Thomas Woodtli from Zürich, Switzerland, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Audio By Carbonatix
Summer is coming and you’re probably planning some kind of vacation to get away from the hustle and bustle of your daily life. That plan probably involves an airplane, and unfortunately more than half of all Americans will have the same idea, according to The Vacationer.
That means a lot of people will cram into understaffed airports to board overpriced, overbooked flights. Do you think your airline choice even matters anymore? Hell, no. Delta Airlines is fighting with its flight attendants because they don’t want them to unionize. United Airlines got caught lying about tracking passengers’ bags. Southwest Airlines is so bad now, it’s trying to catch up to Spirit Airlines.
Then there’s all this weird crap that happened with or on planes in the past year.
The weirdest flight ever.
These sounds started over the intercom before takeoff and continued throughout the flight.
They couldn’t stop it, and after landing still had no idea what it was. pic.twitter.com/F8lJlZHJ63— Emerson Collins (@ActuallyEmerson) September 23, 2022
1. Moaning Sounds on the Intercom
Usually when you get on a flight, the only things you hear are the in-flight instructions from a flight attendant, a message from the captain and the expulsion of gas from that person who seems to sit next to you on every flight.
A flight from California to Dallas, however, probably had passengers freaking out. In September, someone hacked a plane’s computer system, and the sound of moaning started coming over the cabin’s PA system. Actor and former Dallasite Emerson Collins recorded the whole weird incident and posted it to his Instagram as a male voice made “ghoulish” moaning and grunting noises while the flight’s crew tried to figure out how the moans made their way to the intercom. It’s not known if they ever determined the source of the noises.
2. Opening a Door in Mid-Flight
Bill Hicks used to do a really great joke about being on a flight with an annoying child who’s running around the aircraft and bugging him while he’s trying to sleep. Then the kid goes over to the airplane’s door and starts flicking the handle. The kid’s mom tries to stop her adorable child, but Bill stands up and says, “Wait a minute. We’re about to learn an important lesson here.”
This story involving a plane that had just taken off from Houston’s Hobby Airport is basically that, but the kid is an adult who tried to open the door in the middle of the flight because “Jesus told her to open the plane door,” according to court records. She probably didn’t learn her lesson.
3. Upside Down Landing
Some flights get so bumpy and uncomfortable that they can make even atheists start praying for a safe landing. It’s unimaginable how that situation feels in one of those Cessna planes where the pilot is sitting right next to you and there’s no chance of getting a drink to calm your nerves.
This strange story from Terrell’s Municipal Airport has two sides to it, and we’re not sure which is the weirder one. A Cessna plane somehow landed upside down, and it didn’t seem to crash the aircraft like every other downed flight. Apparently, the pilot was doing some practice maneuvers with some touch-and-go landings when the plane flipped over, landed on its roof and skidded to a stop in the middle of the runway. Fortunately, nobody in the plane seemed to be seriously injured. Unfortunately, no one got a video of the plane flipping over like a wind-up froggy toy.
Update: they are still refusing to leave until the rice has been cleaned. They are sending out for a broom. #RiceGate pic.twitter.com/2H8fIQwdsh
— Jennifer Schaper (@jenschap) April 15, 2023
4. Flight Delayed By Spilled Rice
If flying as a passenger is hard, flying as an employee who has to deal with grumpy passengers must require the emotional strength of five Tommy Lee Joneses. That still doesn’t excuse the bizarre flight attendant who thought she was the plane’s schoolmarm and held a planeload of people as occupational hostages over a passenger’s mess.
Some jerk on the flight spilled a whole container of rice in the aisle on a flight from Atlanta to Houston. The flight attendant got on the PA and tried to persuade the silent spiller to come forward, presumably so she could rub his or her face in it like a puppy who made a poopie on the living room carpet. No one came forward, so the flight attendant informed the crowd that the plane would not be leaving until someone confessed to the rice spill. Eventually, another flight attendant swept up the mess so the pilot could take off. Writer Jennifer Schaper, who recorded footage of the incident, said the crew did not serve drinks on the flight possibly as a “punishment.” It’s more probable that the angry flight attendant pulled a Denzel Washington in Flight by downing all of the plane’s drinks before the flight because it was her last flight and “Fuck it! Whatta they gonna do? Fire me?”
5. 18-Wheeler Vs. Plane
Maybe you’re thinking of skipping the airport entirely this summer and taking an old-fashioned American road trip. You’re probably thinking that, sure, it’ll take longer, but you won’t have to deal with the human hair clog in life that is commercial air travel. Wrong.
Earlier this year, a plane had to make an emergency landing in Houston, and the only place it could touch down without crashing in a serious way happened to be over a highway. The plane clipped an 18-wheeler, causing it to veer into a barrier and catch fire, creating miles of backed-up traffic. Fortunately, neither the pilot nor nearby drivers were injured.
6. Scorpion on the Plane
This could be one of the most Texan things to ever happen. The only way it could be more Texan is if the plane were covered in a spicy mesquite barbecue sauce and the captain was Willie Nelson.
A British Airways flight that departed Austin on the way to London in February had to endure a long flight with a scorpion crawling around the cabin. A passenger spotted the scorpion, and the crew had to move all the passengers to one side of the plane so they could search for the stowaway and presumably charge it for a seat. Unfortunately, they never found the scorpion.
