43 Flight Attendants And Pilots Share The Most Obnoxious And Infuriating Things Passengers Have Ever Done

There was a story a while back of how on British Airways a white woman was very dissatisfied sitting next to a black man in economy class. She [complaned] to the flight attendants about it and so after a while they came back to her saying "we can upgrade to first class". She gets up to go, but they stop her, telling her that no, the first class seat is for him.

Just a passenger here. I was flying Ryan air from Berlin to London. When the steward (he wasn't a good looking man at all, relevant) started giving the safety instructions a couple of guys who were part of a large group of friends in their early twenties started mocking him by making monkey and pig noises.

He tried more than once to very nicely tell them to listen to his instructions as they might save their lives, but they continued to mock him. He threatened to get them kick off the flight and they continued to mock. He went to the front of the plane and the pilot pulled back to the gate and they were still mocking. They opened the door and three German police officers come in and arrested the two guys for endangering other passengers by not allowing the safety instructions to go ahead, at which point the entire plane (excluding their friends) started clapping and cheering.

I have a story about people and their rude, obnoxious behavior.

I was in X-ray school at the time and my teacher and I were flying back from an annual conference that our national professional society hosts annually.

I was flying home from Las Vegas (2nd time flying in a commercial plane) and a women two rows behind me started having a seizure. No one seemed to care and her husband was completely clueless as how to help. My teacher was quick to jump out of her seat and called me to help. We attempted to life all of about 300 pounds of her and get her to where she was laying on her side in the isle. No one helped. Everyone just stared. I understand why people don't want to help or can't help. Totally cool with that. Some people are afraid of the situation, afraid of being sued, or just afraid in general.

What really got me is when we landed, the pilot asked everyone to remained seated until the emts got her and her husband off first, no one listened. They tried getting off the plane before she had been strapped to the back board and didn't [care]. As my teacher and I were helping the emt's to tell people to remain seated a man gets up and yells at my teacher. We were floored. Call me naive, but I was shocked at the lack of empathy these people had.

My mom was a pilot for Northwest Airlines.
She was a woman captain, and a man comes on her airplane. He takes one look at her and says "Ugh, a woman captain. I'm getting off." She replied, "Good, get off my airplane. There are people waiting on the standby list to get on." The guy turned right around and got back on. We guessed he wanted her to submit and ask him nicely to come back. She told me "[hell] no."

Girlfriend's a flight attendant and this is my favorite story of hers.

She had just started flying internationally and a woman in coach had decided to spread out in the middle three seats as no one was sitting in them. The last passenger was a man who was supposed to sit in one of those seats. The woman refused to get up, having sprawled out with blankets to sleep on the flight. My girlfriend tried to explain to the woman that the man had purchased one of the seats she was using. Woman didn't care, simply refused to get up and said the man could sit somewhere else.

The guy was very cool throughout this, kind of giving a shrug to my girlfriend like, "Well, now what do we do?"

My girlfriend got the ISM (International Service Manager or Purser, as they used to be called), basically the head flight attendant and the person responsible for everything aft of the cockpit. She walked back and asked the woman to please move. Again, the woman refused, saying the man could sit somewhere else.

The ISM turned to the man and said, "Actually, she right. We have a couple of seats in first class and we'd be happy to upgrade you free of charge. Are these your only bags?"

The woman's face was apparently priceless and she started to stutter out a protest, but by that time the three of them were already working their way to the front of the plane.

I fly seaplanes for a living, and when we get tourists a regular question is, "When will you fly real airplanes?"

As opposed to the fake one you're trusting your life to now?

Had a woman freak out on a flight attendant because the cookies she was serving had cranberries in them. Apparently she was on blood thinners and couldn't eat them. We serve a number of other options. Some people just like to complain I guess. As a pilot I try and avoid dealing with the cargo.

A friend of mine was a flight attendant who told me that a guy called the air hostess and very politely asked if the pilot could shut off one of the jet engines so his son could sleep peacefully.

Had a 20ish year old girl going to see her SO. She needed to shave so she did so in the bathroom, turbulence pursued and she cut herself really bad. Had to bring paramedics in and they carried her out. After unloaded, the FO noticed the trail of blood down the jetway.

Edit1: FO = first officer or co pilot. Unfortunately she did not cut her leg... It was her special lady area.

Not a flight attendant, but was coming from Vegas to LA and some little twit in back of me started painting or nails or removing her nail polish. I didn't know who it was at first and was like, it smells like acid in here, then realized it was nail product. The air wasn't filtering and the whole plane could smell it. The flight attentant came over and told her to put it away because it was toxic. The girl then said, just let me finish my last two nails. The attendant was in disbelief and ordered her to put it away. Then announed on the microphone that the smell was from some passenger who insited on doing her nails in the plane and took a little poke at her.

I guess this was expected from a little LA princess...

I once witnessed a woman lay her toddler on the aisle and proceed to change his diaper. This was during boarding. I was gobsmacked.

After completing my passenger brief, they would often ask me where my name/accent was from. On no less than a dozen occasions, upon hearing that I am of Turkish heritage, would ask "You're not going to fly us into any buildings, are you?"

Commenting on my youth: "Are you REALLY old enough to fly this thing?"

After telling a passenger to put away a phone or put on a seatbelt: "Who are YOU to tell me what to do?." or "Would you tell your father to do that?"

They would also bargain with me about the rules or tried to argue that so and so rule that I was required to enforce had no basis in reality.

Passengers, don't insult your pilot or flight crew immediately before they're about to take you someplace.

Tl;dr: monkeys, alien invaders, important meetings in the Atlantic, and Tarzan.

My mother was a flight attendant for TWA since the 1960's so she saw a lot of stuff that people could never get away with now. For example, she once had a schizophrenic man urgently call for a flight attendant because he was claiming to be receiving messages from the aliens that they were going to intercept the plane. He could not be calmed and demanded to talk to the pilot. My mother heard the commotion, ran to first class and grabbed a silver salad bowl. She then proceeded to put it in his head and tell him it would protect him from the alien messages, so they couldn't track the plane. He spent the rest of the flight with it on his head.

Another good one was when a man, about 5'2, wearing a tweed suit, round glasses came onto the plane, and strapped his bag into the seat next to him. My mother informed him that he had to put the bag in storage, and he very politely showed her that he had a ticket for it. He comes back later, and in place of the bag, is a dead stuffed monkey that the man is carrying on a conversation with. He politely asked my mom for a banana, to which he then attempts to feed to the monkey. Goes on like this the whole trip, and then packs the monkey up at the end of the flight.

Last short one. My mom went to the front of the plane to find a man trying to open the door. She stops him in time, and asks what the man was doing, to which he replied " I'm going to be late for my meeting, I have to get off now." To which my mom replied, " but sir, we are over the Atlantic." He then proceeds to argue with her, until my mom says, " Oh sir, they've moved your meeting to the coat closet ( which they had in older days), he thanks her for the update, and sits in the closet for the rest of the flight.

She definitely had her fair share of weirdos. If people want more, I can tell the story about the man who fondled an old lady, because he thought he was Tarzan.


**Edit/Update:**
Yes, these stories are quite real, I didn't be
lieve some of them, until she showed me a copy of one of the flight logs she had where FA's were required to note any points of interest during a flight. I will give her a call tonight to see if she can find/scan/email one of the reports over for proof.

As for my mom being good at dealing with the crazy people, she has always been person who is very out of the box thinker. Her view on the world is unlike anyone I've ever met, and she is a truly remarkable woman. She's just a creative lady who likes to do crazy things, so she gets people who are *actually* crazy.

Okay the Tarzan story.

On one flight there was this man who about an hour into the flight started making these grunting sounds every 2-3 minutes. The flight attendants continually asked him to stop, but he wouldn't let up and was getting more and more disruptive vocally and physically, so they decided to move him to a section of the plane that had some empty seats to separate him from the other passengers. As they stood him up, he seemed to zone out. My mother was the flight attendant who lead him back, and using her charm she tried to figure out why he was acting the way he was. Suddenly, he snapped back to reality looked her directly in the eyes and said something to the extent of "I'm Tarzan, tarzan need jungle, tarzan need drums!," after which he lunged at the heavier set ~60yr lady in front of him, grabbed her breasts and started bouncing them up and down. Took 3 flight attendants to get him off of her, and they restrained him to an empty row while they turned around the plane to land back at JFK (they had been over the atlantic). My mom, being known for handling uncomfortable situations well, volunteered to take the watch over him. He then proceeded to explain how he was using this flight to get to the moon, so he could get the green cheese that his jungle friends loved so much.

I'll ask her if she has any other good ones that I've forgotten, but those are definitely the 4 best she has encountered after 25 years of flying.

Not a flight attendant but my father worked for an airline for over 30 years and shared this story with me based on one of his colleagues' experiences. On a flight from JFK to Heathrow post 9/11, while the plane was about 4th or 5th in line for take-off an American lady demanded to be let off the plane. The attendant naturally refused since the doors were closed and they were almost at the runway. The lady went nuts and called 911 from her cellphone and said she was an American citizen being held against her will on a foreign airline and they were about to take off and she was going to be taken to another country. In about 3-4 minutes police and FBI vans surrounded the plane, pulled her out and grounded the flight pending further investigation. In the end she was just a nutjob who ruined everyone's flight.

TLDR: crazy american lady calls 911 before take off, says she is being kidnapped, feds surround plane, flight gets canceled.

One of my best friends was a flight attendant for a few years so I've heard some insane stories from her.

My absolute favorite was when she had to wait on Nicki Minaj in first class on a flight. She said Nicki was pretty much the worst passenger she'd ever waited on. She was rude, demanding, and kept doing weird [stuff] like order a vodka cranberry and when the flight attendant would deliver it she'd take one sip, hand it back to her and ask for another. My friend told me that her whole posse kept doing this until they had gone through almost all the mini bottles. As a bartender, that story pissed me off to no end.

I am not a pilot, but my dad is. One of his best stories, while not obnoxious to him personally, caused a flight to be severely delayed and really annoyed everyone, and was *pretty creepy.*

Persons who use wheelchairs or need medical assistance are typically boarded before other passengers. A woman (I'll call her Susan) and her elderly father (Jim) were boarded early for a flight to Buenos Aires, Argentina from DFW (Dallas-FT Worth, Texas) airport. My dad is doing his pre-flight checks, when a flight attendant comes up to him and says there's something odd about the elderly gentleman who was pre-boarded, and his daughter is acting odd. The flight attendant requests my dad come check on the old man. The flight attendant says that the old man is asleep, but looks like he may have had a heart attack or something due to his complexion.

My dad goes back and talks to the passengers and the elderly gentleman is slouched over in his seat against the window, asleep, and he doesn't look good. Nobody wants the plane to take off with a person needing medical assistance, so my dad asks Susan if there's anything wrong. She's agitated, says that Jim doesn't fly well and they gave him medication to let him sleep on the plane. Susan says her father is old, but in good enough health to fly and they are just headed home to Argentina. Susan requests that my dad not wake Jim up, and that he'll be fine.

The flight staff are all getting a weird vibe, so my dad tells Susan something to the effect of if they can't verify Jim is alert and in good health, they will not be taking off. She gets confrontational, refuses to get up from her seat to allow anyone to check on her father next to her, and they have to call gate security. Meanwhile as security is on their way, the woman apparently realizes they're going to get kicked off the flight if they don't cooperate, so she moves to let my dad check on the old man.

My dad goes over, and the guy has no pulse at all. Not just that, he's *room temperature*. My dad thanks Susan, and the flight staff go to the front of the plane to wait for security. When they show up, my dad tells them what is going on, and they also check his pulse and then call for an ambulance.

Emergency vehicles show up, and paramedics remove the old guy from the plane. As they are doing this, the daughter is upset and continues to insist he is fine to travel, complains that their bags from their previous connection will get lost, etc.

The paramedics tell my dad before leaving that the guy is not just dead, he's been dead for awhile (which my dad had sort of already guessed.) Apparently a plane ticket for a person is a lot cheaper than paying to transport a corpse home for burial. The real kicker is that he got on at the previous airport (which I don't remember) without anyone kicking him off the plane. Pretty sure there's a news story on the web for this, but it was in the 90s and I am unable to find it. [There's several similar ones out there though.](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8604663.stm)

TL;DR - Woman tries to fly her dead father home for burial by buying a normal ticket, thinking nobody will notice.

edit: This was in the 90s, pre-9/11.

A family friend is a commercial pilot with a major U.S. airline. He was flying a transatlantic flight from Chicago to London. Midway through the flight one of the flight attendants pages the cockpit and tells him that they need help restraining a passenger in first class. He gets up and walks back to first class to find a 60 year woman hammered drunk fighting with the flight attendants. Apparently the woman was seated next to a younger man and after getting extremely drunk kept grabbing [him]. He asked her to stop and after the 3rd or 4th time he paged the flight attendants asking to be moved.

The women then got belligerent so she had to be restrained. They wound up making an emergency landing in Iceland and arresting the woman because she was so belligerent. The best part is the arrest was the least of the woman's worries. She was permanently barred from the airline, had to incur the cost of the fuel the plane had to dump so it didn't land too heavy, as well as the cost to make the landing, and probably had to register as a offender. Also the entire plane full of people probably weren't too happy to have to be delayed several hours waiting for the plane to refuel and file a new flight plan.

TL, DR: Free drinks in first class can wind up costing you $30-40k in bad decisions.

When I was flying night helicopter "strip tours" up and down the Vegas strip, despite the video briefing which mentioned several times that no flash photography was permitted and my own verbal briefing mentioning this again, people would regularly take flash photos during the flight. It just blows my mind that people would think it's ok to temporarily blind the pilot who's flying them.

Not me, but a friend of mine once told me that on one flight, the attendant was trying to take a lady's drink order when her husband turns to the attendant and says, "Sorry, she doesn't speak to the help.".

I was an F/A on private charter flights. You know that kissy-type noise you make to a cat to get their attention? When he wanted my attention, a certain NBA star (cough-Shaq-cough) would constantly call to me like that. I politely told him my name every time, but he refused to say my name, "ma'am", "miss" or any other form of polite conversation.

He also sulked in the corner of the plane with his headphones on the whole time, playing video games like a child, while his wife (now ex) watched their 5 kids, cut up all of their food, entertained them, and made preparations for after landing. He was totally useless the whole time. No wonder they divorced.

One of my least favorite pax ever.