The worst experience we ever had on a plane wasn't really anyone's fault: we were flying from New York to Minneapolis during the Presidential campaign in 2004. For some reason, we had agreed to see in the last row of the plane, next to the toilets. We'd rather pay $400 more per flight than experience that nastiness again.
Anyway, that wasn't the reason it was so awful. We get motion sickness from turbulence and the weather that night was beyond awful-- there's nothing crazier than looking down at lightning-- with huge gusts of wind sending the whole plane into a panic. A flight attendant on her day off was sitting next to us, buying us Scotches and being a terrible flirt. That would have helped a lot, except after a violent, sudden drop, she said quietly, "Oh, no... this is not good."
Somehow, we survived, as did all of these poor souls who faced violence, turbulence, scary noises, and other sounds that were entirely the work of people on the plane. Can you top these crazy tales from Flights From Hell?
Of course, this is an international flight so after making her
announcements in English, she proceeds to repeat them in German. The
guy starts huffing and complaining that he's sick of hearing that damn
German gibberish already! Uh-oh, I'm thinking. But the fun had only
just begun. He proceeds to order two double scotches as soon as humanly
possible and downs them in nothing flat. Then the woman in front of him
tries to recline her seat. He plants his feet and presses with his
fists against her seat with all of his might (of course he had HIS seat
reclined as far back as possible). She looks back to see if something
is wrong and he pretends that nothing happened! Shortly, he fails to
remain vigilant and she manages to recline her seat a little...so he
starts punching the seat! As hard as he could, he punched the seat in
front of him. The poor woman was going to get whiplash.
When I showed her the [barf] bag, I was astonished by her reaction. I figured,
“Hey, they deal with sort of thing all the time.” But no, she turned
her nose at me and told me to put it under the seat! I was shocked. Not
only did the people next to me have to deal with the sound of my
retching, but now they (and I) had to deal with the faint but lingering
smell of puke from the bag and the fact that it would be under the seat
for the rest of the four and a half hour flight.
He situates himself, waits until we take off, and proceeds to take off
his shoes....first the right, then the left....followed by, of course,
his socks - first the right then the left.....he then begins to PICK at
the dead, scaly skin on his feet. I'm not kidding - he used his finger
nails to scrape, scrape and pull the dead skin from his heels, his
toes, the arch of his foot. After a few minutes, I thought - surely
someone would say something to stop him. Definitely the poor person
sitting next to him would eventually get fed up at the disgustingness
of the situation to ask him to stop. Nope...no one - not a flight
attendant, NO ONE said a word.
Two rows behind her on the plane was a mother, father, and their young
toddler-aged daughter. The daughter misbehaved terribly. She would sing
out loud, kick the seat, toss crayons into the aisles, and pretty much
just do whatever she wanted. Luckily, the flight wasn't long, because
the mother and father never said anything to encourage the child to
stop misbehaving. When the flight did land, a woman sitting in front of
the parents and child turned and said, "You should know that your child
is one of the most worst behaved children I have ever seen," and
proceeded up the aisle to disembark. The next thing you know, the
mother flies out of her seat and literally runs up the aisle after the
woman. The child asks her father, "Where did mommy go?" He tells her,
"Mommy's going to kick some ass."
Ah, there's something to be said for road trips, isn't there? More stories here.
Related:
