30 Outrageous In-Flight Moments That Made Everyone Regret Boarding

True story.

I was flying from London to Minnesota. It was a long flight and I was stuck in a middle seat. I was on my ipad, working on some math problem I can’t even remember. Also, I couldn't sleep. Two hours in the air, this girl sitting next to me on my left, strikes a Conversation. After a quick chit chat, she leaned in for a kiss and I leaned backwards. "I have a girlfriend," I sighed. After an awkward pause, she went back to pretending to watch a movie without saying a word. Two minutes later, she asked me to switch seats with her and I did. Fast forward another hour and that same girl was kissing the passenger on the window seat. By the way, this passenger in the window seat was also a woman.

What? Yes.

After a brief ”You’ve gotta be kidding me” moment, I went back to doing the math problem I can't even remember.

Flight from Canada to the UK, guy sat down next to me and I gagged.

So what? I hear you cry. Well I’m a plumber’s son. I’ve worked farming and domestic spillages and ruptured pipes, I have literally worked knee deep in human poop to get a job done and the smell of this guy made me gag.

So I went and asked the harried looking attendant if I could switch seats and she just spat out “full flight” “no seats” and shooed me away.

So I went back to my seat but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t sit next to this guy who smelled like a homeless guy who had shat himself to death in the Florida sun three days ago.

So I went to try the attendants again and, again, I got the brush off.

Back I went to my seat and I had a little think. And I started pushing my call bell. A LOT.

Grumpy attendant came to see me to shut me up.

Grumpy attendant leaned in close to tell me off.

Grumpy attendant took a big deep breath in so she could give me a proper scolding.

Grumpy attendant nearly puked in my lap.

Shortly there after my happy arse was a looooong way away from where I had been and now-apologetic attendant fed me business class food and wine to say sorry.

In all of my long decades on this silly little flying marble we call home that man was, by far, the worst thing I’ve ever smelled.

This was on an Icelandair flight that was headed from Reykjavik, Iceland, to Kennedy Airport in New York City.

This 46-year-old man in the picture had so much to drink to the point where he had alcohol poisoning.

A while after having a couple of drinks, he started spitting on the other passengers.

He also grabbed women, choked other passengers, screamed that the plane was going to crash.

He became aggressive and started to hurt other passengers.

One of the passengers on board had some duct tape in his carry-on bag — so they taped his mouth shut, and taped his body to the airplane seat for everyone’s safety.

After the plane landed, he was taken by police in an ambulance to get treated for his alcohol poisoning.

The federal authorities decided not to prosecute the drunk man.

I had a flight from Delhi to Frankfurt, and there was a lady with a kid. The kid must be a year old and as the flight took off the kid started to cry probably because of air pressure. She did nothing to make her baby stop crying , just kept sitting !!

We were just waiting for her to pick the baby up so that he stops crying, after 20 mins of him crying, she picked the baby up and figured out that he is crying because he had peed. She took off his clothes and his underwear which had become wet, instead of keeping it inside, she put the wet underwear near the vent on top of her head which was half on my side !!

And I was sitting just behind her , The wet underwear right under the vent above my head drying !!! I was like , what is she even upto ??? I got up from my seat and asked her to stop doing what she is doing and she said, just one more min , let it dry so she can make the baby wear it again.

Coming back from a trip to Thailand, my wife and I went to our assigned seats only to see a young couple sitting there. We showed them our tickets and told them they must have made a mistake. They wouldn’t leave, telling us “The Lady” said they could sit there. I didn’t even bother with getting angry, just called a flight attendant over and showed her our tickets, explaining the situation. The flight attendant told the young couple they had to move, that they couldn’t just sit in seats that someone else paid for. They just kept repeating “The Lady” told them they could sit there. Flight attendant asks them what lady and to please show her their tickets so she could show them to their actual seats. The young couple couldn’t supply either. Amused, I just started putting our carry-ons into the upper bin. The young woman had the nerve to look at me incredulously like, “How could he just start putting his bags away over our seats?” I don’t know what happened to them after that. I just shook my head as they were being led away.

I am African-American, and was flying from Dallas, TX to Los Angeles, with my daughter who was 11 months old at the time back in 1968, to spend Christmas with my parents. My daughter was a beautiful baby with very long eyelashes; (she is still a beautiful grown lady with long eyelashes).

During the flight as she was sleeping in my arms, one of the white female flight attendants complimented and commented on how pretty she was and how long her lashes were. I smiled at her and said thank you. She then asked me if my baby's eyelashes were real! I looked at her in disbelief and shock...while proclaiming that they were indeed natural...and what mother in her right mind would glue false eyelashes on her baby! To my utmost surprise, she then proceeded to reach down, grabbing my baby's eyelashes to see if they would come off!

Before I could stop myself... I felt this rage and anger...and I cold-cocked her with a right hook as hard as I could, knocking her across the aisle way! Of course that woke my baby up who started crying...probably because I was very verbal in my protest!

If that had happened today...I probably would've been arrested for a*****t! I am so glad my husband was flying to LA later that week and not on that flight with us!

The white man sitting next to me who saw the whole thing, immediately called out for an attendant while pushing the overhead button for assistance! He was very indignant as well. As it turned out, the supervising (male) attendant was very, very, very apologetic...and suspended her services for the rest of the flight, by having her sit in the back where the attendants secure themselves during take -offs and landings. I was seated toward the front of the passenger section, and couldn't and didn't want to see her, so I don't know what happened to her after that. The flight landed...and I was glad to get off!

The airlines did give me a voucher to reimburse me for the money we spent on my ticket to LA; and they comped our return tickets back home to Dallas. The white man sitting next to me was very nice and soooooo embarrassed and apologetic as well. He helped me carry my bags/diaper bag, etc. to curb side.

On a business flight to Indianapolis, our plane was moving down the tarmac towards the runway. We were probably five minutes from taking off when this young woman (probably 20 or so) starting screaming that she forgot her medication at home and we had to turn around. The flight attendant tried to talk to her to see if someone could mail the meds to her or if she could just go to a pharmacy once we landed, and she insisted she needed it now and was screaming and crying hysterically. We ended up turning around and letting her off the plane. Of course the entire plane had to be emptied and cleared by security before we could leave again, so we ended up about two hours late. I hope she got her meds but if it was that important, she probably should have been a little more careful.

A woman sat next to me on a 5 hour flight to Mexico City. She sneezed at least 50, maybe 100 times. I never got sick. I had a bad feeling because she looked like she belonged in a hospital bed. I was 36 hours into a 7 day trip when I became ill. I’m walking around in 80 degree weather freezing while getting weaker with every step. The next day I could barely walk. I couldn’t breathe, and my temperature was 104.5 degrees. I was never that sick in my life. I had a doctor come and give me medication. If I wasn’t better by my departure I was going to be hospitalized. I arrived home weakened and 15 pounds lighter than when I went. That was hell. It was the only time I wished I had someone to look after me.

Back in the ‘90s my (now ex-) wife and I were flying out of Amsterdam with our 3 year old daughter on the New York leg of what would eventually be 16 hours in the air. The flight was crowded, and before we’d even left the ground, the woman behind my wife put her nasty, dirty bare foot on my wife’s arm rest. The woman appeared to be some flavor of middle eastern (judging by the way she was dressed) and didn’t respond to our requests to move it.

Then her son (I assume, aged about 8) started kicking the back of my seat. I grabbed his legs and turned around and gave him a nasty look. He thought it was a great game and kept it up. The stewardess got her to take her feet off the armrest long enough to take off, but as soon as we were in the air, back they went. Our polite request to the stewardess to change seats if possible was unnecessarily rudely rebuffed, so were were stuck with the situation. Eventually the stewardess came back and told us there was one empty seat at the back of the plane, so for the balance of the flight we switched off getting a few moments of peace before having to go back to the nightmare. Longest flight ever.

I didn’t initially feel that way when she sat down, but by mid-flight I was certainly thinking that way.

I was working in Kansas City in the early 1990’s and commuting pretty frequently back and forth to Chicago, where I had lived and where my company was based. The flights from ORD to K.C. are short- about an hour in total. On this particular day I had a window seat in the first row of coach, right on the bulkhead. Sitting next to me in the middle “E” seat was this non-descript white woman who I guess was probably in her mid 40’s or so.

She seemed agitated and fidgeted from the moment she sat down. I did my best to ignore her and either looked out the window, read, or tried to sleep while she’s shifting back and forth in her seat.

Midway through the flight the drink cart comes down and she orders TWO doubles - that is four of those little bottles of booze. I don’t think you can order that many on a short flight these days, but that’s what she did. She throws down both drinks in less than a minute, while I’m sitting there holding my diet Coke with my mouth agape, watching this.

After she downs her drinks and commences to fidget, she jumps up out of her seat and heads to the front of the aircraft to use the lavatory. Again, that is not something they let you get away with anymore on planes, using the first-class lavatory, but back then it was acceptable. Seven minutes later she comes back and sits down and she is REEKING of cigarette smoke! The passenger in the aisle seat and I both turn and stare at her, but she just looks at her lap and says nothing. Not a minute later, the PILOT comes out of the cockpit and walks over and leans across the seat towards her and he said: “Ma’am, were you smoking in the lavatory??” She mumbles a stuttering ‘N-no’, and the captain glares are her for another moment or two and then he turns back to the cockpit.

Now we’re just minutes from landing and the FA are on the intercom with their usual ‘we’re beginning our initial descent into Kansas City’ nonsense, and while this is going on the crazed woman has an unlit cigarette in her hand. She’s twirling it around, lifting it to her lips, taking it out of her mouth, twirling it again - it was unbelievable. So now we’re less than a minute from the airport, the plane is just few dozen feet from the runway, and then just as the tires hit the runway and makes that noise that they make when they hit “Errrt!’ or whatever, the woman unbuckles her seat belt and races to stand in front of the door to get out! The front tire hasn’t even touched down yet, the plane is racing at 180 mph, and this woman is standing with her face six inches from the exit door. At this same time, both FA’s who are buckled up in their jump seats are SCREAMING to her: “Ma’am, get back to your seat, GET BACK TO YOUR SEAT!!” in unison. Reluctantly the woman returns, but as soon as we get to the gate she leapfrogs over the woman in the aisle seat and sprints to gain her spot as the first person to get off of the plane.

I have known a lot of heavy smokers, but never knew of anyone who couldn’t even ride in a plane for an hour without smoking. Had this event happened today, the airport police would be the first ones to greet her when she exited the plane.