“The plane started shaking and we heard the flight attendants praying”

Anyone who has ever flown knows that the plane can be a place where anything happens: whether it is the feeling of tension of take-off, the strange tricks of the ground attendants or simply the fact that the sky is the place where you can meet things that have no explanation. When we asked the members of the “Secret Flights” Facebook community to share with us their strangest and scariest experiences while flying, we had no idea how unforgettable the flights could become.

The responses were not long in coming, with stories that will make you think twice before getting on your next plane. Here are just some of the stories that managed to deter, make us laugh and keep us on the edge of our seats.

“My partner was on a flight from New York, sitting in front of the wing, and suddenly he saw a flame coming out of the engine. The next moment the engine went out. The flight attendants were running around in the plane, the light went off and on alternately. It happened after takeoff, then the plane returned to land and the next day took off again. Since then he hasn’t stopped flying, perhaps by the method of ‘fear increases adrenaline’.”

“On the flight from Croatia to Italy, after 11 hours I was delayed in a small field the size of a kiosk. The plane was about to land and we heard the wheels come off, but the plane took off back up and landed over the sea because there was a lightning storm. The emergency lights came on, the flight attendants got stressed. In the end we landed in Pisa instead of Rome, I managed to get on the first bus to Rome, but they didn’t stop us in the city but at the airport. From there I took a taxi to the hotel for a total system collapse.”

“On the flight from Montreal, the whole plane was sleeping peacefully when suddenly one of the passengers got up, rolled up his pants and urinated on the row in front of him. The whole plane was out of control: flight attendants were running around, the man was stoned and they put him under surveillance. After we arrived in Tel Aviv, he was sent back to Canada by the police.”

“My 14-year-old brother threw up completely on takeoff on the person sitting between us and we had to sit next to him for 4 hours when we didn’t like him. Of course we apologized a thousand times and cleaned him up but still. And behind us sat Yair Lapid with his whole family in tourists like a simple people.

When I went to the East after the army I wanted to fly from Bangkok to Beijing. I searched for flights, and found a cheap flight but with a stopover in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. Of course Israelis can’t stop there and I was really upset that I couldn’t fly there and I apologized to everyone about it and booked another flight that day. In the end it turned out that the flight I was upset that I couldn’t fly on was the flight of the Malaysian plane that disappeared… yes yes.”

“I was on a flight from Tenerife to Israel with a connection in Morocco, and after a few hours of flying in a half-empty plane, a crazy power outage started. The plane started shaking and we heard the flight attendants praying loudly and all we could do was wait, hear the passengers say ‘Allah Akbar’ and pray with them.”

“On the flight from Israel to Germany, the captain announced in a panic that following an incident in which a passenger had a heart attack, the plane had to make an emergency landing in Tripoli, Libya. A moment later, the captain announced that the passenger had died during the flight, so we continued on our way as usual.”

“I was flying on a domestic flight in the US, and behind our seat there was a mysterious elevation. After asking the flight attendant what this thing was, we discovered that it was nothing less than a coffin with a dead person inside. I didn’t let the plane take off until they moved me to another seat.”

“During takeoff from the Okavango Delta Reserve in Botswana, we were flying a small plane. Suddenly, the plane’s pilot saw an elephant standing near the runway. She stopped the engine, turned off the engine, and watched it until it moved away. Until then, they did not take off. The pilot explained that in such a situation, if the elephant had been frightened, it could have attacked the plane.”

“When I was traveling in Argentina, I booked an incredibly cheap domestic flight, so much so that I thought it might be an expensive bus. We got on the plane, and it turns out that it was a military plane, with flight attendants in military uniforms. It stopped at stations along the way, they didn’t ask us to fasten our seat belts, and we were the only tourists on the flight.”

Hallelye

“I came back from South America from my post-army trip, and an Israeli I knew there stayed to travel for a few more weeks. In addition to the temporary heartbreak, I came back sick and I felt terrible. There was a flight attendant on the plane who took care of me the whole flight with a full cup of tea, gave me a row of seats to lie on, made me a paper flower, and it was stunning. As for the Israeli, when he returned, we became a couple and it lasted for two years.”