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July 2015 Issue [Readings]

Overhead Comportment

From newspaper accounts since 2010 of incidents in which airplane passengers were removed or flights were rerouted in response to passenger behavior. Compiled by Shayla Love and Winston Choi-Schagrin.

An elderly man on a delayed Hong Kong Airlines flight struck a stewardess several times as passengers clapped and cheered.

A woman on a Thai AirAsia flight threw hot water and instant noodles at a flight attendant after being told that she couldn’t be seated with her friends. Her companion yelled that he would “bomb the plane.”

Moments after a Jet Airways flight landed, a passenger opened the emergency exit, jumped to the ground, and walked away.

A Southwest passenger stabbed her snoring neighbor with a pen.

A woman on a British Airways flight from Kingston, Jamaica, to London removed her clothing and began to masturbate.

A Sunwing plane bound for Cuba turned around after two female passengers consumed their duty-free alcohol, smoked cigarettes in the lavatory, and began to physically fight each other.

A passenger on a US Airways flight brought spoiled meat in his carry-on bag. The contents spilled as the flight taxied, causing maggots to fall from the overhead bin onto the heads of travelers below.

During an EasyJet flight from Tel Aviv to London, a passenger took a two-foot-long snake from his luggage and began feeding it.

A man flicked a scorpion that fell on him during an Alaskan Airlines flight onto a woman sitting next to him. The scorpion stung her.

A Middle East Airlines plane turned around mid-flight to retrieve an Iraqi parliament member’s son, who had missed the flight.

An American Airlines plane made an emergency landing after a passenger refused to stop singing “I Will Always Love You.”


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July 2015

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