My kid walks into a room, forgets why they’re there, leaves… comes back… forgets again.
I was like—yep, that’s my DNA alright.

I was flying the SR-71 out of RAF Mildenhall, England , with my back-seater, Walt Watson; we were returning from a mission over Europe and the Iron Curtain when we received a radio transmission from home base. As we scooted across Denmark in three minutes, we learned that a small RAF base in the English countryside had requested an SR-71 fly-past. The air cadet commander there was a former Blackbird pilot, and thought it would be a motivating moment for the young lads to see the mighty SR-71 perform a low approach. No problem, we were happy to do it. After a quick aerial refueling over the North Sea , we proceeded to find the small airfield.


Walter had a myriad of sophisticated navigation equipment in the back seat, and began to vector me toward the field. Descending to subsonic speeds, we found ourselves over a densely wooded area in a slight haze. Like most former WWII British airfields, the one we were looking for had a small tower and little surrounding infrastructure. Walter told me we were close and that I should be able to see the field, but I saw nothing.


Nothing but trees as far as I could see in the haze. We got a little lower, and I pulled the throttles back from 325 knots we were at. With the gear up, anything under 275 was just uncomfortable. Walt said we were practically over the field—yet; there was nothing in my windscreen. I banked the jet and started a gentle circling maneuver in hopes of picking up anything that looked like a field. Meanwhile, below, the cadet commander had taken the cadets up on the catwalk of the tower in order to get a prime view of the fly-past. It was a quiet, still day with no wind and partial gray overcast.


Walter continued to give me indications that the field should be below us but in the overcast and haze, I couldn't see it.. The longer we continued to peer out the window and circle, the slower we got. With our power back, the awaiting cadets heard nothing. I must have had good instructors in my flying career, as something told me I better cross-check the gauges. As I noticed the airspeed indicator slide below 160 knots, my heart stopped and my adrenalin-filled left hand pushed two throttles full forward. At this point we weren't really flying, but were falling in a slight bank. Just at the moment that both afterburners lit with a thunderous roar of flame (and what a joyous feeling that was) the aircraft fell into full view of the shocked observers on the tower...



Shattering the still quiet of that morning, they now had 107 feet of fire-breathing titanium in their face as the plane leveled and accelerated, in full burner, on the tower side of the infield, closer than expected, maintaining what could only be described as some sort of ultimate knife-edge pass. Quickly reaching the field boundary, we proceeded back to Mildenhall without incident. We didn't say a word for those next 14 minutes.



After landing, our commander greeted us, and we were both certain he was reaching for our wings. Instead, he heartily shook our hands and said the commander had told him it was the greatest SR-71 fly-past he had ever seen, especially how we had surprised them with such a precise maneuver that could only be described as breathtaking. He said that some of the cadet’s hats were blown off and the sight of the plan form of the plane in full afterburner dropping right in front of them was unbelievable. Walt and I both understood the concept of “breathtaking” very well that morning, and sheepishly replied that they were just excited to see our low approach.



As we retired to the equipment room to change from space suits to flight suits, we just sat there-we hadn't spoken a word since “the pass.” Finally, Walter looked at me and said, “One hundred fifty-six knots.
What did you see?” Trying to find my voice, I stammered, “One hundred fifty-two.” We sat in silence for a moment. Then Walt said, “Don’t ever do that to me again!” And I never did.



A year later, Walter and I were having lunch in the Mildenhall Officer’s club, and overheard an officer talking to some cadets about an SR-71 fly-past that he had seen one day. Of course, by now the story included kids falling off the tower and screaming as the heat of the jet singed their eyebrows. Noticing our HABU patches, as we stood there with lunch trays in our hands, he asked us to verify to the cadets that such a thing had occurred. Walt just shook his head and said, “It was probably just a routine low approach; they're pretty impressive in that plane.” Impressive indeed.

Navy helo pilot here:

I was doing some Deck Landing Qualifications last month, and me and my fellow pilots are going out to land on the boat for the first time with a senior IP. We have 4 pilots in our bird that need to qual, and I was the last to go. The other pilots, then me, get our day and night bounces, and on the last landing of the night, we call for the other people to come out and strap into the helo so we can fly back to base. Just before we get ready to launch from the boat, we get a #1 fuel pressure light, and our #1 engine starts acting wonky and starts flaming out. We troubleshoot on deck and eventually have to shut down the bird and wait for the ship to get in port so we can disembark. Had that #1 fuel pressure light come on literally 10 minutes before, or 2 minutes after it did, our helo would be in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and we would be scrambling out of the helo for our lives and a multi-million dollar helo would be at the bottom of the ocean.


TL;DR We had an air leak in one of our engines right before takeoff. If it happened any earlier or later than it did, I would be swimming in the Pacific ocean right now.

I'm an airline captain based out of LAX...

On a commercial aircraft, you generally have 3 sources of bleed air that take air from the engines (and a little device in the back of the airplane called the APU) and use it to pressurize the cabin. You can't breathe the air at 35,000 feet, so the cabin is pressurized by these bleed air sources to a breathable altitude of at or below 8,000 feet. There are 3 sources because 1) redundancy increases safety and 2) you can still dispatch the airplane is one is inop because there are backups.

One of the bleed sources (on the number 2 engine) was already broken, so maintenance deferred it, indicating we were still safe to fly on the remaining two sources. Which is totally fine - you just take off with the APU running as a backup bleed source. Well on the takeoff roll, immediately after becoming airborne, our APU fails. Which leaves us with just one bleed source to pressurize the cabin; the bleed air from the number 1 engine. If that fails, we have nothing to keep the air inside the cabin pressurized to a lower altitude than the airplane is flying at; you won't be able to breathe at high altitudes.

It's a short flight, and we aren't going up too high, so I'm optimistic that we can get up to our low cruising altitude, message dispatch and maintenance, and receive their agreement that the flight is safe to continue on one bleed source. I text our company a message describing the situation via ACARS, a satellite-based texting capability our aircraft has to communicate with people on the ground.

But they never had the chance to get back to us.

Passing through 25,000 feet, I feel the air getting sucked out of my lungs. I'm trying to inhale, but it isn't working, and my lungs are emptying quickly. Unable to breathe normally, immediately my eyes shoot to the cabin altitude gauge, which is showing us at 8,000 feet cabin altitude and rising quickly. In fact, it 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 message on our EICAS (Engine Information and Crew Alerting System, essentially a computer screen that tells us when [things] go wrong) that says BLEED 1 FAIL.

With our Bleed 1 source now failed, our APU having failed on the takeoff roll, and Bleed 2 already deferred, we are 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 throw off my sunglasses and headset, and don my full-face oxygen mask and smoke goggles. It provides 100% pure oxygen under a forced flow, rated up to an altitude of 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, nosing over to our maximum speed while deploying the speed-brakes to generate maximum drag. We receive clearance down to 10,000 feet and begin executing a 180 degree turn to go back to LAX.

ATC does a fantastic job vectoring aircraft out of our way...SoCal airspace is some 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 in the cabin to automatically deploy. It was definitely high enough that the passengers would have noticed, but wouldn't have had a concrete idea of what was going on aside from "that's odd." The cabin also got quite hot because there was no more pressurized, conditioned air flowing to cool it off.

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

12 Chinese passengers on our flight were on a west coast tour, and they were very upset that their trip was inconvenienced by this emergency. No problem, I totally understand the frustration. So I spoke to their translator, who spoke in turn to her group, and I gave her the full and very detailed explanation of what happened. As I explained what happened, the expressions on these 12 passengers' faces went from angry, to surprised, to fearful, and finally thankful. Before I walked away, all 12 of them bowed to me in respect. That was something I have never experienced before or since then in my entire aviation career.

We ended up swapping airplanes to one that wasn't sick, and completed the flight as planned about 3 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" :).

My uncle was a policeman, and was flagged down by a scaffy (binman, trashman, whatever you call them) on his morning beat. The guy told him that there's a black bag next to some commercial dumpsters, and it's moving.

The guy was too scared to open it, so my uncle did and it turned out to be a very small, malnourished Golden Retriever puppy. He took him back to the station, and the Police advertised that he was found and asked his owner to come forward. Obviously, nobody is going to come forward after dumping the poor thing next to a dumpster to die. After the statutory period of waiting for his owner to call in, my uncle's superior (I don't know what rank he was at this point) told him that the pup was going to the animal shelter... unless David and his family wanted him.

So they took him home. He was an amazing dog, a real lovable g**f. He lived for 13 years until he died from cancer, but in those 13 years he was so loved. Not bad for a trash dog.

Mine is from many many years ago when I was a student pilot. I was 14 I think at the time. I had about 15ish hours done and getting close to soloing for the first time but still had a few hours and more landings to practice. I was doing some basics and getting ready to come back with my instructor to practice some touch and go's for a bit. Coming back through we had to pass through DTW's bravo airspace (means need permission to go through it). A few min before I was about to call for permission, my instructor got really quiet. I looked over at him and he looked really bad. I thought he was going to puke so looking for a bag. But then I notice he isn't breathing. I figure out where I am at and call up DTW approach. Declare a medical emergency and that my instructor was not breathing. I also told them I am a student and never landed on my own before, and never in a large airport. Detroit approach was amazing at helping me. They gave me an option for DTW or Willow but Willow would have added a good 5-10 min since i was coming in from the SE. Opted for DTW and they were great at giving me vectors while also getting the big jets out of the way. I remember hearing them tell several planes to go around and several more into a hold. Anyway, did my approach and made the most butter smooth landing I have ever made in my life (even till this day). Ambulance was right there on the taxi waiting for me. Turns out my instructor who was only 25 had a heart attack. He ended up being ok. All in all from first call to him in the ambulance was less than 10 min thanks to ATC and DTW tower.

I used to have to unload stuff from my work truck into my garage. It wasn't uncommon for me to forget to shut the tailgate on the covered truck bed. In the summer it wasn't such a bad thing, but in the winter, cats would take shelter in it.

On bad nights, I would intentionally leave it open. These were cats other neighbors just let roam the neighborhood, often forgetting about them. I felt bad for them, but didn't want to bring them into my house because I didn't want fleas/disease transferred to my animals.

I got into the habit of smacking the bed with my hand before shutting the tailgate and driving to work. When I smacked the bed, the cats would usually jet out the back of the truck. I would do a quick look in and then shut the tailgate. One wintery, blistery day I woke up late. So I ran out the door, slammed the tailgate without thinking about or doing the obligatory bed-smack/look.

On the way to the job, I stopped to get gas at a station really close to my house and remembered I needed gas for my snowblower. I usually had a gas can in the bed. I stopped at the gas station, which was a typically busy in the morning gas station and started filling the truck.

I went back to the tailgate to open it to get the gas can out. I dropped the tailgate and about six, terrified cats came racing out of the bed. One actually ran up and over me, leaping from my shoulder. They did this big loopity-loop, panic run in the gas station and then headed off into the neighborhood. They all made it out safe and we were only a few blocks from my house.

But for one instant. Everyone in the gas station froze to stare at me. People inside were staring out at me. People at the pumps were staring at me. I've never felt so judged in my life, it was like i was trafficking humans. I could feel their eyes penetrating my soul. It was about 10^o F out and I could feel myself starting to sweat.

When I went in to get coffee, the silence finally broke and a woman asked me what it was all about. I explained it to her, rather loudly so that everyone who witnessed it could hear it. I don't think they believed me....

When a state university had a deer problem (the male deer was charging CARS in the parking lot) I let my beagle gleefully bark his head off and chase the deer. 3 to four times per day, everyday. The deer moved out. The groundskeeper, grateful for an organic solution gave my beagle a GIANT stuffed Bambi as a gift, a trophy, in gratitude for his beagling work!

My dog was given 6 months to live due to a heart condition when he turned 8. So i went to study in specialized programs for prescription diets so that i can make food for him to extend his life. It worked. That was 6 years ago and he's turning 15 next month.

I was at a sleepover at my friends place. We decided to sneak out and wander around aimlessly. We stopped at our school which had a small patch of trees on the grounds where the older kids hung out during lunch. There was rumours of a great playboy collection there, hence our visit.

While there my friend stepped off to the side to have a pee. A few seconds later he comes rushing back and says “run”. I didn’t know what his deal was but as a kid in the “forest” with only the light of the moon, I figured asking questions was a secondary option to being left alone there.

We ran until we couldn’t run anymore. Finally my friend explained that there was some weirdo looking at him go pee. He said that he believed the guy was jerking off.

Being kids with a history of pranks I thought he was f*****g with me. Then I looked back and saw the guy a long ways back but moving in our direction. We kept running towards my friends place and he kept following.

When we got back we thought we lost him. We snuck back inside and turned off all of the lights in the basement. We laid there silently and terrified.

About 10 minutes later we see something move by the window. We knew someone was out there. We stayed completely still and quiet. A minute later we hear a noise coming from a room in the basement. We both lost it and started yelling “dad” for my friends dad.

He came running down the stairs and we were yelling someone’s in that room. His dad flung open the door and the window was open and there were fresh marks on the wall from someone climbing in or out. For some reason he didn’t call the police. He decided to stay downstairs with us for the night.

I didn’t really sleep and in the morning my friends dad made me walk home with him. A few blocks away and there were a bunch of police. As we walked by one of the cops stopped us and asked if we saw anything suspicious last night. We told him the story which kicked off further questioning.

It turns out that a kid went missing from his room right around the same time that we got chased home.

They found the guy a few days later dead from s*****e. They never found the boy he abducted.

We had a lot of trouble with that. My friends dad felt guilty for not calling the police. He became addicted to sleeping pills. My friend was traumatized with just how close he came to being grabbed in the forest. He turned to d***s really young and eventually k****d himself. I went through therapy for awhile and still have occasional night terrors from that night even though it happened almost 30 years ago.

**Edit:** WOW this blew up. Thanks for the kind words, helpful PM’s, and the gold and silver. Go figure it’s on a throwaway account.

I had far too many comments and questions, so I will try to address them here.

First of all, I have already posted my story on here a couple of years ago. At the time I was approached to sell the rights to it. I was interested in doing so because I like money. As a result I spoke to my family and my friends brother since he is the only one still with us from that family. I also spoke to a lawyer about what to give and what not to give. As it turned out the potential buyer was trying to pull enough information out of me to basically steal the story. Once I had my lawyer tell them that the information exists and has been verified, but they wouldn’t receive it until a contract was in place, they bailed. For that reason I am a little guarded about this information.

That being said, I wrote this out in summary form. I skipped over several details in the process.

One comment was critical of my friend being traumatized by a guy jerking off. That’s not the case. He was traumatized by how close he was to being the victim. This is the same issue I have been struggling with.

Another comment questioned why the guy just so happened to be in the forest. While I don’t know for certain, my assumption was that he was following us before my friend spotted him. Also this “forest” was actually an island of trees in the middle of a field. It was probably 200m diameter at the widest point. It separated the baseball and soccer fields.

I am also appreciative of the advice about my mental health. I have been attending counseling for this and other c**p that’s happened in my life. Unfortunately I have had a few bad situations that rivaled this one. I am doing really well and have managed to live a very happy and successful life. Married for 10 years now and a baby on the way. My struggles are minimal at this point and really are just infrequent night terrors.

Again thank you all for reading and being so supportive.

Pilot here. Girlfriend is a flight attendant. Personally, I haven't seen too much go wrong. Just the usual tantrums over bags and missed connections (protip: if you book a 30 minute connection, you *will* miss it). Pilots have the luxury of the locked door, but she is locked in the back with some nasty people sometimes.


* Like the time when a middle aged man screamed at her for a few minutes during a 25 minute flight because she ran out of apple juice.


* Like the time when a man asked for a glass of water during a tarmac delay. After delivering said glass of water, he dumped it on her head.


* Like the time when a man heckled her during the safety demo to the point of a needing to return to the gate to escort him from the aircraft.


* Like the many times when a passenger insists that their bag will fit in the overhead, forcing it so hard that it breaks the bin, and requires a 4 hour delay to repair.


Please, be polite to your flight crews! :).