Strange (and sometimes terrifying) things that have happened on planes

Plane bizarre

When we board a plane, most of us are hoping for little more than a quiet neighbour in the next-door seat and an edible in-flight meal. However, some journeys come with bizarre in-flight extras, from unexpected animal encounters to alarming technical malfunctions.

Read on to discover the most unusual incidents to have occurred on aircraft in recent years. Some of them will horrify you...

A plane door blew off mid-flight

An Alaska Airlines flight had to make an emergency landing in January 2024 after a defective door plug blew a door-sized hole in the plane just a few minutes after takeoff. The Boeing 737 Max 9 had already soared to 16,000 feet (4,900m) when the hole appeared next to seat 26A, terrifying passengers and immediately depressurising the cabin.

Mercifully, all passengers and crew escaped with no more than minor injuries.

A man falsely triggered the emergency door

We are sorry to announce that activating the emergency slide will not help you get off a plane any quicker. In fact, as a man on a China Airways flight discovered in 2014, it’s likely to delay you even further. He caused around £10,000 ($13,100) worth of damage and passengers were stuck for two hours.

Emergency escape

This isn’t the only time the emergency slide has been used without cause. In 2023, a Delta Air Lines passenger activated the emergency door and slid merrily down the slide while the Boeing 737 plane was still taxiing towards takeoff. Needless to say he was arrested by local law enforcement and his fellow passengers all had to be transferred to different flights.

Feathered friends on board

It's not unusual for some Middle Eastern airlines to have a few extra pairs of wings. Birds of prey have their own passports in the UAE, and falcons can fly for free on Abu Dhabi-based carrier Etihad Airways.

Airlines often place restrictions on the number of birds per craft, but, as on one unusual flight to Jeddah in 2017, you could find yourself sitting next to as many as 20.

The Pope might marry you

When Pope Francis took his seat on a flight to Chile in 2018 he started talking to two engaged flight attendants. Carlos Ciuffardi and Paula Podest told him that a huge earthquake had destroyed the church that they'd planned to marry in, so the Pope stepped in and married the couple right there on the flight.

Tying the knot in the sky

Daredevil couple Darren McWalters and Katie Hodgson also took to the skies to marry back in 2008, but they chose to do it while standing on the wings of a plane, 1,000 feet (305m) up in the air. Their reverend performed the ceremony from another plane in front.

Amazingly, it wasn’t the first time he’d done this sort of wedding.

Emotional support... monkey?

A lot of US airlines are surprisingly flexible when it comes to emotional support animals, but only if they have the correct paperwork. Gizmo the marmoset made it onto a flight from Las Vegas to Ohio in 2016 with owner Jason Ellis, but Ellis’s lack of proper paperwork meant that the pair were later put on the airline’s no-fly list.

Mushrooms once caused an emergency landing

A humble jar of mushroom soup forced a plane to make an emergency landing in 2008 after it started leaking from an overhead locker. It dripped onto a man with a severe mushroom allergy and the Ryanair plane flying from Budapest to Dublin had to make an unscheduled stop in Germany.

Bees on a plane

A Delta Air Lines flight was delayed by several hours in 2023 when thousands of bees decided to make the plane their home on the tarmac of Houston Airport. The swarm congregated around the tip of one of the wings, baffling authorities who could not allow either beekeepers or pest control to tamper with a takeoff-ready aircraft.

The bees eventually left voluntarily as soon as the pilots turned on the engine, prompting much amusement on social media.

A celebrity disgraced himself

Renowned French actor Gerard Depardieu was removed from a plane in 2011 after he was accused of urinating in front of his fellow passengers. He refused to wait until the plane was in the air to use the bathroom, and relieved himself in a bottle at the back of the plane instead.

A peculiar odour

On a Lufthansa flight to Stockholm in 2013, a strange odour forced the plane to land in Copenhagen amid fears over passenger safety. The source turned out to be remarkably mundane – the horrible smell was coming from a recently installed carpet.

Can you smell burning?

No one wants to smell burning on their plane, and an American Airlines flight from Boston to Miami in 2014 had to make a quick turnaround due to the scent of smoke throughout the plane. It was later discovered that burnt breadcrumbs were the cause.

A windy flight and a fight

Getting up close and personal with total strangers is never fun, but in February 2018 a fight broke out between two passengers on a flight from Dubai to Amsterdam that caused the plane to make an emergency landing. The reason? One man wouldn't stop breaking wind.

A hair-raising experience

A plane to Mallorca was forced to divert after a man set fire to his travel companion's hair as a prank during a flight from Manchester to Palma in 2012. The plane diverted to London Gatwick where the prankster was ejected from the flight and arrested for endangering aircraft safety.

A bird cracked the windscreen

Birds and planes getting into bother isn't unusual but in 2016 a bird struck a plane flying from New York to Tennessee so hard that it cracked the windscreen. The pilot had to make an emergency landing.

Scorpion on board

Flight attendants are usually pretty good at catching travellers without tickets, but a scorpion on board a flight from Los Angeles to Portland in 2015 wasn't spotted until it stung a passenger. She reportedly remained very calm through the whole experience.

Maggots in the overhead locker

However bad your most recent flight was, just be happy you weren't sitting under an overhead locker overflowing with maggots. A passenger on a US Airways flight from Atlanta in 2010 had bought some spoiled meat on board with him – and an unexpected load of wriggly friends.

Baby on board...

When Debbie Owen went into labour on her British Airways flight from Ghana to London, she tried her best to ignore the contractions and hold off until she landed. Despite her efforts, she was moved to first class and her baby was born in the air.

She named her Shona Kirsty Yves, giving her the initials SKY. When Shona turned 18 in 2011, British Airways gave her two free return flights to a destination of her choosing.

...and free flights for life

Although it's not common for babies to be born mid-air because of strict rules around pregnancy and flying, it's even less common for babies to be awarded free flights for life. But Jet Airways did just that for a baby born prematurely during a flight between Damman in Saudi Arabia and the Indian city of Kochi in 2017.

The plane was diverted to Mumbai and the baby was delivered safely before landing.

Don't sing too loud

Next time you're getting really into the music playing through your headphones, perhaps avoid Whitney Houston. A woman was removed from a plane for singing I Will Always Love You at the top of her lungs in 2013, and refusing to stop after multiple warnings.

Officials insist it wasn't her song choice that was the problem.

Anger management

Don't like it when you and your travel companions don't get to sit together? We doubt you've ever reacted as badly as the woman who threw hot water and noodles over a flight attendant on a Thai AirAsia flight from Nanjing to Bangkok in December 2015.

The reason for her outburst? She couldn't sit next to her boyfriend.

Turkeys and kangaroos

Emotional support animals on flights have to be approved by a licensed therapist as part of an individual treatment programme. One of these approved animals was a turkey which flew on a Delta flight in 2016, much to the amusement of passengers.

In 2014 an emotional support kangaroo, predictably called Joey, flew on an American Airlines flight in first class.

Peacocks are not supported

Not all emotional support animals get their ticket stamped. In 2018 a traveller was told that her emotional support peacock could not board a United Airlines flight at Newark Airport in New Jersey, due to the animal's considerable weight and size.

After six hours of wrangling, the colourful bird and its human companions decided to drive across the US instead. United said that the traveller knew in advance that the peacock would not be permitted, though she had apparently offered to buy the bird a ticket.

Pigs might fly

Pigs might fly one day but this one didn't. When an emotional support pig boarded a flight in Connecticut it was removed from the plane after becoming noisy and disruptive – squealing loudly, charging up and down the aisles and resisting efforts to fasten it to an armrest.

The pig and its owner were told to disembark.

Poopy pooch

Some airlines allow passengers to fly with dogs as pieces of carry-on luggage, but please don't let them poop in the aisle. One clearly unwell dog went to the toilet so many times on a plane in 2014 that passengers became physically ill, and the flight to Philadelphia was rerouted to Kansas.

The owner reportedly tried to get email addresses from the passengers and offered them Starbucks gift cards by way of apology.

Flames on the wing

In 2023 some passengers on a flight from Edinburgh to New York got the shock of their lives when flames started billowing from one of the wings just minutes after takeoff. The plane made a speedy turnaround and landed in Edinburgh shortly afterwards, with authorities citing engine problems.

There were no casualties and the cabin crew kept everyone calm – most passengers did not realise the seriousness of the issue until they were on the ground.

Snakes on a plane

You might have seen the movie Snakes on a Plane, but the last thing you want is for it to happen in real life. In 2012 a man who owned a reptile shop in Kuwait hid a spitting cobra in his hand luggage on a flight travelling from Cairo.

The snake gave him a minor bite on his hand before slithering beneath the seats. He was lucky to sustain only a superficial wound – king cobra venom is so deadly it can kill a person in under half an hour.

Spy plane

In 2023, the family of a North Carolina teenager sued American Airlines, claiming that a flight attendant attached an iPhone to an airplane toilet to record people using the bathroom. The incident, which took place on a September flight from Charlotte to Boston, saw the offending device allegedly discovered in a first-class bathroom, almost obscured by tape.

Fight or flight

It's not particularly unusual for flight attendants to have to break up altercations between passengers, but sometimes they cause their own trouble too. A Delta flight from Minneapolis to Los Angeles was grounded in 2016 after two flight attendants came to blows on board.

Onlookers noted the "flying fists".

Lost luggage

It's always annoying when an airline loses your luggage – but what if that luggage happens to be 172 gold bars weighing more than 3,000kg (6,600lbs)? In 2018 the hatch of a plane taking off in Siberia in Russia flew open during takeoff and scattered its load all over the runway.

The cargo of gold bars, diamonds and gems were worth around £275 million ($317m).

A missing wing

A Thomas Cook plane flying from Manchester to Cuba was forced to turn back in 2017 after discovering a technical fault. Passengers noticed that the plane had part of its wing missing, but flight officials insisted that the fault was oil-related and that the broken wing in no way affected the plane's flying ability.

Seriously smelly

In 2015, a British Airways flight from London to Dubai had an unexpected delay thanks to, erm… an incredibly smelly poo. The flight had only been in the air for 30 minutes but because of the pressurised cabin it became a health and safety issue.

Passengers were returned to London and put up overnight, hopefully with the guilty party making their way to the nearest chemist.

Fighting pilots

In 2022, two Air France pilots got into a fight in the cockpit mid-flight. While flying an Airbus A320 from Geneva to Paris, the two pilots had an altercation that involved exchanging "inappropriate gestures".

It is not known exactly what caused the conflict, but both pilots were suspended upon reaching terra firma.

A haunted intercom

American Airlines passengers got an in-flight fright in 2022 when the plane intercom loudly played groans, moans and odd guttural noises for almost their entire time in the air. The strange sounds baffled the flight crew and remained unexplained when the plane touched down in Dallas, before going viral on Twitter and TikTok, where speculation ranged from hackers to pranksters to ghosts.

A subsequent statement from the airline claimed that, following an investigation, the cause was "a mechanical issue with the PA amplifier".

A phantom fire

Shouting 'fire' in a crowded public place will always have pretty major consequences – more so if that public place is a sealed metal tube high up in the sky. A Spirit Airlines flight between Miami and Boston had to perform a mid-air U-turn when a passenger did just that in 2022, after seeing what they thought was smoke pouring from the vents above the cabin seating.

The passenger was left relieved but red-faced after the plane hurried back to Miami, and inspectors determined that the 'fire' had in fact been harmless condensation.

A bear escaped in the hold

A bear delayed an Iraqi Airways flight between Baghdad and Dubai by more than an hour in August 2023 after escaping from a crate and roaming around the cargo hold. On touching down in Dubai, officials opened the hold to see a small brown face peeking back at them – one of two endangered bears making the journey.

Specialists had to come in and sedate the bear before the plane could start its return journey.

Missing windows

Planes undergo a series of exhaustive safety checks before taking to the skies, and you'd think that 'having all its windows' would be important criteria for liftoff. In late-2023 an Airbus A321 took off from London Stansted Airport with four damaged window panes, two of which were entirely missing.

The plane reached 14,000 feet (4,300m) before their absence was noticed, and the plane was turned around.

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