I was on an Piper Navajo air ambulance and the sky was an evil storm in our flightpath. We hit the cloud within a few minutes as we climbed and I informed the crew that we shouldn't climb over 6000' in my physical condition because I may start to brain bleed.

We leveled out in the storm at 6000 feet and it was extremely rough, the crew commented in was the roughest in all their careers. The Navajo was being tortured.

During this time, the ambulance officer/crew was visibly shaking and reassuring me we were ok and that the Navajo was a tough plane, the pilot looked worried. The ambulance officer was trying to get my details on paper hurriedly as they had no paperwork on me, so, I guess if we crashed the rescuers would know who I was...... and it gave him something to do as he was obviously scared.

I could see the weather radar screen and asked the pilot what the coloured blotches were and he said they were intense cells. Rapidly, the cells were getting thicker and then the whole screen just went that colour.
Seconds later, we were stalling and falling, caught in an incredible downburst with the pilot pushing hard on the control column and throttle!

It seemed to take forever to recover from that stall, once in a near vertical dive, I saw the ASI starting to read again and we did a long pullout just several hundred feet above the hills below. We fell 4000 feet in the downburst.

I knew from that moment I would never fear another plane ride as much and starting taking flying lessons within a year.

It was pretty cool actually, but I wouldn't like to do it again.

--------------------------

When I was young, I was in a DC-8 over the Pacific and  we passed close by an Apollo spacecraft as it made it's re-entry back into the earth's atmosphere.

I saw it first out of the port side windows, (I was seated on the starboard side), and I quickly yelled out to all the sleeping passengers in my excitement.

We had no idea what it was at first, but I knew something was coming in from space. The Captain reported it as a UFO and soon afterwards we had confirmation that it was the good guys  

I found a pic of what it looked like but it was much more colourful, like a spectrum or rainbow in the dark. So cool!




-----------------------------

My first 747 ride had the Dallas Cowboys aboard. It must have been after their win over the Miami Dolphins in Superbowl VI in 1972.

I'm not a great football fan, but I remember the party getting very rowdy on the flight with some unpleasant scenes that are a bit fuzzy in my memory.

747's hadn't been around that long then, it was quite a novelty, as were all my early jet flights to and from Australia. I remember the crew taking sextant sites to get a position fix on the Pacific hauls.

Not too much interesting stuf  in my life but...

My father flew on a Soviet Airforce An-12 in the 70's, from Erevan to Moscow. This flight wasn't in the travel plan though but there was some kind of epidemic in that area and they didn't want foreigners up there.

I cant even remember how many times I've flown, and I've had a number of cool and scary times on a plane. But my most memorable was when I was flying alone in 2004. We were on our way Into land KIAH (houston). The captain put on the seatbelt light and we were about 20 minutes out and well in simple terms, I HAD TO POO. and I mean really bad! I didn't care about the seatbelt lights, I got out of my seat and ran to the back of the 737-800 as fast as a could which was only 5 rows away  Suprizingly nobody came and knocked on the lavatory door  which took ALOT of pressure off of me. I was mostly worried about hitting an air pocket or hitting a deer on the runway or sumthing  which wouldnt be good I suppose.