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Three times.
Recently flying into KC from LA and we drove straight into a thunderstorm. He tried to land twice but after getting spit out of the cloud a second time he turned tail and we went to Omaha to wait it out. If they would have opened the doors and let us out I would have finished that trip in a car. My P&M were watching the progress of the flight on the computer and told me they knew it was bad as the plane slowly made its way into a bright red glob of pixels on the screen and they saw the air speed go to 0 MPH. On the plane it felt like we went to 0 MPH too.
The second time was flying into Phoenix in the middle of 60 MPH winds. We were dropping, moving side-ways, up-and-down. The pilot was extending flaps, retracting flaps, and eventually I got the sense that he just pushed down to push through the layer of bad weather and got us through it. It was surreal though because while I'm seeing my impending doom, everyone else on the plane is laughing and whooping it up about how much fun they're having and how this is much better than the stupid rides at Disneyland. After we landed I had to immediately go and get on another plane for the next leg of my trip to KC via Greyhound Airways (aka Southwest, who back in the day would take you from Ontario, CA to Phoenix, then to Albuquerque, then to Oklahoma City, then to KC) which I dreaded, but it wasn't so bad taking off.
The first (and worst) time was taking a puddle-jumper from Victoria Island, BC to Seattle to go through customs. We were on final approach, everything was fine, then BOOM. Suddenly the plane is sideways and the pilot has the engines rev'd as high as they'll go as he tries to pull out before we hit the ground. Fortunately he succeeded. Afterwards the guy I was with was talking to the pilot and he said the ATC screwed up and had him descend into the jet wash of a 747 - which evidently was akin to running into a brick wall.
Anyway, I may not have crashed, but at least I got some material to post on ChiefsPlanet...
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