Unless you're stretching out in first class, flying is rarely an enjoyable experience. Airplane rides are associated with cramped seats, stuffy air, boredom, and involuntarily bowel moments—or at least they will be after you read these 21 tales of in-flight horrors shared on manyRedditthreads, Twitter, and Imgur.
1. Flying brings out the worst in people for no reason, as thearchvolta learned.
Oh man. I got straight-up punched by a hearing-impaired Russian lady on a flight from Calgary to London.
I was reading the newspaper, purposefully angled away from her because she was agitated before takeoff. Then the pilot came on the intercom and said we'd be taking off in ten or so; she made some unintelligible noise and smacked the newspaper out of my hand. I said "Whoaaa..." and she then proceeded to punch me in the ear.
Needless to say, the flight was delayed, we had to fill out incident reports, and I moved to the back of the plane. Apparently on her incident report all she wrote was "He bothers me".
2. Be thankful someone is only eating chicken and not cooking one, which happened when JudgeLaws's mom was working.
This isn't mine but my mother's.
Mom used to be a flight attendant in the 70's for Gulf Airlines, based out of the Middle East. This was back when flying and being a flight attendant was sort of a glamorous thing.
One of the services that Gulf Airlines provided was the Hajj flight, so that worshippers may travel to Mecca with greater ease. People of all types would go on this flight, many of them desert nomads who had possibly never even seen an airplane before.
People would bring everything with them, including live animals.
My mother once had to put out a fire mid-flight with a fire extinguisher because a desert nomad had started a fire in order to cook the chicken whose head he had just cut off on the plane.
3. Some airplanes are hot, and then others have "visible humidity," according to passenger dannyf124.
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4. Strap in for the first of many poop stories, beginning with noluck143's tale of the forgotten sock.
So I was on a 14 hour flight when I had terrible gas. The flight was at 10PM so everyone pretty much went to sleep after dinner was served. Now I had the window seat and I let go a few times before I fell asleep. When I woke after maybe an hour of sleep I felt the back of my pants wet as well as my left thigh. So I started feeling my pants from outside and it felt dry. So i put my hand inside my pants and then my underwear and OMGsh my ass was wet. I fucking sharted. Now my palm and finger had shit on it and I didn't know what to do. I was sure if I pulled out my hand it will be shitty and my neighbors would smell it. So I kept my hand inside my pants. I sat on my fucking hand until both my seat mates fell asleep. It took probably an hour cause the guy on the aisle seat was watching a movie. I wrapped myself with the blanket they give you on board, just below the belt to prevent the stench from diffusing. As soon as the aisle guy slept I quietly took one of my socks off and put my shitty hand in it. Then i placed my hand in my pocket. I got up out of my seat. I sorta hurdled by the other 2 passengers so I won't have to wake them up. When I got to the bathroom, thank God there was no line, I took a dump. I had diarrhea. I had to get rid of my now soiled white underwear and perhaps cause I was tired and not thinking clearly I dumped the shitty brief into the toilet. Luckily I didn't flush. I had to grab the briefs back out of the toilet bowl and wrapped it with paper towel and dumped it in the trash. Now there was someone knocking cause I was in the restroom for a long time. It's cause my jeans had shit on the thigh area also and I had to rub the shit out with wet tissue and liquid soap. When I thought I was finally all clean and smelled ok I stepped out and apologized to the next person. When I hurdled back to my seat I wrapped myself with the blanket again. I was getting comfortable and ready to sleep when I had a tap on my shoulder. The guy from the restroom told me he thinks I left my sock in the restroom by the hand soap. I told him it wasn't mine and went to sleep with 1 sock on.
TLDR: I sharted during a 14-hr flight.
5. Tardisblue had the pleasure of flying with someone who provided their own in-flight snacks.
Sat in the middle seat, wedged between an obese man on my right and a very unkempt hairy man on my left.
Every time the man on my right lifted his arm or readjusted in his seat, his fatty folds would open up and release some sort of gas that smelled like a mixture of dried dog shit and human sweat.
The man on my left took off his shoes and picked in between his toes. He started smelling his toe jam, rolling it around between his fingers, and then HE ATE HIS TOE JAM.
Then he picked at his beard and PROCEEDED TO EAT THINGS FROM THERE.
6. The passengers on fenney's flight suffered cruel and unusual punishment many times over for choosing this 21-hour flight.
21 hour flight from Singapore to UK, after the 6 hour flight from Adelaide to Singapore.
First flight went OK, watched a couple of movies, no sleep, I can never sleep on planes.
Couple of hours to kill in the airport in Singapore, went to the butterfly garden (there's a butterfly garden), ate some noodles.
Plane is delayed because the air conditioning is broken. 2 hours? OK, I'd rather have air conditioning.
4 hours later, can't fix air conditioning, decide to take off without it, board passengers. By now it's past 4am in the timezone I'd been in for a month.
My seat is broken. Every slight move I make moves it back and forward. this may annoy whoever is behind me, sorry bro.
Plane takes off, entertainment screens are not working for everyone, so they switch them all off to reboot for 45 minutes.
BRING US WINE, PLANESLAVES.
Sweet jesus it's getting hot.
Screens come back on in time to enjoy with passable in flight breakfast meal including questionable scrambled eggs.
Guy behind me starts barking at me to stop moving my seat. I tell him to deal with it, it's happening.
Turbulence? Bring it on how much worse could this get?
Much worse. The heat and turbulence manifested themselves into mass airsickness afflicting the majority of passengers. I managed not to throw up but came close during a chorus from the row in front of me.
Now it smells. The plane smells like hot vomit. Most people try and get some sleep, I do not.
Luckily while I'd been n Australia they had updated the inflight movies so I had a few thigns to watch.
The german woman in front of me watched Wild hogs 5 times.
I stole the blankets and will never fly with BA again.
Edit: I missed a major point, about 7 hours into the flight the water cooler and ice machine broke, so the water we vitally needed because of the extreme heat was warmer than the ambient temperature of the cabin, and then later they ran out of water so there was no water at all for maybe the last 3 or 4 hours.
Also, I've never seen a more pissed off looking group of people as at that baggage claim. Not to mention when we got outside after spending Christmas on the beach in Australia to fucking January snow in the UK.
7. The only thing worse than sitting near a PDA couple is sitting near a drunken couple breaking up.
https://twitter.com/keegs141/status/635601861349896192https://twitter.com/keegs141/status/635605303904632836?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw8. The last thing you want to hear on a plane ride is the pilot freaking out, which is exactly the in-flight entertainment Relax-Enjoy had.
Pilot SCREAMING into mic "Denver, we're in serious trouble up here. I need....."
Pilot forgot to turn off main cabin speakers after warning crew to take seats during monster, 40,000 ft. hail storm. We dropped out of the sky when hitting huge air pockets. Bags and people flying everywhere. But the scariest thing was hearing the pilot's panicked voice scream that announcement.
We all thought we were doomed.
DETAILS AS REQUESTED...
Here are the details and you tell me it's not a freeking air pocket..... We're flying from SF to Cincy. In the middle of the flight, the pilot announces to fasten belts because they are expecting a bumpy ride. Apparently there is a very tall weather disturbance that had been reported. Just prior he casually announced that we were at 40,000 feet, expected time, etc. (I believe 40,000 was the number but it may have been a bit less).
After the announcement we hear pop..pop....poppop. POP..POP..pop. Tons of them and we're all like WTF!?!?!? Really bumpy... Turns out it was giant hail hitting the plane. Really bumpy. Pilot again announces more sternly for all crew to take seats and no one get up.
Really really bumpy. Them Wham! We freeking fell out of the sky. There is no other way to describe it. It was like you were just sitting in a chair suspended from a rope at the top of a cherry picker and someone cut the rope.
DROP, drop drop, then Wham! It's like the plane landed in an enormous vat of creme filling (sorry, that's what it was like kind of soft but still a big jolt) but more on one wing than the other so the plane 'landed' askance and all sorts of shit went flying out of the right bins to the left nailing people in the heads. Some people not completely or at all buckled (idiots) flew up and hit the ceiling then back into their seats. Screaming everywhere. Absolute chaos.
Then, FML, the pilot screams over the intercom "Denver, We're in serious trouble up here, I need.." and a few other words we could not understand. Freaked everyone out. He forgot to turn off the cabin speakers from the earlier announcement.
Rough rough rough, then drooooooooop again. Same thing but a much harder landing. I mean we dropped for what seemed like minutes but was probably 10-15 seconds. Wham! a much harder landing. Shit flying everywhere people crying praying screaming. Nuts!
We cruised through that and it became smooth again. Pilot later announced that he was sorry about the mistaken overhead announcement etc. He also said that the current altitude was something like 18,000 feet. Whatever the exact numbers were, we had friggin dropped about 10,000 feet - 2 miles!
It was the worst of my 500,000+ air miles. You never heard so many people clapping upon landing.
9. It's one thing when you accidentally pee your pants. It's another when someone forces you to, like Askura did to a stranger.
I have a LOT of these.
I think I'll go with a short and sweet one. I get up from my seat and start walking towards the isle and just as I get close to the bathroom queue I trip on someone's bag strap and essentially punch this girl in the stomach as I fall forwards.
She wets herself.
I have an overwhelming sense of guilt for shaming this poor girl who actually burst into tears then and there as all these heads turned to see what the noise was. Actually feeling pretty bad right now.
10. That nightmare scenario where something breaks the window does happen: Skips_LegDay was flying high when a bolt made its way through the first layer of the window.
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11. Airplane bathrooms aren't great, but most people make do with them. This dude that Sternology's sister encountered felt that he was above the bathroom.
On another note my sister works as head trolly dolly and she's told me lots of stories about various emergency landings and scandals but the one I seem to remember is a story about someone who for whatever reason refused to use the toilet and choose to squat in the aisle instead and proceeded to curl one out in front of everyone.
12. Popping ears are normal. An exploding tooth is not. Hopefully misterjta has a better dentist now.
My tooth exploded.
Well, ok, not quite. I'd had a filling done by my then-dentist, who was just terrible. It was the second I'd had in that tooth, because he never once drilled out enough, so the tooth would rot behind the filling until eventually the enamel lost contact. Then he'd repeat the process without anaesthetic, to "tell better," and when that failed, he'd extract it.
Anyway, we're flying out to Greece on a school trip, and it was fine until we started to descend on the approach to Athens. At that point, I start to get toothache.
It gets progressively worse, until I'm sat there actually sobbing and digging my nails into my arm to try to distract myself from the agony in my mouth. It doesn't work.
I can't adequately explain what the problem is to anyone, but I'm starting to hyperventilate, so the dude next to me looks me in the eyes and slaps me really hard.
I swear to God I felt the rush of air hitting the back of my teeth, and gob out a foul tasting lump of enamel. As far as I can work out, we climbed gently enough, and descended so fast, I got a pressure differential inside my tooth. Most agonising thing ever, so much worse than just getting drilled without painkillers. Fucking hated that dentist.
tl;dr: got a pressure imbalance in the cavity under a filling and spent the descent from cruising altitude screaming with pain and scratching up my arms until I got slapped so hard the filling came out.
13. Planes don't often smell good. This one smelled awful. Due to some rather rank "liquid fecal excrement," a flight from London to Dubai had to turn around last year.
https://twitter.com/CllrAbhiSach/status/57614575619477504114. At least the entire plane didn't inhale the same scents as acousticphan did.
I was on a flight from Kansas City to Boston, sitting towards the back of the plane. Just before we took off, a HUUUUUGE woman squeezed her way down the aisle and took the seat in front of me. After a few moments I noticed a VERY pungent odor. It smelled like a mix of spoiled sour cream, and a shit you would take after dining at an all you can eat Mexican buffet.
I've heard people talk about things that smelled so bad that it made their eyes water, but it was something I never fully appreciated until this flight.
I soon assumed that the smell was coming from this woman...her vent blasted directly on her sweaty face and ricochetted directly into mine. I spent the entire flight gagging...and did everything I could to get some relief. This included trying to duck behind her seat to avoid the jet stream of death. As soon as I did this she somehow wedged her huge sweaty arm between her seat and the wall...right into my face.
For the first time in my life, I readied my vomit bag.
I ended up covering my face with my Red Sox hat, and stayed that way for the entire flight.
As we were getting off the plane, when the woman stood up, all of the odor that was trapped between her and the chair was released. They don't even make tear gas this strong.
I got off the plane, and enjoyed fresh air for the first time in 3 hours. On my way past baggage claim I saw the woman waiting for her bags with...I kid you not...a box of M&M's as big as a board game.
My curiosity getting the better of me, I really wanted to know if in fact a human being could smell so ridiculously awful, I walked passed her and as soon as I came within about 5 feet of her, it was like somebody punched me in the nose with a fist made of rotting garbage.
The only good thing about that flight was it gave me the best travel story of my life...quite the feat for somebody who travels nonstop for work.
You just can't make this shit up.
15. Hellotheremustard has a fear of flying that's no doubt been heightened since this classic (and sad) catastrophe occurred.
A guy had a heart attack on a direct flight from L.A. to London. We had to dump our fuel and land in Winnipeg at 3 in the morning, when there are very few airport personnel. The paramedics were waiting and took him off the plane pretty fast. However, due to regulations, we could not continue with the man's luggage, so airport staff had to be called to the airport to go through all the checked baggage to find his and remove it.
Also we had to refuel.
Also a guy behind me had a panic attack, and had to be wheeled off the plane in a stretcher, and someone had to find his and his sister's luggage. So we sat on the runway for ~5 hours. Never heard if the heart attack guy made it.
Edit: The worst part (or second-worst part, depending on whether the heart attack guy died or not), was that I have a tremendous fear of flying, and the first thing the captain said to us before we started to make the descent was "Ladies and gentlemen, we have an emergency situation onboard." So of course I freak right out until he asks if anyone is a doctor. Never before in my life had I thought, "thank goodness, just a heart attack!"
16. What's worse than a little baby squealing on a plane? A newborn baby crying as her mother gives birth to her, which happened mid-way through a flight from Taiwan to LA last year.
https://twitter.com/yuppiebucketlst/status/65430943416911872017. Every once in awhile, karma hits those annoying little kids. ProbablyHittingOnYou witnessed one such example of a kid getting what he deserved.
I've told this before on Reddit:
I was on a KLM flight from Amsterdam to NY and some little brat was running up and down the aisles, biting people. Stupid little fucker. As he was running full speed down the aisle, a stewardess pulled the refreshment cart out of the little middle section and he ran smack into it. She just looked down at the little bastard and told it to stop running in the aisle.
I know she did it on purpose.
18. It's not just adults who can't make it to the bathroom. Mrptb2 had a little kid's bladder free itself directly onto him.
On a flight from Austin to SJC, the little kid (probably age 6) in front of me fell asleep in his seat. While sleeping, his bladder let go and it dripped all over my feet. My wife saw me startle when the I first felt it, and reportedly, the look of horror on my face attracted the flight attendant.
TL;DR: "He peed on me!"
19. Getting a little tipsy is OK. Getting hammered and declaring your "racist views" is a bit much. A Modern Family editor live-tweeted the whole fiasco.
https://twitter.com/film114/status/516442677198721024https://twitter.com/film114/status/516447568801595392?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw 20. Crimdusk sat next to a passenger whose queasy stomach couldn't deter her from enjoying her meal.
International Flight out of Shanghai to Newark. I notice this spoiled brat of a woman and her husband with 2 full luggage dollies (mostly Louis Vuitton Luggage) - her shit is falling everywhere - He is barely managing and the woman is not helping him at all. I can't help but make a remark to my translator about how I really feel bad for the guy.
Flash forward to boarding, I have a window seat and lo and behold! The very same lady ends up sitting next to me, her husband or boyfriend sitting on the end. At about the same time that she gets all settled in, I am completely overwhelmed with this GOD-AWFUL FOUL smell. I think to myself, holy shit - I think it's this woman's feet!
At this point i'm a bit livid, the smell is toxic and i'm cursing myself for getting an inside seat with no real fresh air... I'm just drained of optimism as i realize I'll be stuck in this seat for the next 17 hours. It wasn't until i was about 3 hours into the flight that i found out where the stink was coming from. The STINK was not foot stank in nature as i first thought, but rather emanating from a medium sized doggy bag style Styrofoam container carefully hidden under the seat in front of her.
I would later learn that the Styrofoam container held a cuisine which translated quite literally means: Stinky Tofu... as a reference: this is the only thing i've seen Andrew Zimmern on Bizarre foods NOT be able to get down... (link relevant: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILexn0r6STg). Fact: the stuff smells so bad China has laws about preparing this dish on residential property because of it's incredibly offensive odor.
I am gagging as this woman starts eating this stuff less than 2 feet away from my face. I've got a pretty strong stomach, but I have to admit i was REALLY REALLY close to losing it... The real kicker is, not only does she not finish the tofu but after an hour and a half of some decent turbulence she starts vomiting violently.
Now... this stuff smelled pretty freaking bad going down. I will not even attempt to describe how nauseating it is the 2nd time around! I wish i could say this was the end of the story, but after her stomach calmed down approx 3 hours after the 1 hour long puking spell was done... She picked up the lukewarm rancid tofu from under the seat in front of her and started eating it again! I MEAN HAVE U NO SENSE WOMAN!
I wanted to smash the window and jump out into the frozen wasteland below. I should also add for added flavor, that a lot of people adopt babies in china... so the flight was also full of screaming babies, and this woman was a severe drama queen who was complaining the whole flight - constantly fidgeting falling asleep on me, sticking her feet on my armrest and otherwise being a total bitch. fml
21. Sure, wryly's worst flight didn't involve vomit or feces or heart attacks, but that doesn't disqualify the trip from being awful.
Once my iPod died and I had to watch a Queen Latifah movie for almost two hours.
At least wryly didn't watch Wild Hogs five times, like that woman on fenney's very warm and dehydrated flight. After the third time was she really like, "This movie is so layered and humorous I need to watch it twice more to truly understand its full depth"? Apparently so.
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