What was it? It can be either a near death experience or just a scary night...... anything.
My scariest moment wasn't actually a moment, it lasted about 3 to 5 minutes.
A few years back i was an F/O on a MD-11 operated by City Bird. We where on route from Brussels Intl. to Puerto Plata.
About half-way into the flight the captain just finished eating and i was just back from the toilet when all of a sudan the aircraft banked left and made a hard left turn. I strapped myself in and without saying a word i looked at the captain who asked me to disconnect the auto-pilot and take controls. I took controls and applied a counter move (hard right without aileron). It scared the hell out of me when i noticed the aircraft didn't level and just kept in left bank. I informed the captain who contacted control and asked them to keep our surrounding airspace clear because we had lost virtical control over the aircraft. I checked the altitude indicator and noticed we where not loosing alot of altitude so we had some time to do some toruble shooting. We where still at flight level 300 (30,000 feet). We where dropping about 300 to 400 feet per minute. The captain started to trouble shoot while i was still trying to get it to level off. He told me he wanted to apply a break-out (check if the controls itself aren't jammed). The controls itself where not jammed so he had to look further into the problem. He began to check all hydrolics and no hydrolic pumps and/or valves gave any errors. The captain said to me he was pretty sure that it was either a controls or hydrolic problem. He asked me if i did feel any feedback on the yoke when i turned it right. I didn't feel any feedback at all. At that point he narrowed it down to a hydrolic failure so he started to re-route all the hydrolic lines one by one. An MD-11 has got a shutter valve after and infront of every seperate hydrolic line wich is backed up by a second line. He was at his fourth line when the aircraft started to level off.
We later found out that the line infront of the stabelizer pumps had been replaced the day before this flight and it wasn't done properly so the line lost all presure wich resulted in the movement of the stabelizer (the stabelizer pumps didn't have any counter presure anymore so they all wen't to the "null" position).
We contacted control to advice them that we had control again and all operations where back to normal. We arrived at Puerto Plata without any injuries.
At the moment of the events itself i didn't really feal scared but about 10 to 15 mins after that i had to go to the toilet again
So what's your scariest moment?