These Are The Grossest Things Readers Have Ever Seen On An Airplane

1) People walking into the bathroom barefoot

2) People using bare feet to touch screens and walls

3) Blood on the toilet

4) People with bad odor who need a bath (also women who wear makeup that sticks worse than a skunk)

I knew coming in that multiple people were going to say something about bare feet, and I wasn’t disappointed. More importantly, though, blood? On the toilet seat? Even if it’s just from a period, a normal bodily function, don’t leave blood behind for other people to sit in!

Suggested by: QADude

A few weeks ago a guy traveling alone walked past me in the terminal just before boarding absolutely reeking of b.o. from what must have been three days without showering. The guy had on too small t-shirt and too small shorts and what looked like surfer shoes. Also had a large backpack with some climbing carabiners attached so my working theory was this guy was out climbing and/or camping for three days. Also had two to three days of stubble.

The wife and I do the Seinfeld/Elaine, “Do you smell that?” “What am I, hard of smelling?” routine.

Naturally, the guy ends up one row in front of us across the aisle.

As long as he stayed perfectly still the b.o. would kind of dissipate. But then he’d shift or raise his arms and we’d get hit with a wall of smell. Several times he got up to get into the overhead bin, armpit exposed, naturally.

Nine hour flight.

If there’s one upside to suffering a traumatic brain injury in high school, it’s that I rarely notice body odor anymore. If it’s bad enough that I can smell it, though, you just know it’s absolutely miserable for everyone else.

Suggested by: Cyrils-cashmere-sweater-vest

I’m from the UK, so I’ve seen a lot. We’re worse than Florida when it comes to cheap flights to Spain.

What I’ve seen pales into insignificance compared to what I’ve smelled though. A bunch of football (no, it’ll never be “soccer”) supporters having a drunken farting contest was the worst. Especially after not one, not two, but three of the f——rs actually went and shat themselves in the attempt, and they kept on going. God, it was disgusting. And the Ryanair Cabin Crew just did not care, which leads me to ask just what horrors have they seen that made them so jaded to just that?

Having never flown Ryanair before, that sounds about like what I expected on a Ryanair flight. Just imagine the tales those flight attendants could tell. Actually, if you’re reading this, and you’re part of Ryanair’s flight crew, please email me. I want to hear all of your worst stories.

Suggested by: plant_daily

The most disgusting thing I’ve seen has been the entitlement. If you know you won’t fit in the seat you need to plan ahead.

You’re well over 6ft and going to be constantly kneeing the seat in front of you? Maybe pay $49 more for more legroom.

You’re 4ft wide and take 2 seats? Buy 2 seats, you’re not entitled to your neighbor’s seat.

Flying with a baby? Bring multiple pacifiers, toys, snacks, headphones, etc. I know as a parent we’re all allowed a diaper bag, car seat, and stroller for free on all flights.

This reply got the most pushback and will probably cause even more debate in the comments, but I think we can at least agree that you shouldn’t be taking other passengers’ space. Also, the airlines should stop making seats smaller.

Suggested by: 2xTurbrooooo

I’ve told this story before, but here goes again (certainly the cutest AND grossest thing on an airplane ever).

Cutest little blond girl, 3ish years old, comes running up the aisle into first class. Goes goes up to the F/A, looks up at her, smiles, drops her panties, squats, and takes a steaming dump on the galley floor just as Mom catches up with her. The looks on little girl’s, F/A’s, and Mom’s faces were *priceless* (satisfaction, horror, and “God please let lightning strike me now” respectively). I was in 1C with a literal front-row seat for this.

And yet another reason you REALLY don’t want to take your shoes off on an airplane.

Is it disgusting? Yes, absolutely. But if that had happened in front of me, I don’t think I would have been able to stop laughing by the time we landed. Kids, man.

Suggested by: krhodes1

And that would be me.

That was from coming back from Iowa for my high school reunion last year to Arizona and it took NINETEEN EFFING HOURS to get back home. Since of course I missed my connecting flight at DFW, that meant a grueling evening of killing time at that empty labyrinth all night. Peachy! And did the shitheads at American Airlines give any explanation to the huge delays? Of course not.

So to say I was “disheveled” getting on the flight to AZ the next day wearing the same clothes for two days straight is putting it mildly. I was about ready to explode due to getting jerked around so much, but not the connecting crew’s fault, so I managed to not act like a whiny-ass deluded Donald-nazi and kept my cool.

Icing on the cake? Being stuck in rush hour traffic when all I wanted to do was collapse and sleep. Made it home, but barely. And if American Airlines went bankrupt tomorrow, I’d be the happiest man on Earth.

I just checked, and 19 hours is almost enough time to drive from Des Moines to Phoenix. Add in the rush hour traffic you hit once you landed, and with some light speeding, you might have actually saved time. That’s rough.

Suggested by: the1969DodgeChargerFan

I’ve been traveling on planes since before I can remember and now I’m already considered middle aged. Most of the flights I take are long distance international travel and the passengers are usually more well behaved but I’ve seen the typical long hair spilling over the back of the chair in front of me and have had my elbow nudged and scraped by someone’s barefoot poking between the seats but the really the grossest thing that I ever saw is hard to describe so get ready to read from a chapter from my autobiography. (just kidding, I about that)

I lived in Taiwan in the late 1990’s, but grew up in Michigan, and I loved playing ice hockey. The only problem was that in all of Taiwan, there was only one ice rink, and it was not in Taipei.

Fortunately, there were enough players that got together and created a National Ice Hockey League of Taiwan, and even though I was half the age of most of the players, I made it on the Taipei Team. With the help of some of their companies as sponsors, we found the means to fly to another city ever weekend on the opposite side of the island to compete.

I like the brag that I was playing on the second-best team in all of Taiwan at that time, but often left out that there were only two teams in Taiwan.

Very early on every Saturday morning, for most of the year my dad and I went to the airport, stowed the gear on a Dash 8, and flew with the Taipei team to the other city.

One time one of the other gentlemen on my team boarded the plane and it looked like his Friday night hadn’t wrapped up yet. He reeked of alcohol, couldn’t stand straight and slurred like you would expect an alcoholic ice hockey player would on a Saturday morning.

I know that you are all itching to hear the gross part, but I really wanted to paint the picture of us western guys, crammed into a tiny prop plane early in the morning flying to a small city in Taiwan.

What makes this even more gross is that on the team there were a few of us high schoolers and in front of all of us our whole team as well as the random Taiwanese that booked the flight with us he starts to grope and kiss the flight attendant, remember he is a big white guy and the flight attendant was a tiny Asian girl. Just being witness to that scene still makes me cringe.

it was over pretty quick as the rest of the team came to the rescue but it wasn’t too easy as he didn’t have it in himself to stop. I don’t recall if he got booted off the flight or not, but I don’t remember him after that.

When people ask me why Rocknroll_Jeph is sometimes also known as straightedge_Jeph, this is one story even I don’t share because of how gross that whole scene was.

Sounds like the kind of guy no one would have missed if he’d accidentally fallen out of the plane while it was over a large body of water.

Suggested by: Rocknroll_Jeph

I was flying up to NYC last May for Cinco de Mayo and a Kentucky Derby party, and a young girl across the aisle (who was sitting with her mother and aunt) apparently had eaten something bad before the flight, and once at cruising altitude, ended up throwing up all over their row of seats.

I felt bad for all of them. I found out from the mom that it was the girls first time flying, so in addition to getting sick and throwing up, she also had to deal with the embarassment of what happened.

Kids are also notoriously terrible at recognizing signs that they’re going to throw up, so there’s a good chance neither woman had any idea it was about to happen.

Suggested by: Giovanni_Fitzpatrick

Let me end this right here. 19hr flight from Mumbai to Toronto. A Fast Norwalk Virus hit just about every one. all washrooms overflowed. With Indian food.

You didn’t say how many people were on the puke tube from hell, but there’s a chance you might have a story that tops this similar one from a couple of weeks ago.

Suggested by: Todd Beauchamp

The rear toilet overflowed and the blue toilet water flooded the galley and the airplane floor going about 5 rows forward. Then, people started throwing up.

I asked the flight attendants to open a window but they wouldn’t.

Imagine the shame of being the person who clogged the airplane toilet and caused it to overflow. I’d probably just jump out of the plane myself.

Suggested by: wsanders

A long time ago, the summer of 1975, I was backpacking through northwest Africa when I boarded an Air Mali, operated by russian Aeroflot, turboprop flying from Mopti to Bamako, the capital of Mali.

First, the boarding procedure consisted of running to the plane and grabbing a seat as they had sold many more tickets than there were seats.

Second, the guy across the aisle from me was holding a goat on his lap the entire trip.

Third, and the one I found most worrisome from an aeronautical viewpoint, my seatmate set a small charcoal fueled brazier on the floor between his legs and proceeded to brew us some tea.

The surreal cap to this was an hour after arrival transferring to an Air Mali 747 for an utterly normal flight to Paris.

Compared to many of the others, this one isn’t really all that gross, and it’s nice to imagine a cute little emotional support goat going for a plane ride. On the other hand, there’s about a zero-percent chance that goat was potty trained, so...

Suggested by: Steven Bruneel