"Not my story, but a good one: My parents have a friend who used to work for British Airways back in the day. We're talking the 70s. Before technology improved, it used to be a little tricky to communicate with the airports when the plains were over certain parts of the ocean. According to him, they had to communicate with transmissions that came out like text messages.
Well, once the message came into him, "Several passengers report seeing a large snake in overhead compartments. Please advise." The plain was coming from Africa, so there was something to it. When it landed, they gasses the bejeezus out of it but never found anything. Hope people checked their luggage."
-Reddit user ServantofProcess
"I was cleaning the plane after a long flight when I realized that a woman had taken the security booklet and dropped it on the seat.
When I picked it up, I noticed that underneath had a cow patty-sized poop. I’m not sure how she managed to go number two without anyone seeing, hearing, or smelling it."
-Reddit user (deleted)
"This middle-aged guy who was chasing his girlfriend (another stewardess) kept talking about the war to other passengers. Literally everyone aboard.
He couldn't even drink right. He just dumped it all over his face and I kept having to clean up after him."
-Reddit user Fury57
"We were boarding the plane when an elderly lady came up to us all flustered because she left her teeth in the bathroom of the airport.
She was really upset because it was Thanksgiving and she couldn’t eat without them. We had to have our agents at the gate search for them and FedEx them to her since the plane needed to leave."
-Reddit user (deleted)
"I have a co-worker who used to be an FA in one of the local fleets here in Asia. She recounted one incident where the airplane lost control and descended fast.
Nobody but the pilots and crew knew what was going on. She was almost sure it was going to crash but thankfully the pilot gained control and they went back to work as if nothing happened."
-Reddit user jedainz
"My cousin is a flight attendant, and she said the craziest moment was when another flight attendant died in the bathroom. They then had to sneak her body out of the bathroom, close it down, and lay the body down with a blanket over it like she was sleeping in the flight attendant's area.
Then they only had to make sure no one saw and stepped over her when grabbing stuff. I bet she was watching the clock like a hawk on that flight."
-Reddit user Beitlgeuse
"I was on a flight across the Atlantic when a customer complained that bugs were falling from the overhead compartment.
When I went to check it out, maggots started raining on the passengers. It was quite a sight to see."
-Reddit user (deleted)
"One time, a female passenger tried to hand my coworker their bag of vomit. She said it was a biohazard and that a flight attendant’s job was to clean vomit.
She basically threw the bag on my coworker after that and proceeded to attack my coworker like a rabid animal. It turns out she had mixed alcohol and sleeping pills."
-Reddit user (deleted)
"I did a flight on New Year’s Day a fair few years ago. An older gentleman passed out, and his wife thought he had died. Luckily, the other crew went to assist and there was a doctor onboard. We had to stop the food service while the gentleman was stabilized, which took ages. Once he was stable, we tried the food service again. However, just as we were getting the trolley from the back galley, a woman dramatically collapsed in front of it, so we had to deal with her. We get her stable and back in her seat and then go for the trolly only for her to come back and collapse again in front of the trolly.
It was news years day, so this woman had partied too hard the night before and that was why she felt sick. A crew member from the front comes down and says they had to stop the food service as well because a kid had thrown up all over the front galley and the toilet. We also had a parent who kept letting their child press the call bell for fun. I had to explain twice that it was not a toy and to stop lifting my child to press the button. The paramedics came, and the guy was taken to hospital but not before his wife said that the same thing happened on their flight out. The moral of this story is don’t fly if you are very unwell and don’t fly hungover."
-Reddit user posh-old-bird
"Once, my fellow flight attendant told me about an English woman who managed to have a tag-team affair happen mid-flight.
She took one man into the bathroom and when he was done, she waited for the next one to come in. The passengers reported them and both men were arrested. The woman managed to disappear in time. "
-Reddit user (deleted)
"A man urinated on a fellow passenger for not letting him smoke."
-Reddit user StrikrAndo
"I was on a flight when I saw a couple go into the bathroom together. One minute later, the girl comes out crying because she and her boyfriend had gotten into a fight…in the bathroom.
He came out and I think they made up because they went back into the bathroom. This time, half of the plane could hear them doing the deed. It turns out they had both taken “something” before they came to the airport. "
-Reddit user (deleted)
"Back in the 80s, there were people traveling who had never seen a modern toilet flush before.
So instead of going number two in the bowl, they did the deed on the lid of the toilet. They didn’t even use tissue; they just left it there."
-Reddit user (deleted)
Passenger: ”Where’s row fourteen?”
Me: “Before row fifteen and after row thirteen.”
-Reddit user MSotallyTober
"A passenger once took his smelly shoes off to start clipping his toenails, mid-flight. The smell was so bad that passengers three rows back could smell it.
He even put his feet against the plane to get a better angle to clip them. I had to tell him it was unsanitary and he went to the bathroom to finish the task. "
-Reddit user (deleted)