‘The pilot was scared of landing the plane’: The worst flights our travel experts have ever taken

worst flight

We do not remember the easy journeys by air; the good days where the check-in process takes seconds, and the landing is so smooth you hardly notice you are back on terra firma.

No, it is the bad flights which linger long in the memory – the dreadful ordeals where you are delayed for hours in an airport where air-conditioning is just an aspiration; the weary journeys where every other passenger on board is part of a stag or hen party. Then there are the real horrors – the encounters with turbulence so severe that you begin to forget which way is up; the genuine emergencies where, for a few bleak minutes, you are not entirely certain you will make it home alive.

We all have one or two such stories – mental scar tissue accrued as an inevitable downside of international travel. Here, 10 Telegraph Travel writers recall their worst hours in the sky.

‘A drunk man in a flamenco dress urinated on me’

On a 10am flight from Barcelona to Gatwick, I had the pleasure of sitting behind a group of stags, led by ‘Choffers’, the soon-to-be-married groom, in a state of advanced inebriation, who wore a flamenco dress with a spotted bodice that was straining to contain his beer belly.

For the first 30 minutes of the flight, the stags were garrulous as they sunk rosé miniatures. The real problems arose when we entered some turbulence and Choffers started getting restless. “Sit down, sir, please, the seat belt sign has gone on,” said a motherly member of the flight crew in soothing tones. Choffers eventually nodded and complied. Ten minutes later, the seat belt sign was off, and one of the stags was quizzing me about my marital status.

Writer Sally Howard had a memorable experience aboard a flight from Barcelona to the UK - NIKOS DJAIL

I glanced around, and considered asking to be moved – there appeared to be a vacant seat near the window a few rows back. I was about to reach for my laptop and make a run for it when it happened. A very green-at-the-gills Choffers stood up, leant against my row of seats and urinated through his outfit – onto my seat, and me.

“Oh my God!” a woman in the aisle across shrieked. “Oh! My! God!”

The easyJet cabin crew swiftly stepped in to wipe down seats, as well as Choffers, who shamefacedly moved to the front of the plane as his fellow stags stared at their laps. I was relocated a few rows back and supplied with free cake and coffee.

Sally Howard

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‘As we fell through an air pocket, the woman next to me vomited onto her trousers’

It had been a splendid trip to Vienna towards the end of February; a perfect weekend where the cold weather was still framing Austria’s capital as a winter wonderland – the locals gliding about on ice-rinks, lights twinkling on palace turrets at the heart of the city.

Unfortunately, the same cold weather was determined to be a significant factor in my journey back to the UK. In more than 20 years as a travel journalist, I have flown above the Andes, the Rockies and the Himalayas, and have endured the ill-tempered conditions each mountain range can offer. None of those meteorological tantrums could compete with the winter storm that was raging along the English south coast on that Sunday night.

The first approach to Gatwick was so off-beam that the captain might as well have been aiming for Stansted. I remember seeing the lights of the airport a considerable distance below, and wondering if we had already been redirected to a safer runway. The second approach was worse – the plane bucking and lurching, the rain battering the windows. Perhaps it was my – by now – racing imagination, but I was sure the wings were bending in the effort to keep the aircraft level.

What was not my imagination was the scene of panic in the cabin. As we fell through another air pocket, the woman next to me vomited copiously onto her trousers. Her boyfriend – in the aisle seat – did nothing to comfort her. He was gazing ahead with a rigid thousand-yard stare, both hands gripping the armrests.

I still do not know how the pilot managed to ground the plane. There was audible sobbing as we all disembarked, the smell of fear and regurgitated dinners hanging thick around us.

Chris Leadbeater

‘The aircraft was towed away for a full search by the army, complete with sniffer dogs’

Having worked as cabin crew for Thomas Cook Airlines from the late 1990s to the early 2010s, I have my fair share of aviation-related horror stories – from medical emergencies and lightning strikes to not-safe-for-work tales from the Club 18-30 holiday era. But the worst flight I’ve ever been a part of involved a 28-hour duty resulting from a passenger inexplicably shouting that she “didn’t have a bomb in her bag” as she was boarding our flight from Cuba to Manchester.

A zero-tolerance approach to the b-word meant that the woman had to be offloaded, something the Cuban authorities did not take lightly. Over the next few hours, every passenger had to disembark and claim their luggage on the tarmac before the aircraft was towed to a distant part of the apron for a full search by the army, complete with sniffer dogs.

The crew’s available duty hours quickly ran out, so everyone was sent to a hotel for the night. We finally set off the following day and it seemed like smooth sailing – until we were diverted to Gatwick at the last minute due to snow storms.

Lee Cobaj

‘Our nervous pilot landed at the wrong airport’

It was summer 2012, and I was flying from Kunming in south-west China to Nepal’s capital Kathmandu with one of China’s motley crew of always-delayed, state-owned airlines.

The short flight had been uneventful, and as we sank towards Kathmandu, its pretty rabble of low-rise buildings was bathed in early afternoon sunshine, the trees still, the sky blue.

Then, ten feet above the runway, the engines gave a tell-tale roar, and we began to climb again – a go-around, I assumed; perfectly normal.

The pilot on Gemma’s flight decide to land at a completely different airport

But we kept climbing. And then, instead of looping around, we just… kept flying. Thirty minutes went by, the cabin abuzz with feverish Mandarin, the young Chinese stewardesses deftly deflecting a barrage of questions. At last, there was an announcement from the cockpit: we’d been unable to land because of bad weather. The blue skies suggested otherwise.

Another hour went by, and then we landed around 500 miles away – in Kolkata. For four hours, we remained on the tarmac, in blazing heat, as a cohort from the Indian airport and the Chinese flight crew held fruitless conflab after conflab on the mobile staircase. No one could disembark, because none of the passengers had Indian visas.

I buddied up to one of the stewardesses and conspiratorially asked what had happened. “The pilot is scared,” she whispered. “He’s never landed in Kathmandu before, and there are so many mountains.” (She was right – it’s a notoriously tricky place to land, with a very short runway.) He’d landed in Kolkata many times, apparently – and in a moment of panic, had headed straight for his comfort zone.

Other stewardesses – hot and irritable, like the rest of us – soon started to break their code of silence, and word quickly spread. Eventually, the engines restarted and off we went – landing in Kathmandu seven hours late but in one piece. I have experienced many hairy landings in fierce weather, but never have I seen passengers so relieved to be back on terra firma as on that still, sunny day in Kathmandu.

Gemma Knight-Gilani

‘My sleazy neighbour gave graphic descriptions of everything he’d got up to with Thai prostitutes’

He had seemed OK when we boarded, but just 45 minutes into the 11.5-hour flight from Bangkok to London, my neighbour was already a nuisance. He – a sun-leathered, gym-beefed guy in his fifties – was in the aisle seat, while I, a young solo female, was by the window, thankfully with an empty seat between us.

Writer Hazel pulled the short straw on her flight from Bangkok to London

But when he cracked his first can of in-flight lager, his “how was your holiday?” chit-chat descended into graphic descriptions of everything he’d got up to with Thai prostitutes, and why I should “loosen up” and enjoy his advances too. I told him “no thanks” and busied myself with a film, but he wouldn’t stop talking at me, and constantly leaned across to remove my headphones and make increasingly lewd suggestions.

On trips to the loo, I begged the cabin crew not to serve him more alcohol, but they said he was fine, and kept the beers and whiskies flowing. I felt so ignored, so vulnerable, and cried with relief when I disembarked. Now, I only book an aisle seat if travelling alone, and I never say a peep to my neighbour.

Hazel Plush

‘Our dodgy Soviet jet emerged from the clouds – well short of the runway’

We all hate go-arounds, when you’re about to touch down – and then you don’t. I had extra reasons to be worried on an Aeroflot flight in 1975. The Russian flag carrier’s safety record was decidedly dodgy, but they were cheap and if you were flying Delhi to London via Moscow they tossed in a free overnight stop with hotel, meals and a city tour.

Our aircraft was an Ilyushin Il-62, dubbed a “VC-10-ski” since it was clearly a close copy of that popular BOAC Vickers aircraft. Down down down we came, through dense clouds, until we broke through well off to one side of the runway. So up up up we went and 15 minutes later emerged from the clouds again – well short of the runway. It was third time lucky, and I glanced behind to see if any other passengers were looking as relieved as I was. The heavy-set guys in the back row didn’t even look up. They looked like KGB operatives straight out of central casting.

Writer Tony Wheeler had a hair-raising experience aboard an Ilyushin Il-62 - Getty

I’ve had a few more go-arounds, but I had to wait 40 years for my next third-time-lucky landing and, unbelievably, it was Aeroflot again. In 2019 it was a much more modern 737 and the weather was crystal clear, so why we had to make multiple approaches I have no idea. “Wow,” I said to my Armenian taxi driver shuttling me into Yerevan. “Three attempts before we managed to land.” “Four,” he corrected me. He’d been watching the drama from the taxi stand.

Tony Wheeler

‘Somewhere over China, I found myself vaguely hoping that the plane would crash’

Even travel journalists make schoolboy errors when travelling. This happened to me, years ago, when I booked a cheap economy-class flight to Bangkok. I planned to pay for an extra-legroom seat to soften the inevitable pain, but completely forgot. It meant I was condemned to a 13-hour, jam-packed overnight flight, in cattle class – in the middle seat of the centre section.

To compound matters, I quickly realised I was in the midst of a huge stag party: a large, ribald group of lads clearly determined to drink their way from Heathrow to Suvarnabhumi. Which they did. They also sang, swore, threw food, ran down the aisles and played horrible music. The poor cabin crew didn’t – or couldn’t – intervene, and simply retreated to the galley in despair. By hour nine, somewhere over China, I found myself vaguely hoping that the plane would crash. Anything to ease the suffering.

These days I am quite careful about choosing the right seat, and paying extra if needs be.

Sean Thomas

‘Our cabin crew disappeared for the entire flight’

I’ve been lucky to have avoided any seriously scary stuff at 35,000ft, but I’ve had my share of appalling in-flight service. Worst of all was long ago, in the days when you could still smoke on board and seat-back entertainment screens had never been thought of.

Writer Nick Trend suffered sub-par service on a Mexican airline - Clara Molden

I was flying from Mexico City to New York on a Mexican airline whose cabin crew obviously considered it a social rather than a work event. About ten minutes after take-off they raced around with our in-flight meals and then disappeared for the rest of the flight. Trying to get rid of my empty meal tray, I found them hours later behind a curtain at the back of the plane, with their feet up, chatting raucously in a fug of cigarette smoke. They did finally remember to turn on the in-flight movie, but it was far too late. We all filed off the plane while it was still running. Does anyone know what happens at the end of The Empire Strikes Back?

Nick Trend

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‘I feared I was signing up for the worst kind of one-way journey’

Faced with a £5,000 charter flight or a 24-hour bus journey on pot-holed roads, my exit out of the Congo was looking complicated. A $99, newly-launched route with Africa Airlines was my only option.

“I think I know them,” joked one expat. “No survivors.” I wasn’t laughing. Due to concerns about air safety, all carriers from the Republic of Congo are banned from European airspace. I feared I was signing up for the wrong sort of one-way journey.

Writer Sarah’s Africa Airlines’ ‘ticket’

It had no website at the time, with seats reserved by sending WhatsApp messages (in French). A safari park manager managed to get in touch with the office in Brazzaville, however, and procure a “ticket” for me – a piece of card with the destination scribbled in biro. But by the time I arrived at Ouesso Airport, in the far north of the country, my nerves were frayed and my ticket smudged and ripped.

Sat in a room surrounded by glum aid workers and bribe-hungry immigration officers, with a hole in the roof, I concluded this was one of my worst ideas ever.

As it turns out, the flight was fine. We landed safely, there were no delays, the safety instructions were in English and we even got a free fresh croissant from the local bakery. You don’t get that on Ryanair. But the stress – and premonitions of doom – made it an experience I’d rather not repeat.

Sarah Marshall

‘Four male crew were needed to restrain my neighbour’

Here comes trouble. A man lurches towards me and collapses into the seat alongside. He’s at the noisy stage of being very drunk. He’s well-dressed. Middle-aged. He orders – and is served – more drinks. Addresses inanities at everyone and no-one. We are going from Hong Kong to London. This is going to be a long, long flight.

The dapper, elderly couple in front of us clearly feel the same. The man half-turns and says: “We’re going to be on this flight for 14 hours, we can’t put up with this all that time; please can you be quiet?”

A momentary pause while our drunk gathers his thoughts. “Woah,” he slurs, “your wife is f****** gorgeous!”

The crew arrive. There are stern words. Then relative calm. We take off.

But then he’s back. More shouting. Up and down out of the seat. Cue four male crew. There’s a raucous struggle but our man is secured with restraining buckles.

Then the final stage of extreme drunkenness: rapid unconsciousness. And a pronounced, dead-weight sideways slump across me and my seat. For the best part of 14 hours.

Tim Jepson

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