Our flight to Thailand was very eventful. The Qantas flight from Heathrow was practically empty but we got a raw deal buy getting wedged into a corner by an old lady who just refused to take advantage of the copious space. Takeoff was fairly dodgy, just as the wheels left the ground there was a terrible shaking and it sounded like a flap, wheel or engine was falling of the plane. There was a couple of scary seconds for a while until the undercarriage was raised and the plane got some height. It was kind of funny as at the time I was kind of relaxed and thought, wow, this is kind of interesting but it may hurt a little... Emma was a little white and thought I handled it all quite well (apart from a couple of very sweaty palms). I asked the steward what the problem was and it turned out the 747 was so light it had begun to exceed maximum speed with gear down causing some violent but altogether harmless vibrations. The shaking was made worse by the fact our seats were right above the undercarriage (which was not a sobering thought if the gear happened to be yanked from the aircraft...)
