BAD EXPERIENCE
Posted: Thu Nov 02, 2006 10:43 pm
I had my worst flying experience on Wednesday on a CT to JHB connecting flight for London. The weather (JHB)was awfull and flights were delayed between 2-3 hrs. The BA/Comair flight took off at 18:30 from CT and from the start it was very turbulent, which got worse and worse the closer we got to JHB. Fact is, that I have never experienced this magnitude of turbulance in a big plane. The captain announced that there were upper winds in region of 260km/h 
coming from the "left" and they leave some potholes in the air...........true, we felt it.
10 min past Kimberley we were really bouncing around like a top and all of a sudden without warning the oxygen masks were deployed, at first I thought that it popped out due to the turbulance, until the captain calmly announced that we have suddenly lost cabin pressure at 37 000 ft and we have to put the masks over our faces.
Some of the passengers frantically changed masks a couple of times, not knowing how it works or IF it works, cause it doesn't physically blow up. The flight stewards stayed calm and assisted these passengers quickly. Whilst this were happening the pilot put the plane in a dive to get down to oxygen altitude and to prevent the cabin from depressurising too fast. Now this was a frightening feeling as he was not only diving, but also turninig frequently to fly aroung the bad weather, having fewer options I suppose. It felt like we dove at 10 000 ft a min, I don't even want to know what airspeed we achieved , must have been high since the plane was shaking, sqeeking and groaning a hell of a lot. Definitely the fastest descent I have ever had in a plane. 
I suppose we had to be around 10 000 ft when the capitane anounced that we can now remove the masks and everything is normal, except that we will proceed "low level" to OR Tambo.
A very relieved landing followed 15 min later with an applause from the passengers when the plane came to a standstill. Definitely also a couple of Psalms very ravelled off. 30 min later on A340-600 to Ldn, shaky still, but no sh!t.
coming from the "left" and they leave some potholes in the air...........true, we felt it.10 min past Kimberley we were really bouncing around like a top and all of a sudden without warning the oxygen masks were deployed, at first I thought that it popped out due to the turbulance, until the captain calmly announced that we have suddenly lost cabin pressure at 37 000 ft and we have to put the masks over our faces.
Some of the passengers frantically changed masks a couple of times, not knowing how it works or IF it works, cause it doesn't physically blow up. The flight stewards stayed calm and assisted these passengers quickly. Whilst this were happening the pilot put the plane in a dive to get down to oxygen altitude and to prevent the cabin from depressurising too fast. Now this was a frightening feeling as he was not only diving, but also turninig frequently to fly aroung the bad weather, having fewer options I suppose. It felt like we dove at 10 000 ft a min, I don't even want to know what airspeed we achieved
, must have been high since the plane was shaking, sqeeking and groaning a hell of a lot. Definitely the fastest descent I have ever had in a plane. I suppose we had to be around 10 000 ft when the capitane anounced that we can now remove the masks and everything is normal, except that we will proceed "low level" to OR Tambo.
A very relieved landing followed 15 min later with an applause from the passengers when the plane came to a standstill. Definitely also a couple of Psalms very ravelled off. 30 min later on A340-600 to Ldn, shaky still, but no sh!t.
