Recently, I saw the below Tweet and was rightly horrified by this person’s behavior.
New insane airplane etiquette just dropped: dude next to me took both of our under-the-seat storage spots
“Oh, are these both your bags?”
“Yeah sorry I needed your space too”— Allie (@Cluffalo) August 14, 2024
In the interest of being horrified further and therefore entertained, I decided to ask our BuzzFeed Community to tell us the wildest, weirdest, and/or worst things they’ve seen while traveling — and they did not disappoint. Here are some of their most engaging answers:
1. “The woman across the aisle got up to go to the bathroom, had a heart attack, and died. Her friend was my seat-mate and was inconsolable the whole flight, especially after they took her body to the back and announced she was fine.”
“We had an unexpected landing in DC to escort all of them off the plane.”
—Anonymous
2. “Flying from Miami to Chicago. We were on the runway, ready to take off. A woman in economy stood up to get something out of the overhead bin. Flight Attendants were yelling multiple times for her to take her seat! She didn’t comply, and we took off.”
3. “After a pretty turbulent flight and a bouncy landing, they came over the speaker and congratulated the guy who landed the plane for completing his final landing to become a Captain.”
4. “The airline staff left a seat and seatbelt covered in vomit. It spanned three seats, and all three people, one of whom was my mother, had to move.”
5. “Flying home via Denver on a business trip, my plane took off as normal (smallest Boeing jet size in service, pretty sure it was older than me, age 38). We got up to about 20,000 feet while climbing, and suddenly, a very loud WOOSHing noise came over the whole cabin. I got a sudden euphoric feeling, and the plane quickly descended.”
6. A positive story: “I’ve been all over the world and have seen many things but something that will always stick in my mind was a late-night trip to the beach in Mexico. We went to see if we could see baby turtles hatching. Instead, we found a female laying her eggs way too close to the waves due to all the rubbish on the beach.”
7. “Two hours into an eight hour flight to Ireland, the man sitting next to me suddenly started babbling about how hot it was on the plane (it was freezing) and took off his shirt. A flight attendant came up to him and asked him to put it back on and the man said, ‘I bought the f—ing ticket, didn’t I?’”
“The flight attendant was clearly rattled and she walked away. Nobody else came up to him and the shirt stayed off for the rest of the flight.”
—Anonymous
8. “The absolute wildest experience I’ve had on an airline is being seated next to a man who walked on the plane ‘over-served.’ He was so drunk and absolutely reeked of alcohol. He wouldn’t stop talking, so I made some small talk with him. I asked him what he did for a living, and he told me he was an airplane pilot for the airline we were on.”
9. “I flew a redeye from JFK to Heathrow in 2018… I was in a row with two strangers, one a young woman in the middle seat whose friends were sitting in the rows ahead of us. We took off, they began serving drinks, and I fell asleep. Somewhere over the Atlantic, I woke up because the guy sitting across the aisle from me was yelling.”
10. “I once was on a full plane stuck in a middle seat adjacent to a passenger picking his nose (throughout the flight) and wiping a surprising number of boogers on the upholstered armrest between us.”
11. “On a flight from SFO to Orlando, we were on our final approach, and I noticed we began ascending again. You could see storms in the area, so I assumed they were navigating around weather or avoiding wind shear on the final approach. Then the captain came on and announced there was a mechanical problem with the aircraft…silence on the plane.”
12. “The first time I flew on an airplane by myself was at 10 years old. I flew from LAX to JFK to spend a few weeks with a pen pal of mine. I boarded before others with the help of a flight attendant and wore a badge indicating I was traveling alone. People soon started boarding the plane. Everyone was oddly quiet and I couldn’t figure out why the plane was absent of noise.”
13. “One time I sat down in my assigned seat in the middle row and the other two seats on each side of me were already taken. As soon as I sat down, the man at the window seat next to me shouted out, ‘Last person that sits down in the row has to buy drinks for everyone else in the row during the flight!’ He meant me.”
“Now the one thing I am not going to do is spend my hard-earned money on a drunk I have never seen in my life who’s insulting me. I just sat back, closed my eyes, and ignored him. He continued to complain loudly to everyone on board… cussing and calling me names. He was twice my size.”
14. “I was traveling to a different country and the customs agent reviewing my passport kept trailing off and looking over at the neighboring desk, where a group of people were talking to the other customs agent. After about a minute, the group dispersed as several armed customs agents arrested one member of the group and escorted her away. Apparently, she had a forged passport.”
15. “I was traveling through the Middle East, and I knew I would encounter my share of interesting cultural differences. I was prepared for everyone to take their shoes off during the flight to make themselves more comfortable. Not my cup of tea, but I can respect it. However, I was NOT prepared to be woken up by the delicate scratching of my elbow on my rest, only to look back and find long, yellowed toenails from a foot that was sharing my armrest.”
16. Another positive story: “My roommate and I were taking a quick weekend trip by train across Italy, leaving from the Florence station. After we boarded, I realized we had forgotten to purchase tickets from the little kiosk between the trains. No sooner had I hopped off to grab the tickets, the doors closed behind me.”
17. “In late November 1982, my husband was driving through the Midwest on I-80. The highway was snowy and incredibly icy. Suddenly, strange apparitions began flying past his car on the highway. They were large boats.”
18. “My company had spent a group work and play trip in Cabo San Lucas. As we were flying back home. I was seated next to a woman who was shaking the whole trip and leaning forward and backward constantly. I recognized it as a drug withdrawal.”
“At a certain point, I said, ‘Whatever you need to do to calm down, just do it.’ She pulled out a compact and sniffed something, then relaxed the rest of the flight home. Wild.”
—Anonymous
19. “While walking around Prague on New Year’s Eve, I saw a guy sitting on the sidewalk, obviously very intoxicated, with a couple other intoxicated people fussing over him a bit (as best they could). It looked like he had a suction cup stuck to the bottom of one of his shoes.”
20. And finally: “Flying back from Las Vegas with a coworker who’d had too much to drink at the airport bar, I watched as he interacted with his seatmate and bought her drinks. After plying her with alcohol, I overheard him ask her if she would like a foot massage. She agreed and took off her shoes while he began massaging her feet. At some point I heard him say, ‘Can I suck on your toes?'”
If you read this far and have a totally wild travel story of your own to share, feel free to tell all about it in the comments — I always love reading more juicy stories. Or, if you prefer, you can check out this anonymous Google Form. Your story could be shared in an upcoming BuzzFeed article!
Note: Some submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
