Some touch-and-goes are touchier than others

I saw this video earlier today (first posted on a site called LiveLeak.com) and it made me glad I wasn't on this plane. But it did remind me of a hairy takeoff several years ago from Ontario International Airport.

That particular adventure was on a Southwest Airlines flight. I was traveling with three coworkers up to Sacramento to help our sister paper in Marysville cover a flood. We were like the relief workers, after they had all been working days around the clock.

One of the people in our little quartet hated to fly. As the son of a pilot, I was trying to convince him that flying was no big deal. The weather, however, made our takeoff a very big, nearly very bad, deal.

I had never felt a plane turn sideways as soon at the wheels lost contact with the ground, but I did that evening. I'm glad I don't have video of that little adventure to see just how much like this German landing it really was.

The only other time I got nervous on a flight a couple of years ago this month coming into Portland International Airport.

I wrote something about that landing a couple of years ago in another venue, but here's how I described that little adventure.

Portland... was in the midst of a squall. The wind was obviously kicking up pretty good, because that MD-80 was tossed around.... We were bucking and bouncing and slipping and banging all the way through the final approach. The passengers seemed to handle it pretty well, but you know the turbulence is bad when you are sitting in the back of the plane and you can see the front of the cabin bouncing and gyrating around.

After we reached the terminal, when everyone was in the rush to hurry up and wait in the aisle, I asked one of the flight attendants one of those stupid "Here's your
sign" sort of questions.

Me: So, is it windy here?

Blonde flight attendant: Yea, there's quite a storm out there. It's been like that all day.

Me: I thought that landing seemed a little rougher than normal.

Flight attendant: Yea, it thought I was going to get sick there for a minute.

It does not bode well when your flight attendant admits queasiness on landing.

On both occasions, I had far less harrowing travels than the folks who were coming into Hamburg on Saturday. Here's one account of what happened. Good thing the pilot on the Airbus didn't lose his cool, or his lunch.