The Craziest Air Travel Stories of 2024

Many people have traveled far and wide in 2024. For many, the memories began while traveling aboard one of the thousands of flights that crisscross the world every day.

As 2024 draws to a close, here’s a roundup of some of the craziest airline stories from the past year.

Defective door

An incident that quickly went viral occurred on January 5 when the plug-in door panel, which covers an additional emergency exit that is only usable on aircraft with maximum capacity, on an Alaska Airlines flight, exploded at 16,000 feet.

The plane was taking off from Portland, Oregon, and the panel caused the cabin to depressurize. The pilots returned the plane safely to Portland with no serious injuries reported.

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Video footage of the incident shows panicked passengers sitting as wind blew into the plane due to the missing door. The incident led to a lawsuit against the airline and put Boeing, the plane’s manufacturer, under scrutiny again.

“Boeing is responsible for what happened,” Dave Calhoun, then CEO of Boeing, said at the time. “Regardless of the specific cause of the accident, an event like this simply must not happen on an aircraft leaving one of our factories. We simply must be better. Our customers deserve better.”

The tragedy filmed

An aircraft operated by the Brazilian airline The Voepass crashed in Sao Paulo state in August, killing everyone on board.

The fiery crash occurred in a residential area and killed more than 60 passengers and crew. The plane left from Cascavel, Brazilin the state of Parana.

Footage captured seconds before the crash shows the plane drifting vertically and spiraling as it plunged toward the ground.

Aviation experts at the time believed the twin-engine turboprop ATR 72-500 had stalled in flight.

What is this smell?

In December, passengers on an American Airlines flight from Dallas, Texas, to Minneapolis, Minnesota, got an unexpected surprise after a water leak from the toilet reached the cabin aisle.

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The water could not be turned off and the leak crept into the cabin for almost three hour flight.

Passengers are seen holding up their bags to avoid what Hilary Stewart Blazevic called “disgusting” liquid, while some attempt to step over water.

Wing damage

A United Airlines passenger filmed the wing of a Boeing 757 “coming apart” shortly before a February flight from San Francisco to Boston was diverted to Denver following the incident.

Kevin Clarke captured the video showing damage to the plane’s wing that ultimately prompted the plane to make an emergency landing in Denver to assess the problem. Shortly after takeoff, he felt “the most violent chills and shaking” before going back to sleep, he said at the time.

“A pilot came up the driveway and followed me,” Clarke told Lawrence Jones on “Fox & Friends.”

“I looked out the window, went back to the cockpit and turned on the PA system and said, ‘We’re going to be diverted to Denver. There’s some minor damage at… the front of the wing.’ So I immediately opened my window to look at the wing and the trailing edge of the strut was totally… destroyed like you see in a photo.”

“At this point, I’m like, well, it’s not a small shame, but…the United pilot is competent enough to take us to Denver,” he continued. “I guess we’re on our way.”

The Boeing 757-200 with 165 passengers on board landed in Denver to “resolve a problem with the slat” on one of its wings. The passengers were placed on another plane and arrived later that day. in Boston.

Slats are movable panels located on the leading or leading edge of the wing and are used during takeoffs and landings.

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Unruly passenger

A few days in 2024, an angry passenger allegedly punched a flight attendant before he was escorted off the plane.

American Airlines Flight 1497 from Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport in Texas to Bozeman Yellowstone International Airport in Montana on January 3 was diverted mid-trip due to an unruly passenger.

The plane was forced to divert to Rick Husband Amarillo International Airport in Texas after Keith Edward Fagiana repeatedly punched a flight attendant. The incident began after another passenger complained that Fagiana was kicking his chair, authorities said.

After a flight attendant became involved, Fagiana allegedly became furious and began punching the American Air Lines employee in the stomach.

JP Gallagher, an elected official from Montana, told FOX 4 that his wife alerted him to the presence of the enraged traveler.

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“My wife kind of started hitting me and telling me, you know, to make me pay attention to what was going on,” Gallagher said. “There was a drinks cart between us and the incident. So I couldn’t see much of what was going on, but I could hear screaming and other, you know, swearing and, you know , the flight attendant saying: stop it.

Madeline Coggins, Bailee Hill, Ashley J. DiMella and Sarah Rumpf-Whitten of Fox News Digital contributed to this report.