I thought it would be cool if you shared your favorite funny or interesting thing that has happened to you while traveling. I’ve got a couple, but here’s an example:
Yesterday, I was at KMIA and getting ready to board. Then, a whole bunch of TSA officers told everyone to stop moving. Eventually, you could hear the sound of a police dog. It was pretty annoying, but at least everybody was safe at the end of the day.
For more stories (I have a TON), just tell me, and I will create a Group Chat about storytime or something like that. Anyways,
So once, one of the couple of times I’ve ever flown on Southwest (I think we were flying from MDW-MCO), something funny had happened after we’d landed. As I am sure you guys know, Southwest has a reputation for being a funny airline.
So after we had landed in Orlando (the landing wasn’t anything notable - just an average landing) something really random happened. The pilot gets on the intercom and says, “Well folks, on behalf of our Southwest crew today, we’d like to thank you for flying with us, and we hope to see you on another Southwest flight soon.” He then goes on to say, “Umm but anyway, my wife asked me to do this for you guys, so here you go.” He then proceeds to play the chorus of the song Happy by Pharrell Williams. It was totally random, but I found it funny.
Tell me if you want to hear more stories. I’d love to hear your stories too!
One time I was on a delta flight, I forget where I was headed but it was a flight near the east coast. We had gotten in the air but shortly after takeoff, there was a PA from the captain saying we had to turn around and return to the airport we took off of because there was an oil leak in the airplane. Since there was lots of traffic at the airport, we had to go into a holding pattern until the airport could find space for us to arrive. After a while in the holding pattern, we landed and had to wait in the airport for a few hours for them to be able to fix the oil leak on the plane. When it was fixed, we were finally able to get in the air and on our way. At cruising, the flight attendants gave us free pizza on board for being patient and waiting hours for the plane to be fixed! This was a long long time ago so I apologize there may be a few details I left out.
When I was a baby, my mum got stopped at Beijing PEK airport, because the security didn’t believe that I was her son. Basically they thought she had kidnapped me. I literally called her ‘mummy’ multiple times but security still didn’t believe me. My mum got let off after a bit of convincing, but now she always travels with birth certificates, just in case lol
So I was on a flight from New York to Paris on a 777, I wanted to recreate the flight on IF as I was taking off the plane took off in Sync, which was cool but the funny thing is that when we were both in cruising altitude, I was running out of fuel fast so I descended to the nearest airport and landed there and THE EXACT SAME THING HAPPENED TO THE PLANE I WAS FLYING IN
The pilot spoke on the intercom saying that we were low on fuel and we would land at the nearest possible airport. And I noticed that we landed at the exact same airport at almost the exact same time. One of the weirdest stories…
Also after my trip to Japan, I was in the Tokyo Hadena airport and my family was planning on returning to the U.S. that day flying standby but all the flights we tried to get on were completely filled, one after the other. Unbeknownst to us, the Japanese schools has just let out for break that day so everyone was traveling on vacation that week. We ended up spending a few extra nights in a hotel just waiting for a flight that we could get on. We ended up giving up on flying standby and spent a ton of money flying from Tokyo - Honolulu. That night we did another flight from Honolulu to Seattle on a Hawaiian A330. We ended up getting home just fine but our vacation was extended by a few days…
Also there was a Singapore A380 that we considered taking to Seattle but we didn’t want to because of the price of the tickets. After we ended up staying in Tokyo for another night, my parents were desperate to get on a flight home so we ended up buying tickets that were double the price of the Singapore flight’s tickets so that kind of sucked. Especially since we didn’t get to fly on that A380 :(
So I’ve got this pretty interesting story of a delay from a while back (I think late 2016). It was on a trip with my family as we were coming back from a cruise in the Caribbean flying SWA back to NorCal. The route was MCO-HOU-OAK and our layer over was like an hour at Hobby.
The first flight was uneventful and we landed on time in Houston. However, when we deplaned in Houston, we noticed that the boarding time shown on the screens in the terminal was about 20 minutes later than the scheduled time, however, it wasn’t shown as a delay and we didn’t get any notifications of the change…we didn’t really think of this as anything because, well it was only a short difference in time, and the flight was still scheduled, so we just headed over to our gate. Now, when we got to the gate, it was packed, like I mean completely full, and since it was later in the evening, the terminal was less full so people were sitting on the other side of the terminal as well. Also, on the screens at the gate it showed that the next flight wasn’t going to Oakland, but was going to Dallas. This eventually made sense when a plane pulled up at the gate, and the agents announced that it was not for the flight to Oakland, but the flight to Dallas that was previously delayed six hours and going out of the same gate. Which was kind of funny because the airport was almost completely empty at the time (at least that’s what I remember) so there was just a lot of empty space and then this one gate with two very delayed full flights and a lot of people. A little bit after the Dallas flight left they finally made an announcement about our flight and said that our plane was delayed because of weather somewhere nearby. A little while after that announcement, they told us that we would be delayed an hour and a half due to mechanical issues that they needed to figure out… that slipped to 2 and a half hours before our plane came in. Now an almost 2:30 hour delay isn’t too bad, but it was pretty relieving when the our plane finally pulled up at the gate. But wait! There’s still more. When the plane pulled up, everyone got up to lineup on the pillars b/c yk Southwest airlines with their boarding process, but the gate agent explained that there was concerned of a bird strike on landing, so they couldn’t use the plane for the next flight. They told us to be patient as they looked for another plan to use for the leg over to California. Since it was late in the evening at a pretty calm Houston, Hobby Airport, it only took about 20 minutes for them to find a new plane, and they told us all to move over to the new aircraft. It then took them about 10 to 15 minutes to service the aircraft, get it prepared for flight, and to move the flight crews over. However, after they finally got everything done, we boarded, and it was overall a calm nighttime flight with a very late arrival into California.
Just a funny story that I like to retell every so often. Hope you enjoyed.
Noticed this too yesterday on my Delta flight. They use to have E145s, but retired all of them years ago. The fleet page on their IFE system really needs an update lol
mwahahaha it’s my time to shine. I was flying from KLAX-KMCO in 2020 for a trip to Disneyworld. I sat down at my window seat and was hoping for it to be an empty row but unfortunately it wasn’t. A kid and her mom sat next to me. Now keep in mind, i will not give up my window seat! I payed for it so it’s mine 😂. As we were getting ready to take off the mom asks me if i could close the window because her son (like 9-10) is afraid of flying. At this time i was filming a trip report and wasn’t gonna let this lady boss me around because her son doesn’t like flying. So i just said “sorry i’m filming something for youtube and i’m gonna have the window open the whole time.” she scoffed at me and ignored me. Her son was sitting there calmer than a teenage girl going through a breakup. As we started descending i look on my radar and see we’re gonna be flying into a huge storm so i started getting excited and all jittery. We started our initial descent and we were being tossed around and the mom was like “sir can you please close the window i’m not gonna ask a second time.” To which i reply saying “I told you earlier, no i’m filming for something plus I paid for this seat YOU didn’t.” She tries calling one of the flight attendants over saying i’m “harassing her”, which didn’t make sense because i was 14 at the time 🤣. We ended up diverting after 2 attempts trying to land at Orlando, we diverted to West Palm Beach. Once we landed the pilots said that we could leave the aircraft for a bit to stretch and get something to eat. I left the aircraft and met up with my family telling them about this crazy lady. They thought it was funny and told me i did the right thing. As im talking to my parents she comes up and says “Is this your son? He has been harassing me this entire flight and I want an apology now.” Keep in mind I was recording the entire flight so you’ll hear me talk to her once or twice and that’s about it.” Long story short turns out she was the one afraid of flying not her son. Oh yeah and as we were boarding again she didn’t even board… she just straight up left the airport. I’ll have to find the video on my phone, not sure if i have it still but i’ll look for it.
When I was a student pilot checking out my aircraft from the desk, I ran into one of my classmates.
The comm radios in our aircraft had twist knobs with plastic caps.
My classmate said she had taken off during her solo return flight out of Tucson, when tower told her told her to contact departure. But when she reached for the knob to change frequency, it came off in her hand and fell between the seats.
Obviously, she didn’t have a backup plan! It’s not like they weren’t busy.
