Up in the Air: What is Your Worst Flight Experience?
During vacation, many travelers use air travel as the way to get away. Unexpected flight problems can cause frustration and other troubles for vacationers. During spring break, students who flew home encountered some bad flight experiences. Since people love to compare nightmare travel stories, let’s ask some Juniatians for theirs.
Hoang ’11, international student from Vietnam: “Once when I was flying from Singapore to the U.S., my flight was canceled because of the plane was somehow damaged, and they couldn’t fix my flight ticket until the next week. So I found another flight that departed half a day later. Also, they couldn’t find my suitcase, and I didn’t get it back until 2 weeks later.”
Jonathan Wang ’11, international student from China: “My worst experience was that I couldn’t find my iPod at the airport right before boarding the plane. It made me feel really sad though the whole trip on the plane.”
Matthew Tundel ’11, Lewistown, Pa.: “ My worst flight experience was when I was 10 years old, I was on a flight to Florida with my family. During the flight I had a nosebleed and my mom and I couldn’t get out because we sat in the middle seats. There was an old lady blocking our way to get into the aisle and she was asleep. It took us a long time to wake her up but after she woke up there was blood everywhere and also I accidentally got blood on her, which made her really mad. That lady wasn’t happy with us through out the rest of the flight.”
Xue Feng ’11, international student from China: “I was flying from Tokyo to the U.S. After I got on the plane, I waited two hours because they said there was an oil leak in the plane. And then they expelled all of us off the plane, and we waited another 9 hours until the plane was fixed and could take off. I was an awful wait and experience.”
Peng Wang ’13, international student from China: “The first time came to the U.S., the plane that I was on from Washington to State College was a small plane. It was shaking the whole trip. It made me felt really unsafe the whole way and I hated it. I’m afraid of being on small planes from then on.”
-Helen Hu ’13, Juniata Online Journalist
Although this is not really the worst flight experience, it is one that was very interesting. When returning from a military assignment in Germany the government scheduled me to fly to the USA in the passenger section of a large cargo plane. There were about 25 of us – normal flight service, etc. When we departed Frankfort, Germany the pilot came on as usual to announce the departure, but his announcement shocked us all. He said welcome to our flight to New York via Zurich,Switzerland. We all were preplexed – that is going in the wrong direction. When in Zurich we were required to deplane by going through the cargo area. Once back on the plane enroute to New York, the stewardess announced we had been traveling with, and in the cargo area walk right past, several million dollars worth of gold bullion. The plane had come from the USA with that cargo, stopped in Frankfort to pick us up, went to Zurich to drop off the gold and then was proceeding back to the USA.