By 
Air travel isn’t exactly pleasant. You’re 30,000 feet in the air, trapped in a metal tube next to an armrest-hogging seatmate and another passenger who decided to clip their fingernails mid-flight. But these mild annoyances are nothing compared to some of the horror stories flight attendants have to deal with during flights. Consider yourself lucky you weren’t on these flights and maybe be a little nicer to your flight attendant on your next trip.
1. "I had a passenger that was already pretty drunk when he boarded the plane. Maybe five or six hours into the San-Francisco-to-Sydney flight, the guy comes to the back of the plane. Even though we have a lot of bathrooms on this flight, he started peeing in the trash bag hanging on the door. We stopped him and brought him back to his seat. That’s when we saw he had an open bottle of duty-free alcohol, and we realized he must have been getting more drunk during the flight. The rest of the flight we were basically force-feeding him food, water, and also trying to get him to sleep. As for the bag of pee, we put it in a hazmat bag and locked it in one of the bathrooms for the rest of the flight."
2. "I was working a flight to London in business class, and there are these pods with pillows and blankets. A lady wandered up and I knew something off — she didn’t look right. And then she crawls right into bed with a man in one of the pods. He looks at me like, What is going on? I asked if he knew her and he said no. I tell her she needs to go back to her seat and she tells me that is her seat. I ask her again if she can return to her seat and she goes, 'I do what I want.' I think she was on Ambien because these kinds of situations tend to happen when people take drugs like that."
3. "There was a woman who got angry at me because we didn’t serve her drinks fast enough. After she had her drink, she threw the empty cup at me, which hit me in the nose. Then she broke down and said she didn’t understand why I had been so mean to her, because I didn’t serve her drink fast enough. She said something along the lines of, 'You have no idea who I am.' So my partner and I were like, 'Who are you?' And she just goes, 'I’m a dancer.'"
4. "A guy ran to the back of the plane and yelled, 'Where are we?' He was clearly drunk, and I tell him we’re on the airplane, that we just left Dallas. Then he tells me that he got on the wrong flight. I told him that he’s been through security and his boarding pass had been checked multiple times, he’s not on the wrong flight. But he was convinced that he was, and he didn’t remember going through security or getting on the plane. It turned out that he had mixed alcohol with Ambien."
5. "I saw a couple go into the bathroom together, and at some point, the girlfriend came back to her seat and was freaking out and crying. I asked her if she was OK, and she said her boyfriend was still in the bathroom, but nothing she said was making sense. We got her boyfriend back to their seat, but a little bit later they were back in there again, and we could hear them having sex. Then a line started forming so we needed to get them out of there. When they opened the door, we asked them if they had taken anything. It turns out they were both on ecstasy."
6. "We were in the middle of boarding and a little old lady comes up to me in an absolute panic because she realized that she left her teeth in a bathroom in the airport. She was really upset because it was Thanksgiving, and she was visiting her family, and she needed her teeth to eat. I spent 10 minutes talking to the captain and people at the gate to try and locate her teeth. They were found eventually, but the plane had to leave, so we had to FedEx them to her."
7. "I was on a flight from San Francisco to Tel Aviv, and it was the middle of the night. A woman came to tell me that she woke up and the young adult male next to her was masturbating under a blanket. We went back to the seat and saw it happening. He actually finished into the blanket, which we threw away in a hazmat. To make things worse, he was also sitting next to his mom. We woke up her up, and she scolded him and apologized to us — she didn’t want him to get in trouble."
8. "I was in the back in the plane during boarding because I was in charge of getting the galley together. Someone comes up to me and asks if she can have a glass of ice water. I told her I didn’t have my ice broken up yet, but I could give her a normal cup of water. Then she goes, 'Never mind, I’m allergic to water that doesn’t have ice in it.'"
9. "There was a lady in business class wearing a skirt suit and she fell asleep in her seat. The more she slouched, the higher her skirt went, and she wasn’t wearing underwear — her vagina was in full view. So I got a blanket and discreetly put it on her lap. She woke up and looked at me like I was crazy. I walked away so I didn’t see her face when she realized her whole vagina was out."
10. "A guy boarded the plane and he was very drunk. He walked by another guy who had a bushy beard and a lot of arm hair, and started petting his arm hair and commenting on how hairy the guy was. Some other passengers told us about it and we escorted him off the plane. He was a really happy drunk so he got off without a problem. Five hours later, our plane returned to that same airport and I found out he had only just boarded a new flight. There were several flights he was supposed to get on, but I think he missed all of those because he didn’t sober up in time."
11. "I was doing a safety demonstration and I started to hear something buzzing. I thought it was a vibrator at first. But I went to the source of the sound, and it was this sweet little old man who was electric razoring his face. He had his tray table down and we were preparing for takeoff, so I told him to put his tray table up. He did, and kept shaving."
12. "A grown man dressed as an elf walked onto the aircraft and showed us his boarding pass, like everything was normal. He was a tall man, probably in his 60s or 80s. He was pretty drunk. He wasn’t being offensive to anyone; we just weren’t going to serve him any more alcohol. We couldn’t ask him to leave the plane because he wasn’t doing anything wrong but the other passengers were kind of looking at us for reactions. I could barely look at him without laughing. He was just sitting in the end seat dressed as an elf, while everyone was dressed normally. It wasn’t even that close to Christmas. I think it was October."
13. "I was on a flight from Florida to London and a lady pooed herself. Instead of asking us for a blanket and to put her trousers and underwear in a bag, she decided to wash her underwear in the bathroom sink. While cleaning it, she clogged up the sink with the mess and just walked away and left it. We had to block off that toilet because it was such a mess."
14. "There was a man in business class who woke up in the middle of the night and walked to the lavatory in his underwear. He wasn’t drunk or sleepwalking, he was just walking around like that. One of the other male flight attendants working told him to put his pants on. He just said, 'Yeah, yeah,' rolled his eyes, and went back to his seat to put his pants on."
15. "I was written up by a first-class passenger because she asked for BBQ ribs without the BBQ during the meal service, and that isn’t something we can do. We don’t make the food on the plane. We just put it in the oven and make it look pretty. I tried to explain to her that the food was premade and I couldn’t serve her BBQ ribs without the BBQ, but she was really upset. She then asked for my name and reported me to my supervisor. My supervisor said she understood and that was that."
16. "There was one passenger who took off his shoes and his feet smelled awful. It was so bad I wanted to throw up. The person who complained about his feet was actually two rows behind him — that’s how bad the smell was. Then he put his feet up against the wall. At one point, he started clipping his toenails, and that’s when I asked him if he could do that in the bathroom because it was unsanitary for him to be doing that while we’re delivering meals and drinks. Then he walked barefoot to the restroom to continue clipping his toenails."
These interviews have been edited and condensed.
Follow Kate on Twitter.
