“The temperature dropped, and it was freezing. My ears start popping like wild. The plane took a nosedive. Masks deployed. Ok, this is it, this is how I die.”

I'm a Senior Staff Writer based in New York City, where I've been covering classic BuzzFeed-style content since 2020.

We also used replies from these Reddit threads. 

"The scene was pretty much how you would expect it to be: people screaming, crying, praying. I'm also pretty sure someone may have had a seizure. Once we landed, we were delayed another week; it's fair to say that none of us wanted to get back on a plane. I hate flying now, and it's genuinely one of my worst fears."

"We were flying from SF to Cincinnati. In the middle of the flight, the pilot announced that passengers should fasten their seat belts because they were expecting a bumpy ride. Apparently, there was a very tall weather disturbance that had been reported. 

After the announcement, we heard pop...pop...pop...POP...POP...pop. Tons of them; turns out it was giant hail hitting the plane. The pilot again announced more sternly for all crew to take their seats and for no one to get up.

It was really, really bumpy. Then — wham! We freaking fell out of the sky. It was like you were just sitting in a chair suspended from a rope, and someone cut the rope.

DROP, then wham! It was like the plane landed in an enormous vat of creme filling (kind of soft but still a big jolt), but more on one wing than the other, so the plane was askew. Things went flying out of the bins to the left, nailing people in the heads. Some people who were not buckled well flew up and hit the ceiling, then back into their seats. Screaming everywhere. Absolute chaos.

That's when the pilot screamed over the intercom: 'Denver, we're in serious trouble up here, I need...' and a few other words we could not understand. It freaked everyone out. He forgot to turn off the cabin speakers from the earlier announcement.

Rough rough rough, then drooooooooop again. Same thing, but a much harder landing. We dropped for what seemed like minutes, but it was probably 10-15 seconds. Wham! a much harder landing. Shit flying everywhere, people crying, praying, screaming.

It became smooth again. The pilot later announced that he was sorry about the mistaken overhead announcement, etc. He also said that the current altitude was something like 18,000 feet. Whatever the exact numbers were, we had friggin dropped about 10,000 feet — two miles!

It was the worst of my 500,000+ air miles. You never heard so many people clapping upon landing."

"We landed safely, with no further issues. Thankfully, the little airport had a restaurant. Some dude in first class bought us all a round of drinks. It was 9 a.m., and I think everyone proceeded to have a drink that morning. One of the flight attendants quit on the spot and drank with us. They never did explain what happened, other than that they were going to have to fly us out on different flights. Lots of people ended up carpooling together. I had to get drunk the first time I got back on a plane after that.

This was either the year after or two years after 9/11. I can't remember the specific date, but for me, that added to the pucker factor a lot."

"On a flight from Maui to Dallas, I was half-asleep in the second-to-last row of the plane. While I was listening to music and dozing, I suddenly heard a really loud, hard THUD next to me. I looked over, and there was a man lying on the ground, completely still.

I thought maybe he tripped, but the flight attendant came running, and he was unresponsive. She frantically ran up and down the aisles asking for doctors. As it so happened, the flight was full of vacationing doctors and nurses, all of them in ridiculous clothes. Two of the doctors who came back were in Hawaiian shirts and golf attire.

The doctors tried to wake the man up, but he was gone. I was surprised to find out just how much medical equipment they have on commercial flights — the doctors whipped out a portable defibrillator and shocked the guy, then set up an IV drip for him. I never heard a word out of him or saw him move; I'm not sure if he actually woke up or not. Our flight was diverted to LA, and when we landed, half a dozen EMT personnel ran on the plane to pull the guy out on a gurney.

Unfortunately for me, this whole scenario set off a panic attack, and I had to go find a nice spot in the aisle to lie down so that I didn't pass out and cause more problems for the crew and doctors."

"It all happened so quickly, but it felt like a lifetime. I can't express how professional the flight attendants, pilots, and the doctor on board handled the situation. I can't forget the mother sobbing, the color the girl turned, how limp the girl was, and how useless I felt in that moment. Part of me felt the pilot just lied to us to take the edge off, but I searched the local news, and there was no story, so I imagine she did make a recovery. Five stars to Turkish Airlines!"

"It's a short flight, and we aren't going up too high, so I'm optimistic that dispatch will agree the flight is safe to continue on one bleed source. I sent a message...but they never had the chance to reply.

Passing through 25,000 feet, I go to inhale, but feel the air gently move out of my lungs instead of into them. Unable to breathe normally, immediately my eyes shot to the cabin altitude gauge, which is showing us at 8,000 feet cabin altitude and rising quickly; that explains the reverse air movement. In fact, the cabin altitude is rising at the exact same rate of climb as our airplane...indicating the airplane has lost all pressurization capabilities and is depressurizing rapidly. At that instant, we get a warning chime and a message that says BLEED 1 FAIL.

We are now completely out of ways to pressurize the aircraft. If we don't descend to a safe altitude immediately, the cabin altitude will rise high enough that the air is no longer breathable. This is a serious problem.

Immediately, I don my full-face oxygen mask and smoke goggles. It provides 100% pure oxygen under a forced flow up to 41,000 feet. My first officer does the same. This is the first thing you do because if the pilots die, there is nobody to fly the jet, and everyone else dies. Then we immediately declare an emergency and initiate an emergency descent. We receive clearance down to 10,000 feet and begin executing a 180-degree turn to go back to LAX.

SoCal airspace is one of the busiest in the world, but we got priority handling all the way back to LAX. The cabin altitude nearly reached hazardous levels, but didn't go high enough for the oxygen masks to drop in the cabin. It was definitely high enough that the passengers would have noticed.

We landed at LAX on the longest runway with the fire trucks rolling to assist us. Fortunately, none of the passengers or crew reported any injuries from the sudden increase in cabin altitude. We parked at the gate, and I made an announcement to the passengers about what had just happened, downplaying everything so as not to scare the shit out of everyone.

We ended up swapping airplanes and completed the flight as planned, about three hours behind schedule. I slept well that night, and the passengers probably went on to complain about their flight being delayed several hours due to a 'maintenance issue.' :)"

"One didn't make it. I'm guessing that's why she went into labor."

"As we were taxiing, he regained consciousness and told the flight attendant holding his head that he was sorry for the trouble. We landed, and paramedics met the plane and carried him off. He seemed to be stable, but I hope everything worked out for the guy."

"I suppose Thor was going to Eyjafjallajökull to battle Surt or some other fire giant, as only a few days later Eyjafjallajökull had an eruption which blocked all air traffic for a very long time."

"This was in '88 or '89, flying from Moscow to Kyiv (I believe it was in an IL-62m — I'm a bit of a plane enthusiast)."

"We had to divert to Dublin to have her escorted from the plane, and luckily, we were able to continue our journey to Italy without having to deplane.

As it turns out, the lady was having withdrawals from her anti-psychotic medication, which she apparently did not take before flying, and did not bring with her.

Good times! Felt terrible for the flight staff, and the poor kids who had to witness that insanity."

"The plane wasn't full, so I assume people in the row didn't want to continue sitting next to a dead body. I never knew what actually happened to him and what caused it. When we landed, they came in and took him away before they let us leave the plane. Everyone was silent."

"My grandparents somehow made it there to pick me up right after we landed."

"We flew back, waited a few hours, then got back on."

"Mooroochydore is about 100km (62 miles) north of Brisbane. Things were so bad that the pilot had no idea he'd landed at the wrong airport."

"When the plane landed, people from the company were supposed to be waiting at the arrival gate to breathalyze him. But since it was late at night, they weren't there yet; he'd also flown like hell to beat the arrival time. The second he reached the gate and the door opened, he just bolted from the airplane. Left his bags, left all his stuff in the cockpit, and just sprinted through the airport for the nearest exit. This airport was small, and he was free and clear on foot before anyone realized what he was doing.

He wasn't scheduled to fly for like two more days, and despite trying to get a hold of him, they weren't able to. He showed up two days later for his next scheduled flight and acted as if nothing had happened. But of course, this time there was a shitload of people from the company waiting for him.

He claimed he had horrible food poisoning and had to rush off the plane to take an emergency shit. He said he forgot his luggage on the plane because he was so sick. And he didn't stay at the crew hotel because he had a personal friend in the city and stayed with them.

They tried to pressure him to admit it, but in the end, he got away with it. He got some disciplinary shit for not doing the post-flight checklist or whatever correctly, but they couldn't fire him or take his license. He'd been so fast that he didn't even refuse a breathalyzer, technically; nobody ever asked him to take one.

The company breathalyzed him every time he flew for years after that incident, and he went to rehab after that incident and cleaned himself up.

And the dude still flies to this day (but by all accounts sober now)."

"We were still an hour and 40 minutes out. The captain gave us another call, and my heart sank. Just as he called, a passenger got up out of his seat and collapsed right in the aisle.

His wife screamed. Another attendant answered the call from the captain, and I had to deal with this. In my mind, I was thinking, 'How am I going to secure this guy if we are going down? Should I just leave him there and answer the phone? I need to know what the captain is saying.' I asked my coworker to get medical equipment. I immediately switched to first responder mode once I saw him turn pasty white. My coworkers called for any medical personnel onboard and told me that she couldn't call the captain because he's still talking to the lead flight attendant (oh, right, we have that going on, too). 

By the time a paramedic came, the guy was waking up, but said his chest was really tight. He was coughing and looked almost gray. We hooked him up to oxygen and got him back to his seat. The paramedic said we needed to land soon (haha) and get him to a hospital. As we got him back to his seat, I noticed the lead flight attendant had a yellow life vest on and was coming towards me. Oh crap. Oh crap. Oh crap. 

She told me that the captain was able to turn the engine back on and that we should be landing in about an hour. We sent up the message about the sick passenger. I know most passengers had no idea about any of this. I was standing there in the back galley, sweating from helping this guy back to his seat, stressing about the poor new hire who we locked in the bathroom, and just trying to gather myself. A passenger slowly walked up to me, stretching, yawning, pulled his ear buds out, and asked, 'How much longer? Are you guys going to come out soon with the drink cart?' All I could do was laugh. We landed with no incident.

Edit: She was wearing the life vest because she was checking the demo bags, and these kids saw her and were curious how the vest worked."

"I put the mask on, and saw everyone else crying and freaking out or screaming. The plane got pulled out of the nosedive, and the captain came on, his voice calm and smooth like always, and said that we lost cabin pressure. He had to bring the plane quickly down to a lower altitude, and we were circling back to CLT to get on a new plane. 

Everyone started to realize that they were not going to die, and some people were getting pissed. When we landed, emergency vehicles were ready. United made the flight free, and we got a voucher. They eventually got a new plane for us, and we made it to Chicago safely."

"They never told us what happened. I had to fly back (same airline) two days later. While checking my bags, the employee said 'Omg, you were on THAT flight, that was bad.' He gave us a $15 in flight credit and told us to call the airline for more compensation. Never did, but I still wonder what happened."

"It was the lady again. She wouldn't shut up and so had to be escorted off the flight. We saw police cars pull up outside the plane. I'm not sure if she was arrested or not, but we missed our flight window as they took her luggage off the plane, and we sat on the plane for another two hours.

We asked a flight attendant what was up with the lady. It turns out that she thought I was going to take control of the plane using my dad's laptop or something. Eighteen-year-old me was kind of amused at the idea of being seen as a hijacker."

"The guy came off like an awkward creep, and the woman clearly just didn't know how to handle the situation and was literally dumbfounded. The vibe she emanated was not 'I can't believe he's proposing!' in a good way, but more like, 'WTF is this creep *doing?!*'

The rest of the flight, she didn't say a word, not even to people who passed by to congratulate her. She just stared blankly in confusion and anger. She clearly had no interest in the guy whatsoever and was just disgusted by the whole situation he put her in.

I'm guessing they were coworkers and sent to Seattle for some random business seminar together, and that he had feelings for her and stupidly assumed they were reciprocated. I keep wondering how she handled the situation once they were off that flight."

"So I tried to engage in small talk, and I asked what this guy did. Student? He replies nah, I teach. I asked what he taught, and his reply freaked me the fuck out. 'I teach people how to live, and I am gonna go and teach the pilot how to live as well.' As soon as he left to go try to go to the cockpit (of course, it was locked), I pressed the attendant button and told them, along with the middle seat passenger, the whole story. Next thing you know, a built guy who I presume was the local air marshal came by and spoke to him for quite a while and sat behind us, and we got priority landing 45 minutes earlier at an airport that keeps you in a landing pattern for half an hour. As far as I remember, he was escorted out. All in all, I'm not exchanging my seats with anyone ever again."

"He was completely mortified and managed to get back up, pick up the door, and work himself back into the bathroom. He waited for like 20 minutes, hoping no one would have seen it/forgotten about it by then, but when he went back out to take his seat, he got a standing ovation from every single person on the plane. Ouch."

"It was hell; I just kept my face covered, and I protected my head as best I could. After a bit of luck, I managed to get myself wedged UNDER the toilet, and I stayed there till the bumpy ride ended.

I left the bathroom to some laughter and a lot of concern.

For them in their seats, it was fine, until they heard screaming in the bathroom, and loud crashing noises followed by dread silence. They all thought I died..haha.

Forgot to mention that I didn't get to pull my pants up either. I did the whole ride with my pants around my ankles."

"Apparently, this guy had packed a bunch of fish he caught into his suitcase. He managed to get it through check-in and even through the TSA screen, but after being bumped and tossed in handling, by the time it got to the plane, it was wet and smelly, and the baggage loaders refused to put it on the plane (thank God). The gate supervisor had to explain to this guy that everyone was going to be much happier if he got off the plane and retrieved his suitcase, and even offered him rebooking and a voucher if he would come back without the fish. He deplaned, and that's the last I heard of it."