What''s your craziest airline/flying story?

[April20]

I''ve had a heck of a day today and was wondering who else has been through some craziness when flying.

I took the 725 flight to New Orleans this morning. I was only going for the day. I was supposed to land at 800 and had arranged to be picked up at 820 and at the first place I had to visit by 830. Aggressive schedule, I know, but I figured the worst that could happen was that I ran ten minutes late. N.O. was really fogged in and had a little weather. They said it should pose no delays. They announce we are in final approach and are landing. We are headed distinctly down when all of the sudden the plane WENT BACK UP. As in went back up, folded the landing gear in and headed away from the airport. And circled. No message from the cockpit. They finally announce we are landing again. We go into final approach and get so close I can see the airport, runways, everything. We get so close I can almost touch it and the plane GOES BACK UP. At which point they announce that in order to conserve fuel they are going to divert us to BATON ROUGE for refueling. I think they overshot the runway the second time and didn''t have enough fuel to pull the plane up again and re-approach if they missed. So we land in Baton Rouge at 830 and they announce they will try to have us back in NO in two hours. I got off. I rented a car and drove to my meetings. I found out later the plane didn''t land until noon. I had the 300 flight out and would basically have not been able to make any of my meeting if I had stayed on the plane.

That''s the craziest thing that''s happened so far this year. What are the craziest thing that''s happened to you while flying?

 

[sunnyd]

Wow, that''s nuts!

I don''t fly often, but this was odd to me. I was on a flight from SEA to DTW, and I swear it was like a party plane or something! Or everyone had ADD. The flight is only 5 hours but everyone was up and down, walking the aisle. Going to the bathroom 4 times...I''d never seen so many people not able to sit for 5 hours in my life.

 

[Lauren8211]

On my flight to Las Vegas, the plane was delayed because two girls got so drunk that one actually went unconscious. They had to wheelchair her off the plane, and her friend was hysterical because they forced her off the plane, and she really wanted to go to Vegas. She obviously did not care that her friend was unconscious. It was... weird.

 

[Kaleigh]

I''ve sat for hours on the tarmac, only to go back to the gate...

But the worst was flying home from Nantucket, US Air, a commuter flight. There was a gentleman who was acting very weird pre boarding. He had a little dog with him. Once on the plane, he refused to put his little dog in the carrrier under his seat. I was sitting across from him. The stewardess asked him nicely, he refused. At this point we had taken off.. Things can be kinda lax in Nantucket... The dog was running all over the place. The man got violent. Two men sitting near me, held him down. He was screaming, and throwing punches. Meanwhile, I am right across from him. For those that know me, I am a very nervous flyer. I really hate it.
I was sitting there staying still, and praying.
They got him to calm down, got the dog in the carrier. Short flight, when we landed loads of COPS swarmed the plane and took him off in hand cuffs. Then we all had to make sworn statements. This happend just before 9/11. I didn''t fly for a long time....

 

[ladypirate]

What, no mile high club stories?

 

[Diamond Explorer]

Date: 4/23/2009 7:00:27 PM
Author: ladypirate
What, no mile high club stories?

LoL.. wouldn''t you like to know

 

[basil]

Was coming home the Sunday after Thanksgiving this year. My flight was supposed to be at 8, then connecting and getting in at midnight.

So at about 4 pm, the airline calls and says that my flight is already delayed and I''m going to miss my connection, so they want to reschedule. They offer me a direct flight, leaving at 8 and getting in at 10. Of course, I said sure. I was a little surprised I hadn''t booked that flight in the first place since I usually book direct when I can, but figured maybe it was expensive or something.

I went to my computer and printed out the boarding pass. I even picked a seat...surprisingly, there were a lot available. I then thought maybe they had added in another flight somehow to adjust for the delays.

So I show up to the airport at 7 and walk through security, but I can''t find my flight on the monitor to know which gate to go to. I went out back to the ticket counter and explained my situation.

The girl looks at my ticket and sighs deeply and says "Another one!?!". Then goes on to tell me that "my" flight was actually a charter flight for the NFL team playing that day to go home on, and that there was no way they were letting my non-NFL butt on that plane. Some idiot in booking had apparently done this to several people.

I ended up not getting home until the following afternoon, so I missed a day of work, but at least I had a good story for it!

 

[Italiahaircolor]

Last time Mark and I went to Las Vegas from Chicago we were sitting next to a guy who was probably between 18 and 20. He had the window seat, Mark was in the middle and I was in the aisle. Everything was fine to begin with...Mark and I were chatting, watching a movie via iPod and other nonsense. Eventually, our "neighbor" had to take a bathroom break....as he got up, he handed Mark his drink sliently and rather than wait for us to stand up, climbed over us...literally, climbed over us. As soon as he was down the aisle, and our shock wore off, we broke out into big fits of laughter.

Another time, on another flight home from Las Vegas for work, I was sitting next to a woman who unzipped her pants and put her hands down them, she also removed her shoes and at some point began eatting oranges she must have had in her carry-on bag...she ate like 8 of them.

 

[Fly Girl]

Date: 4/23/2009 6:16:49 PM
Author:April20
I''ve had a heck of a day today and was wondering who else has been through some craziness when flying.

I took the 725 flight to New Orleans this morning. I was only going for the day. I was supposed to land at 800 and had arranged to be picked up at 820 and at the first place I had to visit by 830. Aggressive schedule, I know, but I figured the worst that could happen was that I ran ten minutes late. N.O. was really fogged in and had a little weather. They said it should pose no delays. They announce we are in final approach and are landing. We are headed distinctly down when all of the sudden the plane WENT BACK UP. As in went back up, folded the landing gear in and headed away from the airport. And circled. No message from the cockpit. They finally announce we are landing again. We go into final approach and get so close I can see the airport, runways, everything. We get so close I can almost touch it and the plane GOES BACK UP. At which point they announce that in order to conserve fuel they are going to divert us to BATON ROUGE for refueling. I think they overshot the runway the second time and didn''t have enough fuel to pull the plane up again and re-approach if they missed. So we land in Baton Rouge at 830 and they announce they will try to have us back in NO in two hours. I got off. I rented a car and drove to my meetings. I found out later the plane didn''t land until noon. I had the 300 flight out and would basically have not been able to make any of my meeting if I had stayed on the plane.

That''s the craziest thing that''s happened so far this year. What are the craziest thing that''s happened to you while flying?

April - What happened to you was a missed approach. Actually, two of them. If the pilot cannot complete an instrument landing safely for some reason, he will go missed. In your case, it sounds like fog prevented the pilots from seeing the runway environment at the missed approach point, in which case they are required by regulation to go missed. Missed approaches are a high activity time in the cockpit, as they revise their flight plan, reprogram the computer, etc., so I''m not surprised they didn''t get around to speaking to the passengers immediately. Aircraft are required to file an alternate airport where there will be better weather that they can fly to and to carry enough fuel to fly to that alternate and for 45 minutes beyond. Two failed attempts at NO would be enough for anyone, and they decided to go to their alternate where they could land, refuel and wait for the weather to improve at NO. This is all normal, and these rules are there with the safety of the flight in mind. There wouldn''t be much point in taking off again for NO until the weather there had improved, hence the delay at Baton Rouge.

Airlines try to make it sound like they have reliable schedules, but in reality, flights are highly weather dependent. If you have a meeting you absolutely need to make, try to go early, or have a Plan B. In your case, it sounds like you coped very well with this unavoidable bad weather situation.

 

[Hudson_Hawk]

Date: 4/23/2009 7:12:15 PM
Author: Italiahaircolor
Last time Mark and I went to Las Vegas from Chicago we were sitting next to a guy who was probably between 18 and 20. He had the window seat, Mark was in the middle and I was in the aisle. Everything was fine to begin with...Mark and I were chatting, watching a movie via iPod and other nonsense. Eventually, our ''neighbor'' had to take a bathroom break....as he got up, he handed Mark his drink sliently and rather than wait for us to stand up, climbed over us...literally, climbed over us. As soon as he was down the aisle, and our shock wore off, we broke out into big fits of laughter.


Another time, on another flight home from Las Vegas for work, I was sitting next to a woman who unzipped her pants and put her hands down them, she also removed her shoes and at some point began eatting oranges she must have had in her carry-on bag...she ate like 8 of them.

Um..I hope she ate the oranges BEFORE she had her hands down her pants...

 

[Italiahaircolor]

Date: 4/23/2009 8:03:56 PM
Author: Hudson_Hawk

Date: 4/23/2009 7:12:15 PM
Author: Italiahaircolor
Last time Mark and I went to Las Vegas from Chicago we were sitting next to a guy who was probably between 18 and 20. He had the window seat, Mark was in the middle and I was in the aisle. Everything was fine to begin with...Mark and I were chatting, watching a movie via iPod and other nonsense. Eventually, our ''neighbor'' had to take a bathroom break....as he got up, he handed Mark his drink sliently and rather than wait for us to stand up, climbed over us...literally, climbed over us. As soon as he was down the aisle, and our shock wore off, we broke out into big fits of laughter.


Another time, on another flight home from Las Vegas for work, I was sitting next to a woman who unzipped her pants and put her hands down them, she also removed her shoes and at some point began eatting oranges she must have had in her carry-on bag...she ate like 8 of them.

Um..I hope she ate the oranges BEFORE she had her hands down her pants...

No, she had she hands down her pants before we even taxi''d the runway...and the oranges made an appearance about half way thru.

 

[Black Jade]

Two years ago. Me and my husband are on the way home from Las Vegas where he took me for a kind of extended ''date'' away from the kids. I can speak Chinese fluently, which is sometimes strange to people because I''m black. Anyway, I hear the guys in the seat behind us talking and I''m reading so I''m not paying too much attention; I hear the one guy saying how sick he feels and the others trying to figure out what to do with him. I''m tired from the trip and thinking they''ll figure it out. Of course I know they''re speaking Chinese, not English, but I''m not thinking too much about that, very vegged out, in short. Anyway, then they call the stewardess over. And it gets through to me that they can''t speak English and she can''t speak Chinese and they are really talking at cross-purposes. They are trying to mime that he''s sick (because he took a bunch of ibuprofen and Nyquil and stuff for a cold, and then added a bunch of Chinese herbal medicine) and she is not guessing what they are saying and she''s getting very nervous about them, ten guys all shouting at her (they seem to think that if they talk loud enough, she''ll understand). So I turn around and start to translate. You should have seen the looks on all their faces. The stewardess was like "You UNDERSTAND them?"
Anyway, we get everything sorted out, they find a doctor who is on board and they actually even find a Chinese speaking stewardess (you would think they would have called her out from the beginning) so now there are two translators, a very sick guy and people running around trying to decide if we need to make an unscheduled stop in Chicago, because nobody is sure whether the guy poisoned himself or not. And there are little cultural misunderstandings, like the doctor says, give him water, and the stewardess brings cold water, with ice, and of course he won''t drink it because Chinese won''t drink ice--it messes up your yin and your yang or something like that. (I''ve never clearly understood that, but when I lived in the Republic of China, I could never get a glass of cold water all year-in fact I could never get water to drink that wasn''t boiling.) But we don''t have to stop in Chicago, and by the time we get to Washington, something has worn off, and the guy is doing much better, well enough to pick up his own baggage and everything. I say goodbye to him at the baggage rack, where he is very grateful, and I go off wondering why a group of ten Chinese came to the US to do business when none of them speak any English. Brave, but odd. A lot of people now speak at least some English in China.
THe nice part of the story is that the stewardess sent me a nice note a couple of weeks later and we were given a bunch of extra frequent flier miles as a gift for helping out.
Once the guy was better, my husband thought the whole thing was seriously funny. He kept telling the story to all our friends for quite a while, especially the part where I was not realzing that nobody else in our immediate part of the plane could understand the guy. He''s always reminding me that few non-Chinese people speak Chinese, which I tend to forget because a lot of my friends do, and he really enjoys the way people''s eyes pop when I start speaking fluent Mandarin, or when they see me reading a book in Chinese because I guess there''s a kind of disconnect because not only am I not Chinese, but I''m black (with a lot of frizzy wild hair and usually wearing a not very fifty year old lady outfit, I wear like skinny jeans and a hoodie a lot, things like that).

 

[musey]

Date: 4/23/2009 7:03:05 PM
Author: Diamond Explorer

Date: 4/23/2009 7:00:27 PM
Author: ladypirate
What, no mile high club stories?

LoL.. wouldn''t you like to know

Well those aren''t CRAZY enough for a "craziest stories" thread!

 

[Clio]

A few years ago, I was coming home from a conference and had to connect through a large hub airport (I think it was Dallas but might have been Houston). It was the kind of setup with a big open area with lots of gates, and the flights were all small regional jets going to various Texas cities. Once they called your flight, you walked down to the tarmac and then to the plane (so, no bridge like you would have for larger planes).

This particular airport had several planes lined up and sort of corridor on the tarmac going past all of the planes. So, you''d take the first turnoff for the Austin flight, the second for El Paso, etc. Each had a sign.

So, they called the Corpus Christi flight, and we all filed down to the tarmac. The line was a little backed up as people gate checked their bags and boarded the plane, and I noticed the girl in front of me. The first thing I noticed was that she was carrying her shoes. Yes, she was standing BAREFOOT on the tarmac. The second thing I noticed was the bottle of booze in her purse. She seemed a little out of it, and drunkenness seemed like a pretty good explanation to me. We eventually got on the plane, and Drunk Girl collapsed in her seat.

All was well until the flight attendant began her standard welcome and announced our destination. At that point, I guess Drunk Girl realized that she was actually on the wrong flight! It did delay us for a while so they could sort her out. I just hope she finally put her shoes on.

 

[E B]

A few years ago, I watched a married man (well, he was wearing a band) across the aisle from me get the strange woman next to him drunk. After several whiskeys, they giggled and touched each other in what I can assume were naughty places. I'd guess they were both in their 50s and completely sloshed.

It was weird and rather uncomfortable.

More recently, I sat next to two teenage boys from Haiti who talked non-stop about their love of the ganj and how they'd be happy to sell me some. Also weird and uncomfortable.

 

[stephinextremis]

I have done plenty of traveling, but I am also an air traffic controller. One of the craziest "work" stories I have is also one that still makes me laugh several years later...because I really feel for the passengers who were on that airplane!

It was around nine at night, pretty slow at work, and a Delta plane flying JFK to LAX called me up over western Kansas:

"Denver Center, this is Delta XXX?"
"Delta XXX, Denver Center, go ahead."
"Uh, Delta XXX needs to divert to Denver. We need to do it right now!"

I''m thinking, has he been hijacked? Is there a sick passenger? Is the plane on fire? and so on. Every possible thing ran through my mind, and I waved my supervisor over. I gave the Delta a clearance to head toward Denver, and then asked him what was going on.

"Well, we have a situation...not an emergency, but we have to land. The lavatory system is backed up and we have overflowing toilets in the back of the aircraft!"

For once in my career, I couldn''t talk because it took me a full minute to stop laughing. And the jokes started flying among the handful of pilots on my frequency.

Then he added, "I guess you could call it a biohazard emergency. Because the back rows are going to riot if we fly for another three hours. You wouldn''t believe the smell in here."

My co-workers are a bunch of jokers, but I don''t think I have ever heard so many ''poo'' jokes in my life as I did that night! Can you imagine being on that airplane? Poor passengers! That made snow and thunderstorm delays seem pretty painless by comparison...

 

[musey]

Ewwwwwww stephinextremis!!! Those poor passengers

 

[niccia]

A couple years ago I sat next to a guy who was acting very oddly on my way from Vacouver to Toronto. He was wearing a hoodie and shades and got really upset when the takeoff was delayed. He kept calling someone on his cell and was whispering something about being late over and over. Anyway, I convinced myself that he was going to hijack the plane and take me hostage as I was sitting right next to him. So I offered him a magazine and some candy in the hopes that he would like me...well, he looked a little surprised at first and then accepted my offerings and started talking to me. Most of what he was saying didn''t make much sense, but he spent the rest of the flight trying to buy me drinks and showing me the wad of cash in his wallet. When I finally got off the plane, he walked with me to baggage and waited while I retrieved mine. He wanted me to go to dinner with him, and didn''t seem to care that my fiance was waiting for me in arrivals. I finally lost him somewhere in the airport and got out of there as quickly as I could. He definitely misinterpreted my friendliness.

 

[Kaleigh]

Date: 4/23/2009 9:17:00 PM
Author: musey
Ewwwwwww stephinextremis!!! Those poor passengers

EWWW, is right. That stinks for those passengers, pun intended, couldn''t resist. But yes, that sucks.

 

[CDNinNYC]

I used to be a Flight Attendant so I''ve got a few stories but one of the ''weirdest'' was having to help an overweight passenger get off the toilet. Apparently she was sitting when she flushed and it vacuum sucked her into the seat.

 

[CDNinNYC]

Date: 4/23/2009 7:00:27 PM
Author: ladypirate
What, no mile high club stories?

I''ve got some of those!

ETA: not personal ones, though!

 

[CDNinNYC]

Date: 4/23/2009 9:01:58 PM
Author: stephinextremis
I have done plenty of traveling, but I am also an air traffic controller. One of the craziest ''work'' stories I have is also one that still makes me laugh several years later...because I really feel for the passengers who were on that airplane!


It was around nine at night, pretty slow at work, and a Delta plane flying JFK to LAX called me up over western Kansas:


''Denver Center, this is Delta XXX?''

''Delta XXX, Denver Center, go ahead.''

''Uh, Delta XXX needs to divert to Denver. We need to do it right now!''


I''m thinking, has he been hijacked? Is there a sick passenger? Is the plane on fire? and so on. Every possible thing ran through my mind, and I waved my supervisor over. I gave the Delta a clearance to head toward Denver, and then asked him what was going on.


''Well, we have a situation...not an emergency, but we have to land. The lavatory system is backed up and we have overflowing toilets in the back of the aircraft!''


For once in my career, I couldn''t talk because it took me a full minute to stop laughing. And the jokes started flying among the handful of pilots on my frequency.


Then he added, ''I guess you could call it a biohazard emergency. Because the back rows are going to riot if we fly for another three hours. You wouldn''t believe the smell in here.''


My co-workers are a bunch of jokers, but I don''t think I have ever heard so many ''poo'' jokes in my life as I did that night! Can you imagine being on that airplane? Poor passengers! That made snow and thunderstorm delays seem pretty painless by comparison...

You wouldn''t believe how many times I''ve been on a flight where the lavatories were full and we had to either close them from further use or use a device on the aircraft to ''shift the sh*t'' to the lavatories that weren''t as full. When an aircraft is doing a number of legs or a long turn, it doesn''t get emptied out until it''s ''home again''. When we''ve closed a lavatory because it was full, I''ve had passengers ask me why we don''t dump the waste as we''re flying.

Wouldn''t you love to have that stuff coming at you from up in the sky???

 

[April20]

Date: 4/23/2009 9:37:07 PM
Author: CDNinNYC
I used to be a Flight Attendant so I''ve got a few stories but one of the ''weirdest'' was having to help an overweight passenger get off the toilet. Apparently she was sitting when she flushed and it vacuum sucked her into the seat.

I''m scared to even ask how you break that vaccuum seal.......

 

[April20]

Date: 4/23/2009 8:03:27 PM
Author: Fly Girl

Date: 4/23/2009 6:16:49 PM
Author:April20
I''ve had a heck of a day today and was wondering who else has been through some craziness when flying.

I took the 725 flight to New Orleans this morning. I was only going for the day. I was supposed to land at 800 and had arranged to be picked up at 820 and at the first place I had to visit by 830. Aggressive schedule, I know, but I figured the worst that could happen was that I ran ten minutes late. N.O. was really fogged in and had a little weather. They said it should pose no delays. They announce we are in final approach and are landing. We are headed distinctly down when all of the sudden the plane WENT BACK UP. As in went back up, folded the landing gear in and headed away from the airport. And circled. No message from the cockpit. They finally announce we are landing again. We go into final approach and get so close I can see the airport, runways, everything. We get so close I can almost touch it and the plane GOES BACK UP. At which point they announce that in order to conserve fuel they are going to divert us to BATON ROUGE for refueling. I think they overshot the runway the second time and didn''t have enough fuel to pull the plane up again and re-approach if they missed. So we land in Baton Rouge at 830 and they announce they will try to have us back in NO in two hours. I got off. I rented a car and drove to my meetings. I found out later the plane didn''t land until noon. I had the 300 flight out and would basically have not been able to make any of my meeting if I had stayed on the plane.

That''s the craziest thing that''s happened so far this year. What are the craziest thing that''s happened to you while flying?

April - What happened to you was a missed approach. Actually, two of them. If the pilot cannot complete an instrument landing safely for some reason, he will go missed. In your case, it sounds like fog prevented the pilots from seeing the runway environment at the missed approach point, in which case they are required by regulation to go missed. Missed approaches are a high activity time in the cockpit, as they revise their flight plan, reprogram the computer, etc., so I''m not surprised they didn''t get around to speaking to the passengers immediately. Aircraft are required to file an alternate airport where there will be better weather that they can fly to and to carry enough fuel to fly to that alternate and for 45 minutes beyond. Two failed attempts at NO would be enough for anyone, and they decided to go to their alternate where they could land, refuel and wait for the weather to improve at NO. This is all normal, and these rules are there with the safety of the flight in mind. There wouldn''t be much point in taking off again for NO until the weather there had improved, hence the delay at Baton Rouge.

Airlines try to make it sound like they have reliable schedules, but in reality, flights are highly weather dependent. If you have a meeting you absolutely need to make, try to go early, or have a Plan B. In your case, it sounds like you coped very well with this unavoidable bad weather situation.

I kind of assumed that their "two hours" back hinged on weather and that taking my odds with renting a car was better. The fog had completely burned off when I dropped off the gal that rode back with me at the NO airport. The flight still didn''t land for another hour and half after that. Oh well. I fly a lot and almost always have a "plan b" of sorts. Unfortunately, getting there the night before was not an option with the city I was in the day before but I''m in the city I need to be in for tomorrow morning tonight, so no flight drama for me tomorrow morning. Tomorrow afternoon maybe.

 

[elrohwen]

For how often I fly, honestly nothing too crazy has happened. The worst might have been when I arrived in Hartford at 11pm and Northwest lost my luggage and the luggage of 1/4 of our plane. We sat at the luggage claim desk for *45 minutes* at 11pm waiting for someone to come down. They finally came down and said there were no other employees and they had to bring the plane in and clean it up. Seriously?? The Hartford Airport has no other employees?

So I did my claim thing and left. I needed that bag because I was leaving for Germany in two days and needed my stuff. So Sunday morning, I need to prepare for my Germany flight and my bag hasn't been delivered. I'm panicking at this point. FI is smart enough to suggest we drive around the neighborhood, and sure enough, they left it on the door step of a house in the wrong townhouse development

So that was pretty bad, but probably not out of the ordinary. It has made me avoid flying Northwest though because their service was horrible (and losing the luggage of 20-some people on a direct flight is pretty bad too).

ETA: My other fun story was the time I was on my way to Dallas and the rain was so bad they diverted me to Oklahoma City. I was in first class because of a free upgrade, so I sat there drinking and enjoying myself

We sat at a gate for 3 hours, but they let us get off and on so we could get food, etc. It really wasn't bad at all. The only bad part was when I finally got to Dallas and the Hertz line took me over an hour (even in the Gold Club line) at midnight. I could've done without that part. Honestly, most of the things I go through are only bad because I'm exhausted and ready to be in bed when they're happening. If the same things happened at 2 in the afternoon, I wouldn't mind nearly so much as when they happen at midnight.

ETA2: Ooo, I thought of another! I was on a flight to Cleveland with only 5 people on the plane. They made us all move to the back, but one woman wanted to stay in her seat (maybe 3 rows from the back) and refused to move back a row or two. The pilot came back and she was snarky with him (he was kind of snarky back ... I was trying not to laugh). Eventually they told her if she didn't calm down they would have cops waiting for her when we landed. It was just ridiculous ... I don't know why she fought it instead of just switching seats.

 

[Julianna]

Date: 4/24/2009 7:17:57 AM
Author: elrohwen
For how often I fly, honestly nothing too crazy has happened. The worst might have been when I arrived in Hartford at 11pm and Northwest lost my luggage and the luggage of 1/4 of our plane.

This reminds me of perhaps the second time my family flew from Germany to California (home leave) and the airline sent our luggage to Russia. NICE! It took a week to get our belongings, they actually shipped them to us at my grandma''s house.

 

[Hudson_Hawk]

Date: 4/23/2009 8:24:52 PM
Author: Italiahaircolor

Date: 4/23/2009 8:03:56 PM

Author: Hudson_Hawk

Date: 4/23/2009 7:12:15 PM

Author: Italiahaircolor

Last time Mark and I went to Las Vegas from Chicago we were sitting next to a guy who was probably between 18 and 20. He had the window seat, Mark was in the middle and I was in the aisle. Everything was fine to begin with...Mark and I were chatting, watching a movie via iPod and other nonsense. Eventually, our ''neighbor'' had to take a bathroom break....as he got up, he handed Mark his drink sliently and rather than wait for us to stand up, climbed over us...literally, climbed over us. As soon as he was down the aisle, and our shock wore off, we broke out into big fits of laughter.



Another time, on another flight home from Las Vegas for work, I was sitting next to a woman who unzipped her pants and put her hands down them, she also removed her shoes and at some point began eatting oranges she must have had in her carry-on bag...she ate like 8 of them.

Um..I hope she ate the oranges BEFORE she had her hands down her pants...

No, she had she hands down her pants before we even taxi''d the runway...and the oranges made an appearance about half way thru.

We need a vomiting emotie....*gag*...

 

[Hudson_Hawk]

Date: 4/23/2009 9:51:15 PM
Author: CDNinNYC

Date: 4/23/2009 9:01:58 PM

Author: stephinextremis

I have done plenty of traveling, but I am also an air traffic controller. One of the craziest ''work'' stories I have is also one that still makes me laugh several years later...because I really feel for the passengers who were on that airplane!



It was around nine at night, pretty slow at work, and a Delta plane flying JFK to LAX called me up over western Kansas:



''Denver Center, this is Delta XXX?''


''Delta XXX, Denver Center, go ahead.''


''Uh, Delta XXX needs to divert to Denver. We need to do it right now!''



I''m thinking, has he been hijacked? Is there a sick passenger? Is the plane on fire? and so on. Every possible thing ran through my mind, and I waved my supervisor over. I gave the Delta a clearance to head toward Denver, and then asked him what was going on.



''Well, we have a situation...not an emergency, but we have to land. The lavatory system is backed up and we have overflowing toilets in the back of the aircraft!''



For once in my career, I couldn''t talk because it took me a full minute to stop laughing. And the jokes started flying among the handful of pilots on my frequency.



Then he added, ''I guess you could call it a biohazard emergency. Because the back rows are going to riot if we fly for another three hours. You wouldn''t believe the smell in here.''



My co-workers are a bunch of jokers, but I don''t think I have ever heard so many ''poo'' jokes in my life as I did that night! Can you imagine being on that airplane? Poor passengers! That made snow and thunderstorm delays seem pretty painless by comparison...

You wouldn''t believe how many times I''ve been on a flight where the lavatories were full and we had to either close them from further use or use a device on the aircraft to ''shift the sh*t'' to the lavatories that weren''t as full. When an aircraft is doing a number of legs or a long turn, it doesn''t get emptied out until it''s ''home again''. When we''ve closed a lavatory because it was full, I''ve had passengers ask me why we don''t dump the waste as we''re flying.

Wouldn''t you love to have that stuff coming at you from up in the sky???

FI has this book about crazy ways people have accidentally died (true stories), and one of them is about a farmer who was killed by a block of poo falling from an over-flying airplane. Apparently the poo froze because it''s really cold at 30,000+ feet and was solid by the time it reached the ground. He was on his tractor...random...

 

[jcarlylew]

mines not totally crazy, but still funny to me
flight 1) from Goa to Mumbai, i was the only white (american) person on the plane, and the little girl behind me poked my skin (i have a lot of scars on my back, so if i get really tan, i have fun dots everywhere) the whole flight. THE WHOLE FLIGHT. okay, well she did spend 5 minutes poking my neighbor too. fortunately it was only a puddle jumper flight.

flight 2) from Puerto rico, the gentleman sitting next to me kept on playing salsa music from his cell phone, refusing to turn it off. it got to the point where i almost rang the flight attendant because it was so annoying (it wasn''t even good music). she came over a couple times to tell him to turn it off, and he pretended to not understand her. another came over and spoke Spanish and English to him - he got the point that time! of course later in the flight he spoke English with no problem

I will let you know, however, i am the short passenger who always gets the outside seat, and winds up giving it to the tall guy. still waiting on karma to boot me to first class

 

[LaraOnline]

Date: 4/24/2009 8:36:54 AM
Author: jcarlylew
i am the short passenger who always gets the outside seat, and winds up giving it to the tall guy. still waiting on karma to boot me to first class

Sounds like a song lyric, or the thread of a novel in that line!

I confess, I am NOT READING this thread, my mortality finally became apparent at about the time I became pregnant the first time
("Hey, if someone pushes me, I fall over!!")
and I''ve never been the same since.

Flying out on a rubber band 12-seater to visit my brother near Arnhem Land (far west of Far North Queensland, Australia) is as close as I''ve come to death. That we landed intact was a miracle, and I''m not looking rto repeat the performance ever, ever again.

The plane had filled with smoke on the flight the day before... same plane...

Flying in Burma, on the local airline, was also something of a ''faith'' experience.