Originally Posted by joepilot

I was FE on a DC-8 with an FO that really, really liked Flight Attendants. Working in the back was his ex-wife, his current wife, and his current girlfriend. Yes, they all knew about each other.

The entire five hours to Hawaii he stayed in the cockpit, and no female F/A came up to the cockpit. Luckily the F/As had a layover, but the cockpit crew was on a turn.

Joe

Originally Posted by Borden Drousy

I'll throw one in. Departing Bogota which on your best day is a goat rope. TRW's all over. The departure looks OK ish, but you have a 90 deg left into a valley. I'm in the right seat with an old friend in the left seat. We take off and make the hard left. Were climbing through 10,000, which if I remember right is probably two thousand above the ground.

Cumulo-Granite on the left, Cumulo-Granite on the right. We're in that loud heavy rain that you can tell just wants to turn into hail. A few miles to make the first restriction. Guxun, I think at 12,000.

Really loud bang and flash. A little girl sneaks onto the flight deck and screams out in surprise. I say it was the other guy. The other guy says it was me. But, it's my story so it was definitely him.

The right engine rolls back.

We look at each other. Really? Today? Why us? Crap. You know, the whole Kubler-Ross thing in 10 seconds.

Thankfully my pal was from the era when the first immediate action step to any flashing red panel lights and overly loud aural warning was to sit back for a moment and light up a smoke. So we lived.

We do some common sense things with the levers and switches, cross Guxun at 11,999 ft and eventually got the engine back. Best guess was when the lightning directly hit the engine cowl, it probably confused the FADEC for a while.

The really important lesson I learned from this is crashpads should always have laundry facilities. I'd also like to ask Airbus to make that stupid "Ding Ding Ding" a little louder. How are we supposed to get any sleep with all that racket? I guess someone needs to test to see if those emergency defibrillators actually work, why not the pilots?

Originally Posted by Poser765

only thing worse is when your girlfriend on reserve gets assigned a trip you’re already working with your girlfriend.

Originally Posted by Rolf

That is oddly specific, Airhoss. How did that story end?

Originally Posted by Turbosina

Not sure if this counts since this was in a Cessna, but after takeoff with a student one day, the entire airplane started shaking like a wet puppy, while both rudder pedals began slamming to their stops in a rhythmic fashion. I turned back to the field, and made the mistake of turning around to look at the tail. You ever seen those high-speed flutter videos that NASA did? This was just like that, only at 90 knots instead of 550 knots. You can imagine the thoughts that went through my mind.

Somehow got the airplane back on the ground. This was long before cell cameras everywhere (heck it was before nearly anybody had a cellphone), so I don't have a picture. The fuselage aft of the flight deck was twisted like a crunched Coke can, and the rudder looked like someone had attacked it with a 2-by-4.

Turned out the rudder had been removed for repainting, and whoever 'balanced' it did the complete opposite of balancing. So an airfoil that could normally do, say, 200 knots before flutter set in, was so unbalanced that it happened at 90 knots.

To this day I'm amazed the entire tail didn't come off.

Originally Posted by Airhoss

A positive EPT in your V file wrapped in a note that says “call me”.

Originally Posted by Big E 757

I worked for a cargo company with headquarters just south of DTW, and they had pilot bases in SDF and Monroe, MI (whatever their identifier is). I got hired into the PA Aerostar. The year before I got hired, they had 7 engine failures....on 6 aircraft. And they lost one aircraft in a field in Ohio or West Virginia. The Pilot survived. Me being the 1500 hour, indestructible, optimist, thought over half of those engines are new now, so the likelyhood I’ll have an engine failure at a critical time is really low.

I was only there 3 months and then left for a commuter. And no, I never had an engine failure, but a couple times, flying the twin turbo PA700 superstar’s, those manifold pressures sometimes were all over the place. The best aircraft they had was a non-turbo Aerostar.

Originally Posted by KLM pilot

Ha, I had 2 of those 7 engine failures on the Aerostar with that company. Finally quit after after landing in Toledo after another horrible flight.