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

Saw the pilot walk into the passenger area and say " I'm not flying this piece of s**t " and get off the plane , and all the passengers followed him

When I was a ramp rat in the 90’s we were servicing the airplane as people embarked. The pilot came over the speakers and spoke about the flight details and said we will land in Dallas in approx 1-1/2 hours. He then said if you’re on the wrong flight please get off. Dead silence and 3 minutes later the pilot and co pilot exited the airplane as they were the ones on the wrong flight.

As a baggage handler I once had a shipment of live Alaskan crabs escape their container on the ramp. Flights were delayed. Turns out those guys scatter when they panic and try to hide under anything and everything.

We had a guy drinking out of hotel Shampoo and lotion bottles. He got upset when we questioned him saying it wasn’t alcohol. I said “Sir, if it’s not booze, I have many more questions for you”.

A fully naked woman just walked through the terminal and tried to walk through security like she wasn’t fully naked

Not in the industry, but boarded a Northwest flight many years ago. A lady in the emergency exit row (a couple of rows behind me) called the FA back and said “I can stick my arm out of the plane”.

I look out my window and sure enough, she’s waving back at me.

Takeoff was delayed while they called maintenance to re-seal the exit window.

I always get stuck in the last seat, directly in front of the latrine, because I book flights last minute for work. Flight attendants usually sit nearby. I asked one that question one time. She just smiled and said it would be unprofessional to share those stories.

I kid you not, 30 minutes into the flight, some large dude came waddling down the aisle while blasting out gurgly squelchers. He was all grimaced, sweating, squinting, and exclaiming "oh no oh no oh no oh no." He paused right as he was fumbling for the stall door when I heard his a**s violently jettison 5lbs of forbidden honey mustard directly into his pants. We made eye contact. Purest dread and regret. He squashed himself into the stall and didn't come out for most of the flight. He left a puddle in the aisle which quickly fumegated everyone from row 24 back. The flight attendant took out a can of lysol and sprayed it.

As we were leaving the plane, the flight attendant said "that was in the top 3."

Coffin with dead body inside being left out of the flight due to overload without notice neither to us nor the family and the family realising it by seeing it while the plane was leaving and screaming to us…

Legacy captain here.

After starting the engines and beginning the taxi, we immediately get a call from the back saying “There is a man back here punching his wife in the face and a very large military looking guy got in the middle and said if he touched her one more time he would ‘break his f*****g face.’”

Welp, back into the gate we go…

Little girl had an emotional support rooster in a tutu. This was shortly before the airlines started cracking down on what kind of animals could be in the cabin during flight.

Someone had the tip of their finger cut off when closing the door to the plane and didn't say anything until the flight landed at the arrival gate and when the door was opened the chunk of finger fell out. The staff then said, "oh yeah, that's my finger. you can throw it away."

Not airline but Im a helicopter engineer. North sea Oil and gas

We got asked by a pilot, "what's the max weight for the cabin step"

Assuming the pilot is away wanting it for a joke we say no idea, couple hundred KG..... Pilot dead pan looks at us and says no he needs to know. Ok fine, we go checking the manuals and eventually find it's 200kg max load.

Next he says what's the max weight of a cabin seat.

Again, we think what the f***s he on. But we go back to manauls and find out that it's 220kg.

Ok thanks, says the pilot. "I'm asking because my next flight has an unusual passenger....... A SEVEN FOOT 7 INCH..... 185KG MAN!!! this guy was from Fiji, and they are built different. This guy walking out to the aircraft looked like he was away to pick it up and play with it... Never see a walking land mass of a human like him since.

I don’t work in the airline industry, but I did stay at a holiday inn express last night. Anyway, my idiot aunt smuggled a monkey into the US from Mexico. Her plan was to keep it under her shirt until she got through customs. She is a big woman and it was a small monkey. Anyway, the monkey started running around the cabin, and crew and some passengers were trying to catch it. The monkey was a bit of a biter, so it was a huge stupid s**t show.

Coworker of mine worked as a baggage handler for 25 years.

Early in his career, a family was trying to get their grandpa onto a flight that loaded on an outside ramp. He was in a wheelchair and was waiting on people to help him up when it started raining.

My co-worker watched as his person in a wheelchair was just getting rained on and when people were finally ready to board him on the flight, he was dead.

The thing was.. he was dead for 2 days already and the family was trying to get him home the cheapest way to bury him and not pay to transport the body.....

Needless to say the family got into a lot of trouble and my coworker said he still remembers seeing a person in a wheelchair just out in the rain for 10 minutes.

One of our pilots wanted to do a funny April fools joke.

He filled his flight bag with empty alcoholic drink bottles and on his way out of the flight deck pretended to be drunk and spilled all the bottles down the aisle. It was so funny HR wanted to hear about it and he was shorty fired.

In no particular order: A 400 lb woman who sh*t herself in her seat and proceeded to leave a little turd trail down the aisle as she got off the plane. (She wasn't being inconsiderate. She literally had no control over her bowels, could barely walk yet couldn't fit on the aisle wheelchair so was forced to hobble off the plane with the help of two other people, all with s**t falling out of her clothes. Terrible experience for all involved.) Various injuries sustained by coworkers. A bad slip on ice resulted in a nasty concussion. Another guy got his hand lightly mangled by the baggage loader. A drunk guy tried to force his way onto a jet bridge after he was denied boarding. I was at the bottom of the bridge and started preparing for a physical confrontation to prevent him from illegally boarding the aircraft. It didn't come to that, but I still got to watch the cops drag him off in the ~~patty~~ *paddy* wagon (apologies to my Irish friends). Cool weather/natural phenomena. Lighting, thundersnow, meteors, even a tornado. Windblown luggage going on an adventure... and almost rolling onto an active taxiway. Eight large duffle bags, all checked by the same passenger, full of nothing but oranges. (Edit): That cargo bin smelled fresh as f**k. An over-packed bag that split open. Not a super rare occurrence, but this one being full of bdsm gear and other such items was a bit of an outlier. A baby goat, horse semen, dead people, and dead people parts regularly shipped as cargo. A flight from another airline diverted to my station after all that airline's ground workers had left for the night. There must have been a serious miscommunication because that really should not have happened. The plane sat at the gate waiting for help that wasn't there. At some point, an over wing emergency exit was opened, and the escape slide deployed. Big, expensive problem that I'm glad I wasn't a part of. And finally, just the sheer amount of both valuable items AND disgusting s**t people leave in seat back pockets. Phones, tablets, wallets, watches, purses, keys, headphones, flash drives. But also spilled drinks, half-eaten food, chewed gum, dirty diapers... Guys, if you're flying, how about just don't put anything in there, okay? In fact, don't touch the seat back pocket at all. Don't even look at it. It's not for you. Leave it alone.

There were two suitcases checked in that were full of nothing but weed.

I saw a person get eradicated by the blade of a helicopter.

I saw someone almost lose their leg to an exploding tire.

I saw a guy lose his finger to a jet rolling over it.

I saw a guy have his leg squeezed like a tube of toothpaste because he fell in front of a tire. Then they had to roll it the opposite way back over him. They saved his leg, and he still walks.

Several years ago I was flying from Knoxville to DFW. It just so happened a full eclipse was happening that afternoon directly over our flight path. Just about the time we leveled off at our cruise altitude the eclipse began. By the time the eclipse was full on 100%, it got so dark in the cockpit. I’ve never seen it that dark in the cockpit during the daytime on a clear day in my entire life. We put our sunglasses away and enjoyed the show. It didn’t last long and the speed we were flying. Another. Flying from Houston to DFW in 2003 we were at our cruise altitude when we looked up out the cockpit windows and saw quite a few fire balls above us leaving massive contrails. Many other pilots were chatting about this on the radio and none of us or even ATC knew what it could be. It wasn’t until we landed about 35 minutes later that we learned it was the Space Shuttle Columbia re-entering Earths atmosphere and had burst into many many parts and killing all on board 😢. I will never forget that day. Another. As the second gulf war was heating up we were flying near For Hood Texas one night. We were able to look down from our cockpit windows and see a massive amount of tracer fire as the US Army was practicing on the range. These are just a few of many over 20,000 flight hours.

Worked in the Cargo handling shed. We had two HUMS (Human Remains) arrive at the same time. Some bright spark took the documents off and forgot which was which. Flipped a coin on it and one went to Tel Aviv (Jewish Burial), the other to Dalaman (Muslim Burial).

He chose... wisely. But could have been a lot worse.