Maggots on a plane!!!

[IBMJunkman]

I watch the (now old) border control TV shows. NZ, AUS, USA, England. I am constantly amazed what people carry in their luggage.

I have returned home to the USA with bottles of wine, Cuban cigars (shhhh) and a few bespoke suits from England. I once was bringing home some computer tapes from Italy that were my employers. Had to explain those. But never fresh food.

[Krystal n chips]

Originally Posted by Apron Artist

During my time at Gatwick I had the pleasure (?) of managing the outbound baggage for the Med-View flight to Lagos. A complete horror story of a flight using a knackered 747-400 (TF-AMV) from Air Atlanta Icelandic. Every flight rammed - 20 AKEs (LD3s) and every bag 35+ kgs. Most over 40, record was 49kgs. And the bags absolutely stank and some were oozing what must have been frozen fish juice that was thawing. Disgusting, I'd get home from work and all uniform had to be washed at least twice to remove the last traces of smell. One particular night, for tech reasons 3 bins didn't make it onboard - so those bins were moved to the "Rush Unit" to be re-flighted for the next flight, 3 days later.

By the next night, there were maggots everywhere and the smell beyond anything I've smelled before or since. I was off for a few days after that, but I am led to believe that the 3 bins mysteriously vanished up to LHR for an earlier flight. Lucky them. So many more horror stories from the Med-View days...glad I didn't live in Charlwood.

Unfortunate though that may have been, please remember the poor sods, the cleaners, who had to remove the maggots and the engineers involved in any subsequent inspections. An acknowledgement for their efforts would have been nice.

[PAXboy]

When my nephew was RHS in Southern Africa, he served his time hopping small locations in small twin turbo-props. Luggage had to be carefully checked - whether carried or loaded. They found:

• Motorcar engine, still with oil in the sump to be 'hand carried' into the cabin.
• Tins of petrol for the engine - naturally.
• Food of ALL and ANY type.
• Staff adding a suitcase to go to their friend at the destination. This was unchecked and just loaded on without a tag. Then they would phone their mate working airside at destination to say it was on board.
• As with most destinations in that great continent, the concept of 'max weight' is not fully understood.
• The loaders might see that there is spare 'space' in the hold and fill it up. If that took them overweight or out of CofG...?

Amongst many more.

[tdracer]

Don't forget this one that exploded in flames on landing in Tawain:
Uni Air Flight 873 - Wikipedia

Apparently, there were two brain dead passengers - one brought bottles of gasoline in their on-board luggage (that leaked), and another had a motorcycle battery (that shorted).
Although one passenger died and the aircraft was destroyed, they were damn lucky it happened on landing and not in the air...