If you’ve been reading the news this week (or just about every travel-related publication out there), you’ve undoubtedly read about the Detroit-bound Delta Air Lines flight that had to return to its departing airport in Amsterdam after maggots, from some rotten fish stored in the overhead, began raining down on passenger’s heads.
Although it’s probably one of the more gross things people have brought onto planes (because let’s face it, if maggots dropping onto your head isn’t nightmare material, I don’t know what is), believe it or not, it’s not one of the weirdest. Nope, not by far.
We won’t even mention that just a few days before “maggotgate,” it was reported that a U.S. Customs and Border Protection dog sniffed out mummified monkeys in luggage from a traveler returning from Africa.
In October, 2023, CBP at Minneapolis – Saint Paul International Airport (MSP) inspected a small box that a passenger was trying to bring into the U.S. form Kenya. It turned out to have giraffe poop in it. The owner said she planned to make a necklace out of it, like she had done with moose poop from her home in Iowa. Well, OK then…
The New York Times reported in February 2019 that Egyptian officials found mummified limbs found in a loudspeaker.
Back in 2014, , someone on Reddit asked airport security staff what the weirdest thing they’ve seen through the X-ray machine. Some of the answers were indeed a little weird:
- my uncle once had to hand inspect a case full of various sized dildos because one of the dogs smelled something funny — Ryuksan2021
- In Armenia i saw a guy trying to enter the plane with his
bearcaucasian sheperd,after 30 minutes of “intense negotiations”($$) with the security and the pilot, he was allowed to travel with thebeardog on the seat next to him, the dog s**t himself on the take of,spent the flight chewing on the seats and puked on the landing.(sorry for bad english)
Edit: made some word corretion so i wouldnt sound like Borat. — [Deleted ID] - As a 21 year old, I smuggled myself on to a flight when I forgot my ID by claiming I was 16 and had no ID. — Firebert010
- Kitchen sinks, engine parts, but my all time favorite was the man who came off a flight from Haiti after the earthquake with a suitcase stuffed with nothing but cash and porn. No clothes. No keepsakes. No paperwork from his homeland beyond his passport… Cash and porn. — galebird
- Once I was travelling back home from France having done a clay sculpture workshop while there, and a friend of mine had made a fairly-realistic life-sized head which she was carrying in her hand luggage. The look on the security guy’s face as that image popped up on the x-ray screen was absolutely priceless… — pontdesera
Someone asked a similar question on Quora, also in 2019. Gabriela M., who said she was a TSA officer, said someone tried to bring a toilet an a kitchen sink onto the plane.
The same question popped up on Reddit in 2019. The replies weren’t quite as fun, but some were pretty darn good:
- Unpackaged lumps of decaying ham — EPIC_BOY_CHOLDE
- Mans was wearing a strap on — BicBoi42069
- Some guy put a stun gun in a bag of flour, and swears he doesn’t remember putting it there/wasn’t his. Bags of flour are very dense but you could tell something looked weird in there, I wasn’t sure of what it was right away but it was definitely something that needed to be inspected. — lb_fantastic
Usually these weird things are confiscated. But The Daily Mail reminded us in 2016 about that time when TSA at ATL let a decaying body through the X-ray machine and its owners took it on its merry way. But that’s because it was a prop for The Taxes Chainsaw Massacre movie from 2003.
The TSA posts the most unusual things they’ve found on passengers every year, and some of them are pretty far out there. Here are the lists from several years:
- 2023
- 2022 SPOILERS! Yep, they listed spoilers that year. The Top 10 included: 1. Fentanyl Candy LAX 2. Gun inside of Chicken FLL 3. Peanut Butter Firearm JFK 4. Gun in sling ROC 5. Knife in laptop RIC 6. Drug Scrunchies BOI 7. Gun in the PlayStation ATL 8. Cattle Prod IAD 9. Inert grenade MKE 10. Money Crutches ELP
- 2021
- 2020 and 2019 were both kind of a wash. Thanks, Covid!
- 2018 Whoop whoop…more spoilers! 10. Ice ax, Chicago O’Hare International Airport (ORD) 9. Spear gun, William P. Hobby Airport (HOU) 8. Saw blade glove, Denver International Airport (DEN) 7. Snakes in computer hard drive, Miami International (MIA) 6. Concealed knife in baby carrier, LaGuardia Airport (LGA) 5. Replica explosive device, Chicago O’Hare International Airport (ORD) 4. Tuxedo grenades, Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) 3. Giant scissors, Nashville International Airport (BNA) 2. Inert mortar round, Evansville Regional Airport (EVV) 1. Razor glove, Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL))
I guess it takes all kinds, huh?
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