The Things They Carried—On Planes

Travel Blog  •  Rob Verger  •  04.21.09 | 10:22 AM ET

Photo by visualdensity, via Flickr (Creative Commons)

We carry our things with us when we fly, and sometimes those things are weird. And even if they’re not weird, they might seem strange when juxtaposed with the airplane setting, an incongruity in such a modern environment.

Last week, four baby pythons evidently escaped their container in the cargo hold of a Qantas 737, slithered somewhere in the plane—and disappeared. The plane was later fumigated. I don’t know if the snakes belonged to a passenger or were just being shipped, but it does make me wonder: What weird things do people carry with them aboard?

Janet Engel, a former flight attendant for the now-cargo-only Arrow Air, remembers “a full set of tires” that a passenger carried onto a charter flight. “Not kidding,” she wrote in an email. “We grabbed them at the door and put them down in cargo.”

Sometimes items that are normal in one context seem extra strange on an aircraft. “I visited a garden store in Sonoma County that is known for its large selection of garden gnomes and somehow felt compelled to buy two, which I crammed into my carry-on,” Sophia Dembling wrote in an email. “And I get tickled every time I think about what that must have looked like in the x-ray.”

My friend Susanne told me this story: “I brought a large sunflower on board a plane once,” she wrote in an email. “I remember the middle of the flower was really sticky. I fell asleep on the plane with the flower in my lap, woke up, and the sunflower was totally glued to my boob like it was breast-feeding. Pretty ridiculous looking!”

Then there are the things that people try unsuccessfully to bring on the plane. An article (via the TSA’s blog) from early March in the Daily News rounds up the weird things that are stopped at security or, at the other end of the flight, at customs. TSA employees in New York City have encountered a “drug-filled dead cat, a frozen monkey head and a suitcase bursting with wriggling cockroaches in the past few weeks,” the article reports.

“A Chilean family once tried to wheel a dead relative through security in a wheelchair at JFK to avoid paying the fee for transporting a body,” the article adds. I guess you could say they didn’t want to get stiffed on the fee.

Tags: Air Travel, Airplanes, Airports, Airworld, Travel and Security, North America, United States, New York, New York City, News and Briefs

Rob Verger

Rob Verger is a frequent contributor to World Hum and the site's former air travel blogger. His articles and photographs have appeared in the Boston Globe and other publications, and he's a former undergraduate writing instructor at Columbia University. If you like, .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or follow him on Twitter.


9 Comments for The Things They Carried—On Planes

Jenna Schnuer 04.21.09 | 11:20 AM ET

Real snakes on a plane! Fun piece Rob (though it’s going to take some time to get images of drug-filled dead cats and frozen monkeys out of my head—so, thanks). My own oddest check-through: a clock made out of an old buzzsaw blade. I had originally planned to go all carry-on for that trip but, while packing to return home, realized the blade could have ended with my being tackled by a TSAer. So check through it was.

Joanna Kakissis 04.21.09 | 4:52 PM ET

Ha! Great post Rob. Some friends of my parents once brought live snails on board with them on a flight from Greece to Canada. The wife was a native of Crete, like my mom, and she had intended to make a Cretan delicacy of snails “boubouristi” (fried in olive oil, wine vinegar and rosemary). Unfortunately, the snails managed to crawl out of her husband’s duffel bag and ended up all over the overhead bin. Uh oh!

Rob Verger 04.21.09 | 5:46 PM ET

Thanks, Jenna and Joanna!

Joanna—It’s a shame those snails escaped. That Cretan dish of snails “boubouristi” sounds delicious! But the good thing about an escaping snail is that I bet it can’t get very far.

Love2SeeNewThings 04.21.09 | 8:59 PM ET

What will remain most memorable for me was the family that tried wheeling a dead relative onboard at JFK.  First, since JFK is my primary airport so this could be happening right next to me and I might not notice.  (Not unless the body reeked!)  Then there is the question of what was supposed to happen when security would ask the relative to switch wheelchairs in order to get through security.

Rob Verger 04.21.09 | 9:44 PM ET

Love2SeeNewThings—

Yes, the dead body in the wheelchair raises lots of interesting questions. Such as: Had they bought a ticket for the body, and did it thus have a boarding pass? And if successfully through security, had they planned on putting it in an airplane seat?

Sophia Dembling 04.22.09 | 12:45 AM ET

On our last trip, my husband was stopped at security twice because he had some sort of small plug for a microphone in his carry-on. Verrry fishy. Although one of the security guys, once he saw it, actually knew exactly what it was.

New York Airport Transportation 04.22.09 | 2:58 AM ET

Why do they have pythons in the first place? PAW should know about this.

Chris 04.22.09 | 11:09 AM ET

I want to know how many people on that plane jumped up and exclaimed “I’m tired of these mother-f—-ing snakes on this mother-f—-ing plane!”

Gulfstream G Iii 05.03.09 | 11:06 PM ET

opps, baby pythons in the plane? that’s wired. yeah, i wonder how many people on that plane jumped up being afraid of pythons. terrible!!!

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