30 People Who Work In The Aviation Industry Share The Craziest Things They Have Seen

A grandma had an oversized pair of scissors, she wanted to take them with her. Instead of putting them in her checked in bag, she decided to put them in her shoe. So out of all options she decided that smuggling is the way to go and got the cops called.

Worked as ground crew. 2nd day on the job we were issued a notice to gather. So when you check in every morning you’re supposed to always take a breathalyzer test to prove you can like you know, ride around the tarmack, use pushbacks etc.

For whatever reason this dude hadn’t taken it/got past without taking it.

He was not sober.

He was tasked with pulling a 370 into a hangar.

He eyeballed it for whatever reason.

So here we are watching a video of this absolute loon break the whole wing off while damaging the hangar in the process.

Because he was drunk, insurance doesn’t kick in.

We were promptly told that christmas bonuses might be a bit smaller

Worked at the airport, flight had just got off the ground. Pilot calls in “uhhhh hey we are coming in for an emergency landing…..the exit door just got sucked into the plane” so door was sucked in. I had someone in that seat be really wishy washy about whether or not they wanted to be in the exit row so I moved them. Probably would have killed them if they had stayed, door completely destroyed the seat.

Worked in operations at IAH for a while, one of our pilots landed with passengers at the wrong airport.

Was on base maintenance for my national airline carrier in 2013 or so. Aircraft was scheduled for take off, and the pilot followed procedure per the usual. The chocks come off the wheel, the engine spools up and taxis to the runway. Except the ground personnel didn't clear the chocks in time because he didn't follow procedure. They're often poorly trained or not at all as part of cost cutting. Pilot spooled up the engine and sucked the ground personnel straight into the turbofan. His torso was pinned against the fan cone, shredded his limbs and head right off. We spent the next 2 weeks decommissioning the engines. Damn near 5 Mill USD bill. He got a pension of about 400 USD per month. Now I know what it's like to powerwash someone's bones out of complex machinery.

Emotional support scorpion is probably up there on the list of crazy. Dude was unable to state the emotional support he derived from the scorpion. It got even more fishy when we told him he would not be allowed to board with it and he said he would just throw his buddy in the trash.

A plane I got on once almost left without half of its aircrew on it.

I’m an aircraft mechanic. I got called out once because a passenger had accidentally dropped their cell phone into a lavatory toilet. That took me a little while to fish out because it had slid into a tiny corner of the toilet tank. The passenger wanted the phone back, so I had to put it in a giant red biohazard bag.

My craziest call though had to be the time a refueling hose had popped. I drive out to the gate and it looks like a geyser of fuel is spraying up out of the hose. Someone hits the e-stop as I get out of my van, and I start inspecting the plane. The entire right engine (CRJ-900) and a good portion of the right rear of the fuselage is soaked with fuel. I’m standing there wondering what they expect a mechanic to do about all this, when I get a call from my office because the pilots were wondering if they were good to go (they were not). We ended up towing the plane back to our hangar to wash the whole thing.

Family friend who was flight attendant on South America to USA international flights. She said someone tried to get boarded with their service animal….a Kangaroo. Service Kangaroo and their human were denied boarding. Still can’t work out how they got through the airport.

The amount of sex in that small bathroom. Geez