We are all too familiar with crying babies and loud talkers, but we bet you've never encountered a passenger like this before. These flight attendants share some of the worst people they've ever had to deal with.
The man who couldn’t handle his alcohol.
Pilot here. Drunk pax assaulted a flight attendant when she refused to serve him more liquor. We diverted and had him arrested. We didn’t pull his bag before we took off again, because that would involve removing everyone’s bags from the cargo bin, locating his, and then loading the plane back up. The man is looking at a big fine and some prison time.
The creepy business man.
I went to boarding school as a child, and would frequently fly abroad to see my parents. Once I was on a long haul flight from London to Dubai. I was 15 years old, and a man in a business jacket was very drunk, vomiting non-stop, and being quite creepy towards me. 5 years later, I was being interviewed for an internship at a law firm, and lo and behold, it was the same chap. Turned out that he had a bit of a cocaine issue and was still quite a creep. He would delight in telling junior lawyers that he had had sex with a call girl upon every surface in the office, including their desks.
The Russian vocalist.
My aunt worked as an “air stewardess” for a few years. Her most memorable passenger was on a 1.5 hour evening flight. He was Russian and visibly inebriated, he sang The Star Spangled Banner, God Bless America, and a couple of verses from Yankee Doodle for a while before passing out until landing.
The heavy flyer.
I work on the small regional planes no one really likes to be on. So I’m working a full flight from Houston to somewhere in the Midwest. Well this fairly large guy gets on while we’re about half way through with boarding and realized the guy he has to sit next to is also fairly large. Well before he takes his seat he storms back to me and asks if he can take one of the empty seats in the back. I know it’s going to be a full flight so I tell him that but if there are any empty rows I’ll come get him. He says something about the guy next to him being too big and spilling into his seat. I checked it out and it want even that bad. The guy fit just fine. Boarding starts to slow and with every passenger trickling in he looks back seeing if he can go. I have to tell this guy at least 5 times to wait. Well sure enough we’re full. I’m doing my count and tell him he had to stay there. Gives a big sigh and starts grumbling about how ridiculous it is. He proceeds to cross his leg and lean as far into the aisle as possible, literally an inch from the seat across from him so anytime anyone had to pass him they have to say excuse me and he’ll make a big huff about leaving a couple inches so they still have to squeeze by. My job requires me to make that walk many times a flight, a couple times with a large heavy cart. I knew what he was doing so I made sure I pushed my side of the cart as close to him add possible. After having to say excuse me 4-5 times and him making a scene, embarrassing the guy next to him, I stopped saying it and just walked into him every time. Things calmed down but he still wouldn’t sit right in his seat, he wanted to make a point. So I only did trash runs when it looked like he was about to fall asleep. I can be an asshole too.
The dirty man.
My mom had Marlon Brando on her plane. She said he told dirty jokes the whole time and after each time he would slap his knee really hard and guffaw. She liked him, but when he was leaving the plane and giving her a big old hug she said his tummy felt like jello. I guess obese Brando was just waiting to pop out.
The (in)considerate father.
I’m not a flight attendant, but I was flying a red eye first class from Dubai to New York. I’m sitting there on my phone, and I hear some guy say, “Excuse me, could you ask the pilot to turn off the left engine, so my son can get some sleep?”
Sometimes Vegas doesn’t always stay in Vegas…
It’s a morning flight from Las Vegas to Seattle. This classic Vegas-5-foot-nothing-blonde-floozie comes on in last nights clothes/makeup/weave, NO SHOES and starts slur-demanding blankets, we don’t have blankets on our flights, we explain that yet she insists we are lying and just being lazy. The whole time she’s holding up boarding. She takes her seat but within five minutes she’s ringing her call light repeatedly, bothering the other Flight Attendants demanding they stop being lazy and please just fetch her the blankets that we’ve, time and time again, insisted we don’t have on board. She starts demanding all of our names and telling us she’s going to get us all fired because we refused to get her blankets. I tell her one final time, and I honestly can’t help but laugh when I say “I promise that if we had blankets it would be SO much easier to give them to you than to continue having this terrible conversation.” I give our gate agent the go ahead to take her off the flight, but now she refuses to leave. So the passengers are all pissed obviously and yelling “KICK HER OFF ALREADY!” We’re like, “DUH we be trying!” Unfortunately police are at least 1-2 hours out from being available to arrest this hoe, so they send the three biggest firefighters to the scene. She once again refuses, and all logic is out the window. She now claims she has a medical condition concerning her circulation and can’t walk off the plane any longer, so she should just be allowed to fly and that wouldn’t somehow turn into an in-air medical shit show. Yeah no. BUT says she has to be wheeled off the plane because she can’t walk. That means pulling out our little ghetto onboard wheelchair which is the only thing narrow enough to fit down the aisles. I shit you not, the whole cabin CHEERED. Like standing ovation.
Mr. Priceline.com is here.
At least once during the day a flight attendant will stick their head in the cockpit and mention to us about how Mr. Priceline. com last row of the plane tickets made a grand speech about unused seats in the premium cabin or how some old woman shit her pants right after takeoff. They will talk about the passenger that grabs their arm to ask for alcohol or having a showdown with someone who thinks their refrigerator sized bag will fit in the overhead.
The uncontrollable racist.
My Dad was a passenger on Jetstar (Australian airline) and ended up punching a passenger in the face after he suspected him of being Jewish when the guy told him he shouldn’t have two alcoholic drinks at the same time. He was a bit of a racist…. Got escorted off the plane by police and fined $10,000.
The confused old man.
On a flight from Angola to South Africa, an elderly man seated in front of me suddenly got up, put on his jacket and sixpence, pulled his carry-on from the overhead and proceeded to try to open the door to get off. When he was told to leave the door alone, he lost it and had to be overpowered. That wasn’t very hard, as he was a frail old man, but nobody could convince him that it’s a really bad idea to open the door when you’re at cruising altitude. In almost twenty years of frequent international flying, this was the only incident of having to use physical force I witnessed.
Some people think every where is home.
I once had a passenger take off his shoes, put his dirty feet on the seat and clip all of his toenails. It was rude, there were toenails flying everywhere. He also left a nice pile of his hacked off heel skin on the seat for someone else to deal with. Not me!
We’re not sure why someone would ever do this…
My sister is a flight attendant. She told the story of a passenger who dropped trou in the aisle and took a shit.
And there are some things you should never say on a plane…
There was five of us, everyone gets drunk except for me. So two of my buddies sit up front and the other three of us take up a row. The two beside me are very very drunk and are laughing and giggling loudly as people board the plane. Then my one buddy starts trying to hit on this stewardess that is obviously extremely swamped trying to help people get on the plane. I try to calm him down and he is all like – “Why should I? fuck that!” And I’m like – “Dude there are certain behaviors you just can’t do on a plane or you will freak people out and get kicked off.” He looks at me and slurs – “Like what?” I reply – “Like acting like a dumbass, being loud, saying bomb (I whispered this part, big fucking mistake) stuff like that. ” Then he goes, loud as hell – “What’s wrong with saying bomb on a plane?” And my more sober friends and I are like – “Shut the fuck up man!” And he goes – “No, no tell me what’s so wrong about it, it’s not like I’m going to bomb the plane or anything.” I was freaked out because I really didn’t want to end up in a cuban jail.