I have a couple of scary take off's and landings that I can remember. First one was when I was about 14 and was travelling to Madeira before the runway extension with my parents on a Monarch 737, the approach was very windy and the plane was lurching all over the place making last minute turns before hitting the tarmac hard and braking sharply. The plane attempting to land after us had 3 goes at landing before diverting to Porto Santo! The take off was great from Funchal, it was like being in a slingshot. The pilot really revved the engines up before letting go and we shot up with a steep climb, felt like your eyes were being sucked into the back of your head! After take off I made a complete pillock of myself as I noticed what appeared to be smoke coming from the overhead compartments and in particular dark black marks on the compartment nearest to me. I pressed the call button and the stewardess came over, I explained my concerns fearing the plane was on fire but was immediately re-assured by the stewardess who explained that the smoke was in fact the air conditioning system kicking in and the black marks were off her hands as she had loaded the free newspapers into that overhead compartment and she had got newspaper print on her hands!!! How stupid did I feel
One uncomfortable experience was when we were coming into land at Skiathos airport again on a Monarch jet, this time an A321. We seemed to be approaching for ages before the plane started climbing and then descending then climbing steeply. The pilot came over the tannoy and said that the computer had indicated a fault with the flaps in that they had locked in one position and in his words "we would not have stayed on the runway in Skiathos" so we diverted to Thessalonika for an emergency landing which was squeeky bum time for all on board. We landed at one end of the runway and it felt like we didn't stop until we reached the other end!!! It was at that point I wanted to drink the contents of the duty free!