the north, so we called ATC to see if they had any weather near us, or in our way, and they said the radar was totally clear.  So we kept going, but about a minute or two after hearing from ATC that there was lighting or anything in the area, the entire airplane lit up with a huge flash.  I just sat for a second to figure out what had just happened, and whether or not we were still flying and everything was still working, which we were, and everything still was, so I wasn't too phased by it, until I look to the right at my instructor whose eyes were like dinner plates and he had that "holy-s**t" look on his face, which freaked me out a bit.  But everything was fine, and we didn't hear any thunder, and ATC said they still didn't have any lightning flashes on their scope.  So we figured it had been a discharge of static electricity or something that had built up on the airplane, like St. Elmo's fire.  So that was pretty interesting.  Also interesting, was the odd ~70kt headwind we had on the way back up at 4000 ft, when it was calm at the surface.

If you're interested.....St. Elmo's fire on an MD-11