One of the hairiest commercial flights I ever took involved landing at O'Hare while a squall line was passing through the area. This was back about 1973 or 1974, and I'm not sure if the airport had Doppler radar deployed at that time or not. You know the saying, "There are no atheists in foxholes?" Well, I think a lot of people were born again on that flight. The pilot managed to thread his way through and put the plane on the ground, but it was very dicey. I was a rated pilot back then, and when he said he was going to try to land, I told the guy next to me, "No way he's going to pull this off."
He didn't help passenger morale when he announced that he was going to try to land, and said, "Most of the planes who've tried it, made it down safely." There was absolute silence in the cabin. Then the captain came back on the intercom and said, "Let me rephrase that -- Not all of the planes ahead of us tried to land, but of those who did, ALL of them made it safely." The sighs of relief were quite audible. I guess everyone was holding their breath. Anyway, we landed just fine in some of the worst turbulence I've ever experienced. But I still missed my connecting flight.