Funny Air Travel Stories!

[Gearspoke]

Reading the daily newspapers, Aljazeera, BBC and of course CNN there was this funny article in CNN about "how do you know you aren't the annoying one on a plane? (http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/24/travel/jerk-airplane-behavior/index.html?hpt=tr_c2) It got me thinking about my past holiday travels and the funny experiences that have had. I am sure there is a ton of people out there with funny or upsetting stories, and I would love to hear about them.

What is the craziest, funniest, rudest experience you have had while traveling on a plane?

[Dogwood]

On a full flight from Kahului to San Fran, after working for 3 wks straight averaging 82 hrs/wk to get the time off to hike while on my way to a JMT thru-hike I had this 5 yr old boy in the seat behind me. I was planning on sleeping during the flight. I needed it. He seemed like a nice kid at first showing me his cartoon drawing books and transformer action figures as he repeatedly leaned over the back of my seat to tell me all about these important things. He would even pull off my ear phones to make sure I heard, and acknowledged that I heard, all this vital information. Then, as he was so excitedly revealing the all important(to him) latest book he was crayoning in he spilled his soda down my neck into my one hiking shirt. Ice felt pretty refreshing but the stickiness sucked. I only wore a vest on my top half the remainder of the flight after washing the shirt. I looked like Burt Reynolds in Deliverance when I disembarked at San Fran Int AP getting some stares. The crayon he was also holding poked into my eye as he started to cry because his mother yelled at him for spilling the soda on me. He also managed to draw a purple crayon line on my face as he did this. This little whirling dervish of a child endlessly fidgeted around behind me, over me, and to the side of me routinely playing kick the imaginary can down the street on the back of my seat with his mother repeatedly verbally chastising him. Sit down. Buckle up. Stop kicking the seat. Sit down. Leave the nice man alone. What did I tell you? Sit down. Put that seat belt back on. SIT DOWN. Stop kicking the seat. That little f@#ker doesn't know how close I came to dropping two mini vodkas into his second soda.

This was rather recent too. Once I got on the plane I realized I had my Swiss Army Knife still on me - TWO DIFFERENT OCCASIONS on domestic flights at different APs. I've found it ironic that I can always get my pointed Vargo metal Ti tent stakes on the plane in my carry-on backpack yet have had several knives confiscated by TSA agents. I bet children of TSA agents all have pocket knives. That half drunk bottle of pricey AP bought bottled water always gets confiscated too at the security check pt but those supposed packets of nut butter, small bottles of EVOO, HUGE bags of supplement capsules, and oranges in my carry-on backpack have never been questioned. TSA has flipped out surrounding me en mass like I have the football in a rugby match in Melbourne when I've forgotten I have an Iso can in my carry-on backpack on two occasions.

[Gearspoke]

Oh my goodness.... what the devil child lol Bless you for your patience, if I was in your situation I would have told the mother to get her child in line or I will. Mind You I am a teacher and a misbehaving child is the last thing I have tolerance for. Sorry you had to put up with that.

My experience, I was running late for a flight, primarily due to ungodly traffic on the 5 from Bellingham to Seattle (which only takes normally 1hr 40 min, this time it took 3 hours) due to an overturned RV. So of course, the plane was nearly completely boarded when I got there, so seats were slim pickings. Especially when a discourteous flight attendant who had no sympathy for the likes of my situation, pointed out a seat and made me sit, as if I were some petulant child awaiting punishment. Or course, the seat was a middle seat, right in between a Mcdonalds lover and what looked like a sumo wrestler.. definition I only had a half a seat waiting for me.

After I aggressively shimmied into my seat, instantly feeling a wave of sweaty heat, we ended up having to sit on the tarmac due to electrical storms for an hour, with no AC in the middle of summer and the climate in my seat was humid, hot and I wanted to die. By the end of my flight I probably lost 10 pounds in water weight alone.

Never again! lol