Worst inflight situation!

-Flipped inverted from wake turbulence on final
-Massive fuel leak in cockpit during flight
-Turborcharger failure after departing TEB
-Severe turbulence on multiple occaisions (cold fronts are fun!)
-Not knowing whether the nosewheel will collapse on landing
 
1. Partial Power Loss on Departure

2. Alternator Failure At Night in IMC.

3. Gear wouldn't come down => emergency gear extension :)
 
Dumb luck:
-The top hinge of my door in the 172 broke while doing some commercial maneuvers. I was waiting for the other one to go, and the whole thing to whack the stabilizer. When I opened it on the ground, I had to lift it out of its frame, lest the whole thing would have Tommy Boy-ed on me.
-My first alternator failure happened when I was being observed by a higher up. No biggie, day VFR off the departure end, but still... dumb luck.

Poor judgement: In my first month of instructing, I let let student fly an approach way too fast, landed very far down, squealing brakes, barely made the hold short. Yes, I was an idiot. That one really put me in my place.

I've been fortunate. Dilligent, too, for the most part, but fortunate.
 
All four of these were startling, but not really BAD, per se...

-Vacuum failure during my PPL hood training. Non-event, but exciting/interesting.

-Turbulence I didn't anticipate (or correct for) during power-on-stall on my checkride causing me to begin a spin...got out of it, though. DPE was impressed.

-Right after I got my PPL, doing some landing practice at Taylor, had to go around twice and on the third try, managed to put it down. Floated. Long. Sphincter factor 12 as I was trying to slow down and not run off the runway. Lesson: go around a third time if necessary.

-2 am date flight, turning downwind at Llano on a moonless night and realized I had NO horizon to work with. That made me verrrrry careful on setting up the landing. First time that has ever happened to me.

I guess none of these were bad, but definitely made me pay a lot more attention. Sorta the aviation Gods saying, "Bill, don't get cocky. We can still double-click the smite icon..."
 
1) Seeing a river of black streaming out of my left engine. We departed on a 3 hour flight home just at sunset. I barely noticed the stream of oil as it was with the light, but some how I did. This was about 10 minutes after departure. We turned back and landed non-eventfully. In hindsight probably should have done a single engine landing but oil pressure and temp were good, never mind the river of black. Got back on the ground and the dipstick read 1 qt, we departed with 7 qts. Doing calculations Single Engine Service Ceiling was lower than the terrain (flying over high plateau's of Arizona during a summer night). Thinking back on this, if I didn't catch this when I did I wouldn't have caught it until the engine failed (wasn't in the habit of shining a flashlight on each engine at night) and that sure would have made an interesting drift down scenario.

2) Standard Land Gear failure so used emergency landing gear extension, was kind of worried about the integrity when on the ground, would it fold up underneath?
 
Guy said:
Being hit by automatc weapons fire.
Click to expand...

Ouch. You, your bird, or both?

Took a short burst in Northern Rhodesia c.1974 on a fun flight w/ my dad in a 140. He was flying, 'cause I still couldn't reach the rudder pedals :-) Not much to it, just a few small holes in the right wing and some fuel spray, neither dad or I was hurt and no vital parts of the 'plane were hit. Obviously could have been catastrophic. How'd yours play out?
 
Had to drop a deuce about 20 miles out, ended up going missed approach and had to run back on downwind.

Aircraft problems, I can handle. Physiological concerns are way worse.

A slight intolerance to lactose and a big o'trough of Legal Seafoods clam chowder from Boston don't mix too well at times.
 
Engine flameout in a Lear over the Gulf of Mexico but we got it back.

Slammed pretty hard by wake turbulence a couple of times including just two days ago by a 757-300. That thing puts out a pretty good wake that got us at about 150 feet. Not too scary until you realize that you have about 100 feet of wing sticking out the left side. Darn thing knocked out the radar altimeter too. That 757 made it up to me though as it was my commute ride home and had seats left.

Running out of gas with no alternate near and the weather dropping rapidly going into St. Johns caused a bit of a pucker.

A couple of near mid-airs a while back. One was with an honest to God Blimp. We popped out of the clouds going into EWR and there was Snoopy starring at me diving for his life. The controller had to ask a couple of times for clarification what the target was.

I'm sure there are a few more here and there.
 
Port engine flameout at 100' AGL off touch-n-go during FCLP's (Field Carrier Landing Practice). Run away rudder trim at night at the boat (aircraft carrier)...jammed rudder after a fly-by, in that order. Oh, and every night carrier landing...every one.
 
I've been lucky so far. Partial power loss on departure, 400'.

And on my first (and to date, only) instructional flight, my AMEL-rated student almost put us in a spin during a V_MC demo recovery. Learned my lesson from that one, real quick.

And the typical simple stuff--doors popping open, losing GPS/radios (in VMC), etc.
 
Twice I've had to go to the bathroom so bad my legs fell asleep and had to hold/got vectored within 50nm of the airport.
 
Just outside radar coverage, I thought I saw a hole in a line and went for it.

I blundered into some light convective activity on the fringes of a storm.

I was alone, cutting the corner over the water between New Orleans and Houston in a Beech Duchess.

The turbulence shook me so bad I hit my head on the ceiling- and I was firmly strapped down.

I realized at that point that if I had been knocked unconscious, I would spiral out of control and die in the in-flight breakup as pieces of me and the airplane fell to the Gulf below.

All the while, my dear old Mom was charting my progress on FlightAware.

I made the best left 180 I could muster while hunting for clear air and took it back to Houma, LA, where I'd started the day.

I shook for a good while after I landed.
 
Bird strike crushed the leading edge of my right wing. Luckily it happened at 3k agl, so had plenty of time to figure out if I still had good controls. Oh, and drank too much coffee before a cross country, had to pee like a russian race horse (in a DA-20, which anyone who has flown would tell you that there is not enough room to stand up and pee in a bottle). I about had to crawl into the FBO when I arrived.
 
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