One time when I was a kid we were flying back from visiting family in Venezuela. The flight home was from Caracus to Houston, then Houston to Seattle, and then Portland. This was January and Seattle was in between waves of a nasty NW ice storm.
We fly into Seattle and then circled... and circled... and circled... finally the captain comes on and says they're having problems deicing the wings of the plane. So the plane continues to circle Seattle, now doing a wider pass out over the Sound (dumping fuel) while the flight attendants come row by row of seats and is telling people to take things off like watches, necklaces, earrings, etc. Anything that could fly off of your body if we crash. And tell us when it comes time to land to cross our arms against the seatback in front of us and to lay our heads against it.
WTF?!? They're teaching us crash positions?!?
So we finally are going to land. They have us take crash positions. One of the images seared into my mind is looking over at my mom, her eyes are shut and she's silently praying. I mean her lips are moving so fast she could be an auctioneer.
We hit the runway so fast and hard, FUCKING HARD. Hard enough that some of the overhead bin doors popped out. The engines screaming as they're reversed. The plane intermittently shuddering as the pilots apply and release the brakes. We must have used every inch of the runway until we stopped. The airport fire trucks with lights flashing finally caught up to us.
Everyone was fine but that was the hardest landing I've ever experienced.
So we're at the far corner of the airport. Just sitting there in the plane. Firefighters and mechanics walking around the plane. The flight attendants push the bar carts into the aisles and announce it's open bar while we wait for the little tractor to tow us to the terminal. My parents have never been big drinkers but even they grabbed some little bottles and fixed a drink.
Anyway, they towed us back to the terminal and we had to wait for a new plane so we could complete our trip to Portland.