What is a Scary, Interesting or Humorous story you have from an Airport or on a Flight?

Real World Aviation
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In 2020 I was on a flight from Los Angeles to Orlando on United. Prior to the flight I had paid around 30$ for a window seat. Usually they cost about 16$ but because it was towards the front of the aircraft it was a bit higher. I usually always pay for a window seat so I don’t wind up in a middle seat or isle seat. Everything was normal, I got into my seat, my parents and sister were behind me and we were good to go… well I thought so at least. Boarding was almost done and this mother and her daughter sit next to me with the daughter in the middle and the mom in the isle. The mother asked me politely if her daughter and I could switch seats as it makes her less anxious. That’s understandable but at the same time I don’t think it would lower her anxiety. I think it would’ve been better if she stayed in the middle or even in the isle. I told the mom politely no and explaining I paid for the seat and I wasn’t going to let someone else have it. Like I said, I was very polite and at first the mom seemed understanding. That didn’t last long. She started getting mad that I wouldn’t give a seat to a child and that I should because I’m a guy. My parents behind me didn’t say anything because they wanted to see how I would deal with it. (I also have bad anxiety and tend to not be the greatest at interacting with people. This incident made me better at it though!) The mom started to yell saying how it was unfair that I got to sit there and wouldn’t let her daughter. Eventually everyone was staring at me and finally one of the FA’s came by. He explained the same thing to her as I did. “He paid for the seat so it is his. If you wanted a window you should’ve paid for it.” She started getting really mad and upset and the FA told her that he could move her to the back. So he did. She walked away all cocky and my parents were laughing as well as the rest of the passengers. I got the whole row to myself for the rest of the flight and the mother and daughter were in the back. The daughter got the window seat she wanted and well… she freaked out and started crying. I feel bad for whoever was on the isle seat next to them. Anyways there’s my story!

Feel free to share yours! They’re fun to read : )

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18/19 November 2016, ATL-IST, we turned around in the atlantic ocean and diverted to Gander due to a medical emergency.

I am wondering, do medical emergencies get documented as an incident, somewhere on the internet where I can find it? I’ve been trying to find some report of it but haven’t come across anything.

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I couldn’t say for sure, but I don’t believe so. There would certainly be a record of the diversion though.

Incident reports are usually reserved for more severe incidents or failures, such as a cabin depressurisation or the like. These will always be available online.

http://www.aviationdb.com

https://www.ntsb.gov/Pages/AviationQueryV2.aspx

Some good websites to use. There are of course more if you dig deeper.

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I think incident reports are normally to help other operators avoid the same error. Can’t really avoid a medical problem so it doesn’t seem like something that needs to be reported.

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This isn’t one flight but rather related to an airline. Back when WN used to serve peanuts, they for some reason gave preboarding to children with a peanut allergy, no matter how severe. I presume this is so their parents can sit with them. Someone in my family happens to have a peanut allergy, so every Southwest flight we got to board before even A Group.

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Eh, couldn’t find anything but I’ll keep digging. Thanks

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I’ll share another one:

Last year, I took a trip to Costa Rica, and came back via Atlanta. The day of return in question? December 31, 2022. We took off in N688DL (B757-200) as DL 764 at 10:22 PM Eastern. Our scheduled arrival? 12:01 AM… next year.
The entire flight, I was just praying that we would get in right at Midnight, or slightly after. I would love to ring in the New Year on one of my favorite planes.

But, alas, we got in just a few minutes shy. I got to spend Midnight on January 1st, 2023 at Baggage Belt 9 in Terminal One at KMSP. Not exactly a 757, but still an airport.

I got these photos coming into MSP. It was actually quite a turbulent approach.

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And a nice video of our landing (very hard one at that):

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Not sure if this matches any criteria, but this happened to me on my flights back from London Heathrow to Hong Kong on Qatar Airways a few days ago on the 22nd/23rd of July. So we were moving my little brother back from uni to Hong Kong as he was done and he is a very nervous flyer, like incredibly nervous. So to help him I paid extra to sit next to him on the second flight, even though the cost was stupid (I will never tell him this though). I also gave up my window seat on both flights to sit with him so he could have the extra leg room (to help him feel comfortable with his recent injury/health problem) and still feel comfortable. We fly the first flight and we are sat across the aisle from each other no problem. The second flight was on a leased B777-300ER from Cathay Pacific registration A7-BOA. I can tell it was from Cathay by the layout of the seats as we were sat in Cathay Pacific premium economy seats, but because Qatar Airways does not offer premium economy it was economy just with an extra charge for the seat. My brother managed to pick it for free because he is Sapphire One World. Because of his One World status we got to the gate and they had upgraded him to business, my brother was apprehensive as he wanted to sit next to someone as he has never flown without someone he knew sat next to him that he knew before. But he did not really have a choice cause someone was already sat in his seat and they had already torn his boarding pass and printed him a new one. I bought him and I wifi for the flight for both of us so he could contact me if he needed anything. About 6-7 hours into the 8 hour flight he woke up and asked if I could come and say hello and have a chat as he was getting a little nervous. Given he was in the last row of business and in the window seat of a 1-2-1 configuration I saw no problem with just poking my head through the curtain and checking on him. I had alerted the purser already that it is possible I will have to do this as he is nervous and she said it is completely okay as she fully understood the situation. Fast forward less than 10 seconds and I have one of the younger male cabin crew right in my face berating me about how economy passengers are not allowed to come in no matter what the circumstance and that I was bothering the business class passengers, when I explained the situation (which he clearly was not listening for) he said I had 30 seconds to get back to the economy section and there is no reason for me to do this, he said that he will let me off with a warning this time and if it happens again I will be reported to the airline. At this point I say goodbye to my now even more nervous brother and head back to my seat, where apparently he then has a stern word with my brother about the situation saying if it happens again he will be reported too. It was clear he then got the biggest yelling to of his life because then the purser apologised to me and my brother so much that I thought something life changing has happened and she asked both me and my brother what we would like to drink from the from the first class drink list, I said Port and my brother said Champagne and so for the rest of the flight the purser would bring me and my brother a Port or Champagne respectively whenever our glass was empty. Interesting situation for sure but could have been avoided so easily, especially given I have already had a word with the purser about this.

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I absolutely love it when people abuse their powers and then get reprimanded by their superiors

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Honestly same, I just wish she had made him come and pour the drinks every time himself, but she definitely saved my image of Qatar a little with this gesture!

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AA1129: CLT-LAX
Around Christmas time two years ago, the SoCal area was getting a lot of rain. Upon descent into Los Angeles, we we’re going through thick clouds. While in those clouds we were getting green and red color’s outside the window because of the green light on the right side of the aircraft and a red strobe from the top. This caused a continuous green and red flickering which must have been a coincidence because it was Christmas time and those are the common Christmas colors.

The pilots didn’t say anything about landing so I guy casually went into the restroom. Little did he know we were on final. Everyone in the cabin here’s this come on the speaker: ”Person in the restroom, hold on!” The plane did butter and the individual survived a landing in the bathroom.

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Don’t toilets get locked when the pilots start their descent?

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That looked like a pretty late landing to

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I have no idea, but this guy managed to get in 😂

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Another story from my Grandma:

She was flying from Dubai to Kathmandu in I think it was 1993. She lived in LA at the time, and was going on a tour of Nepal (she later went to Bhutan, and landed in Paro).

On the flight, the oldest member of the group, a man from Australia, felt slightly unwell. The FAs kept an eye on him, but he was stable enough to make it without a diversion. As they edged closer to Kathmandu, the weather was steadily worsening, to the point where, by a half hour out, the pilots said it was too poor to land in.

So, they turned around and headed towards Kolkata, where the weather was decent enough. Well, as soon as they turned over to Kolkata, the man went pale and promptly passed out. The FAs moved him to the galley where they began opening the medical kit.

The plane entered a holding pattern, while they called doctors on the ground. Apparently, they thought he was having a stroke. The medical facility available in Kolkata did not have the right kind of equipment to treat a stroke, so they had to find somewhere else with the proper level of care.

After a few minutes more of circling, the pilots said they were doubling back to Delhi, where I guess they had a bigger hospital.

They finally landed, and by this point it was pretty dark outside. The passenger was taken to the hospital, where he unfortunately died during neurosurgery to try and fix the stroke damage. My grandma was given a hotel, and put on a flight to Kathmandu the following morning.

I wish you could find a replay of that flight…

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Yeah! No kidding! I guess they just wanted to get on the ground then.

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Wow I thought Hong Kong was bad…

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One last story:

My dad was flying from San Fransisco to New York on a very early morning flight on September 11th, 2001. He took off, and about 3 hours into the flight, the first plane hit the South Tower. They didn’t hear a thing about it, until a little while later, the second plane hit, then the Pentagon and all that.

The pilot came on the speaker and said something like “There’s a situation happening in New York City, and we have to land right away.” My dad had no idea what was going on (this was of course before the days of inflight Wi-Fi) so thought there may be some sort of problem at the airport or something not involving an international terror attack.

They diverted to Chicago, which I guess was the closest available airport. His flight got parked for about 3 hours on a taxiway with a ton of other planes until they cleared them to enter the terminal. Still unaware of what was happening (they were kept in the dark), he turned to a TV as they got off the plane, and finally realized what was going on.

Quite an interesting 9/11 story.

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Yikes! I’d be so anxious I’d test positive and get stuck

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Yup, I was extremely anxious. Fortunately, I’m a half Chinese born in Guangzhou (that can barely speak Cantonese and mandarin) with a special type of Chinese passport. So I would have probably been in a better situation if I was positive.

Passport thingy

That “passport…?” lets me in without a visa and costs only a fraction of the price of a visa. Unfortunately it is only valid for one year. Not exactly sure what kind of “passport” it is (because I usually just use my Dutch one) but I can provide a photo if anyone wants to see it.

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