Flights from Hell: The Worst Things That Can Happen on Planes

For the most part, planes are a very safe way to travel. They are much safer than cars (about 200,000 times safer) and you’re more likely to be struck by lightning than die in a plane crash. However, dying in a plane crash is just one of the terrible things that can happen on a plane.

Some of the other things that could happen are experiencing extreme turbulence, long delays before your flight takes off, medical emergencies onboard, and many more. Here are some of the worst things to happen on planes. I’ve arranged them from bad to worst, so let me know in the comments if you think I got the order right.

Poop Plane

Let’s start with a little lighter story before we get into the heavy stuff. Sometimes, people on planes cannot make it to the bathroom in time.

This happened recently on a Delta flight when a passenger ran to one of the bathrooms before finding it locked. She then turned around, hoping to make it to the bathroom at the back of the plane, but she (and the passengers of the flight) were not so lucky.

She had an accident in the middle of the aisle that stretched across the entire plane. The plane was forced to emergency land due to the terrible smell and the biohazard the accident caused. There have been many other instances of this happening, but this is the most recent.

Severe Body Odor

If you’ve been on any budget airlines in Europe, you’ll know this is a problem. Just put on deodorant before you get on a plane, people!

About a month ago, 8 passengers got kicked off of an American Airlines flight because the other passengers were complaining about how badly they smelled.

The men sued the airline and claimed that the body odor complaints were false, and it was about their race. Whether the complaints were real or not, I think more people should be kicked off flights for body odor.

Duct Taping Passengers to the Seat

Believe it or not, taping passengers to their seats has had to happen multiple times. The most famous incident happened in 2020 on Frontier Airlines when one of the passengers showed up to his flight very intoxicated.

He was sitting in his seat drinking when he accidentally spilled some alcohol on himself. He went to the bathroom to clean himself off, and one of the flight attendants followed him back to his seat to try to offer help. This is when things got bad.

He started groping the flight attendant, and when she left, the man proceeded to walk around the plane and grope other flight attendants. Finally, one of the male attendants got him back to his seat, which outraged him.

He started punching the flight attendant and had to be restrained. That’s when the duct tape was brought out. The man’s arms, legs, and face were taped to the chair until the flight reached its destination.

The man was sentenced to prison for 60 days and one year of house arrest.

Giving Birth on a Flight

As if giving birth isn’t hard enough, some people have to do it on a plane! In the past 100 years, there have been 74 infants born on commercial flights. Out of these infants, 71 survived. When this happens, medical professionals on the plane are asked to assist in the birthing process while the plane finds a place to emergency land.

The most recent birth on a flight was just last year on January 19, 2023, on an Emirates flight from Tokyo Narita to Dubai. The passenger was lucky that a doctor on board specialized in maternity care.

The baby survived, and when the plane landed, the woman was taken to a hospital.

Dead Passengers

It’s estimated that about 72 passengers a year die of natural causes while flying. If you compare this number to the 6 million people who fly daily, it’s not a lot (but still feels high to me).

When a passenger on a flight dies, they are moved to a less populated part of the plane, like an empty row if one’s available. Then, they are buckled in to ensure they don’t move during the flight.

The flight attendants moving the body wear protective gear and do their best to be gentle. One thing I find interesting about the protocol for this situation is that the plane is not required to emergency land.

That means that the people aboard could be stuck in a plane with a dead body for hours (sounds like the plot of a horror movie).

Passengers Fighting

This seems to be happening more and more frequently on flights, especially in America. It seems like every day, I see a new video going viral on TikTok of passengers fighting each other or the flight attendants. Last year, airlines reported 10,854 incidents of unruly passengers, 41% higher than the previous year.

It seems that as we become increasingly divided as a country, the number of fights on planes is dramatically increasing. When a fight on a plane breaks out and cannot be immediately contained, the plane is forced to emergency land. That is why it’s more common for flight attendants to kick unruly passengers off flights before the plane takes off.

Trapped on a Plane

With more flights than ever taking off, landing, loading, refueling, and having maintenance work done, it’s no wonder that so many flights are being delayed and canceled. The problem is, once the doors to the plane are closed, in most cases, they won’t reopen until you get to your destination. When this happens, passengers are trapped, usually just sitting on the tarmac.

The longest time a flight has been delayed on the tarmac was 6 hours in Houston, Texas in 2020 (even though federal law states that 3 hours is the longest an airline can hold you for a domestic flight and 4 hours for an international flight).

There are other instances when delayed flights get so hot while they’re sitting on the tarmac that people start passing out. Also, some airlines have refused to give passengers food or water. Some passengers have also reported not being allowed to use the bathrooms while waiting for hours for their plane to take off.

Extreme Turbulence

Turbulence is something that anyone who has taken a flight has experienced. There have only been a few instances where turbulence has caused a plane to crash. However, this doesn’t mean that turbulence isn’t dangerous.

Just last month on a flight from London to Singapore, a man died due to extreme turbulence. The plane dropped 177 feet in one second, causing oxygen masks to drop and leaving 1 person dead, 7 people severely injured, and 23 people with minor injuries. Authorities say that the passenger who died most likely died due to a heart attack.

Mass Illness

This is one of my worst fears on a flight. With so many people being trapped in such a small space, illnesses can get passed rapidly on flights. Just last month, on a flight from Mauritius to Germany, 70 passengers started experiencing severe nausea and cramping.

By the time the flight was about halfway to its destination, all 70 passengers were vomiting and had severe diarrhea. The most likely cause of the sickness was food poisoning from something that was served onboard the flight. Can you imagine being in a space that has maybe 4 bathrooms and 70 people needing to use them? No thanks.

Mechanical Problems in the Air

This has been a growing problem in recent months. Earlier this year in January, an Alaska Airlines plane was in mid-flight when one of the emergency doors just flew off.

No one was tampering with it or anything. It just fell off. Some onboard recorded their experience from inside the plane, which went viral online. Luckily, no one was injured, and the plane flew at a lower altitude until it reached the nearest airport.

This is just one of the more recent issues that has been happening with Boeing 737 MAX planes. In 2018 and 2019, two crashes killed everyone onboard (346 in total), both happening on Boeing 737 MAX planes. Both happened because of stabilizing errors with the planes that caused them to nosedive.

Crash Landing

You need to watch the movie “Sully: Miracle on the Hudson” if you’ve never seen it. The flight had just taken off when a flock of geese got sucked into the engines of the plane.

Sully, the pilot, had to make a split-second decision and decided that he would have to crash land on the Hudson River. Doing this saved the lives of everyone onboard. This is one of the happier stories of a flight crash landing.

The worst crash in airline history occurred in 1977 in Tenerife, Spain, when two planes collided on the runway, killing 583 passengers and crew. There have been hundreds of other fatal plane crashes, but this one still has the highest death toll.

The US government released data on flight crashes that showed that 95.7% of the passengers involved in accidents between 1983 and 2000 survived. This means that only 1.19 of every 100,000 plane crashes had a total fatality crash.

Flights Disappearing

There have also been hundreds of flights that have just disappeared without a trace. Most of them are smaller civilian planes, but in rare cases, full commercial airlines have vanished without ever being found.

One of the biggest is the Flying Tiger Line Flight 739, which was carrying 107 passengers and happened in 1962. It was a flight that had been charted by the army to take military members from California to Vietnam. Many believe that the flight exploded somewhere near Guam, but this has never been confirmed.

The biggest flight was Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which was carrying 239 passengers in 2014. Much of the evidence suggests that the plane went down in the Indian Ocean west of Australia, but again, this has never been confirmed.

Flights Being Shot Down

During war times, commercial airlines have been shot down. It’s been happening since WWII, up to the present day. The first commercial flight that was shot down was in 1938 when a Pan Am flight with 18 passengers and crew was forced down into the ocean by a Japanese aircraft killing 15 of the occupants of the plane.

The most recent was in January 2020, when Iran shot down Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752. They said that they “unintentionally targeted” the plane after mistaking it for a cruise missile. The attack killed all 176 people onboard.

Hijacking

We all know what happened on September 11, 2001, when two planes crashed into the Twin Towers, killing thousands of people in the process. This is by far the worst hijacking to ever happen in flight history, but it’s not the only one.

There have been 13 hijackings to happen on planes, the first happening in 1964 on Pacific Air Lines Flight 773. A depressed man in debt shot both pilots, which caused the plane to crash, killing all 44 people onboard.

The third worst hijacking happened in 1987, on Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 1771, when a disgruntled former employee of USAir killed the crew of the flight and then crashed the plane, killing 43 people in total.

Suicide by Pilot

For me, this is the worst thing that can happen to you on a plane. When you board a plane, you put all your trust into the pilots to get you to your destination safely. Sometimes, pilots abuse this trust.

The first commercial flight to crash in a “suicide by pilot” was in 1982 when the pilot “engaged the inboard engines’ thrust-reversers in flight” hoping to kill himself and everyone onboard. Luckily, the first officer partially regained control of the plane and saved 150 out of the 174 people onboard.

The most recent happened in 2022 on China Eastern Airlines Flight 5735. There’s an ongoing investigation to find out what truly happened, but as the plane went down, there was no response from the pilot when he was contacted by air traffic control and investigators found no major safety concerns. All the 132 passengers on the flight died.

Did I Miss Anything?

Let me know if I missed any of the worst things that can happen on a flight. Also, let me know if you think I got the order of the list right or if you would change things around.