Last week we asked our listeners to
share their stories about air travel safety and
near-misses. Hang on for what some of you had to
say.
Flight
Safety, Hour One: June 12, 1998
Betsy Hsiao
I was taking off from Seattle, my plane was just
ready to turn left onto the runway and take off. I
was on the right side of the plane and saw a plane
coming down to land - almost ready to touch the
ground. The pilot must have seen it too but had
already started to turn, so he gunned it and we
took off faster than I have ever done before. I was
waiting for a crash in back when the other plane
hit us. I have no idea how it did not hit us, or
how close it actually came to us.
Jim Fletcher
I was on a flight from Ontario (CA) to O'Hare
... about six years ago. The flight was fairly
normal, and the landing seemed OK until we actually
touched down. The pilot used both the thrust
reversers and the wheel brakes very heavily. The
airplane was shuddering quite a bit while we were
stopping. The airplane finally did stop on the
runway, and we sat there for several seconds. The
engines revved up and we made a U-turn on the
runway, and the end of the runway was not 200 feet
from the point we stopped. I was sitting in a
window seat, and I saw that the point we touched
the runway was not unusual, it was pretty close to
"the numbers" that visually identify the end of the
runway. I don't know what piece of pavement we
landed on, but I'm sure it was not intended as a
runway to land DC9s.
