My worst experience isn't due to a bad plane/crew/malfunction or whatever..
..but as I got back from my honeymoon this past july I had a horrible ear infection, and I lost balance half-way thru a 4 hour flight and it was the worst experience of my life, it felt like the plane was continuously tilting to the right. You know when you're REALLY drunk and go to bed and the room spins, it felt like that but way way way way worse. I puked my guts out..and when we landed it felt like someone was stabbing my eardrums with a knife...
This was great especially since we flew from Milan to Berlin..so I got to experince all of this AGAIN as we flew from Berlin to Helsinki.I even went to the airport doctor in berlin and all he said "Well, you can either just try to endure the flight, but I recommend that you take a hotel at your own expense until you no longer have the ear infection". He couldn't do anything about it, which sucked. I have never been afraid of flying, but I was trembling and I had cold sweat on my entire skin as we waited to board the second flight in Berlin.
There's been some other 'horror' stories that caused my relatives to get fear of flying. As a kid when we flew to Hawaii we took a 747 from LA to Honolulu, and as the plane took off it immediately took a very very sharp turn, and it honestly looked like the wingtip would crash to the ground. We were probably dozens of meters in the air, but my aunt still started to fear flying after that.
Another fun deal was when me and my wife returned from a new years party in Amsterdam in 2003 the plane had to circle Helsinki airport for a while because one of the tires was stuck and we were told to prepare for an emergency landing. Luckily the tire popped out after a while.
