As the most popular and convenient travel service in the world, serving hundreds of millions of passengers each year, airlines often find it difficult to avoid mistakes and incidents.
Many rare and humorous situations have happened to airlines.
The flight dispatcher fell asleep
A cargo plane in France once had to circle many times over Nice airport for 30 minutes because it did not receive a response signal from the ground dispatch station to land.
The dispatcher was then awakened by security officers.
The pilot abandoned the plane to go buy food
Northwest Airlines once fired a pilot for leaving passengers waiting on the plane for 90 minutes.
Customs officers mistakenly put marijuana in a passenger’s luggage
Narita Airport (Japan) also encountered a rare incident when a customs officer tested the sensitivity of a sniffer dog.
However, the matter became complicated when the sniffer dog did not detect any clues while the customs officer himself was at a loss as to the traces of luggage stuffed with marijuana.
Call bomb warning to catch the flight
According to Flight Global (part of the aviation magazine Flight International), the rare incident considered the funniest in aviation history ever occurred when a man whose flight was delayed called a bomb warning on his plane.
The police tracked down the mischievous guest through his phone number and imposed an administrative penalty.
The flight attendant wanted to quit through the emergency exit
Steven Slater’s case attracted the attention of a large number of the American press.
In August 2010, Steven Slater – a flight attendant for JetBlue Airways (USA) got into a verbal argument with a guest on a flight to Pittsburgh.
Immediately after that, Steven opened the emergency door and went down to the runway using a specialized slide.
Kicked off the plane for praying
During the flight from New York JFK to San Francisco (USA), when the plane was about to take off, a Jewish tourist stubbornly refused to sit in his seat and fasten his seatbelt on the grounds that he was busy with traditional prayers.
Sue the airline for being forced to sit in the toilet
In 2008, JetBlue Airways was sued by a passenger named Gokhan Mutlu for $2 million in compensation for being forced to sit on the toilet for too long.
According to this man, he was initially arranged to sit in the extra seat on the cabin with the reason that `the plane was full.`