What was the most confrontational situation you have witnessed at an American airport?

37 comments

1. a woman was sitting on the floor crying and a security guard was talking to her. that’s literally it lol

2. One time someone cut in line at the airport McDonald’s.

3. A lady was demanding the plane she was supposed to board like 40 minutes earlier pull back in so she could get on. They had already separated and were taxiing. She was saying ‘ I dont need your excuses, tell them to get the fuck back here!’ It was amusing.

4. My old roommate getting “randomly selected” 100% of the time due to his name

5. Some lady’s dog (that clearly wasn’t a service animal) took a shit on the floor of the terminal and a couple of people made comments.

6. Guy was yelling at a Spirit airlines gate agent about a rescheduled flight and instead of being all apologetic and and customer servicey she was like ‘You’re flying Spirit. This is what you get.’

7. Honestly have never seen anything more than just a person trying to re-book a canceled/delayed flight.

8. Not truly exciting but…..We were in Chicago for a record breaking storm & flights were canceling left & right. I’m a nervous flyer so if they say it can’t fly – I believe it!! But there was a woman that just had a full meltdown at the person working the counter. Screaming!! As if that person can make that plane get up and go! I just do not understand thinking behavior like that gets the desired result ever.

9. I haven’t seen that much.

   On my last flight (las-atl on Frontier), a passenger, who already had left the plane and was already in the gate area, attempted to run back into the jetbridge to retrieve belongings they had left behind. That’s not something you want to do if you don’t like face to face meetings with airport security officers.

   Also once witnessed an incident where an unruly passenger had attempted to serve themselves alcohol while seated on a plane still parked at the gate, and then got into a heated argument with a flight attendant. I believe their seat was flown empty after a few minutes of arguing

10. Someone upset that their flight was overbooked and they got bumped forcing them to miss the event they were travelling for.

11. I’ve never really witnessed any public freakouts or bad airport behavior. I’m sure things are really bad right now though with all the Southwest chaos though.

12. My dad broke his finger because TSA couldn’t comprehend that he couldn’t stay standing without his crutches.

13. Someone’s hearing aid set off the metal detector and they were calmly patting him down.

14. Some stupid kid was giving a Custom agent attitude. Customs only takes so much shit, and it’s a very small amount. Anyway, he was lead off to another room for further investigation and cavity searches I’m sure. I just kept laughing at him.

15. Irritated, overtired people arguing with their own family members. Slightly curt conversations between airline staff and passengers. That’s it. Have I been missing out?

16. Probably when they took my shaving cream 2 weeks ago, idk. I’ve never witnessed anything particularly dramatic.

17. Not airport but on a plane. Last year, *on my birthday*, I was on a coast to coast fight, sitting close the front. About an hour in, I noticed the fight attendants looked panicked and were looking towards the back of the plane. There was yelling and I could hear things crashing around but couldn’t see what was going on.

    The pilot then announced we were making an emergency landing in Montana. We were met on the tarmac by many police vehicles. The police boarded and dragged a young man off the plane. We were stuck there for 7 hours, where I learned that the man attacked people and jumped on the beverage cart before 2 other passengers restrained him.

    Wild way to spend a birthday!

    Edit: if you wade through all the dog posts in my history, you’ll find a photo of all the vehicles that met us

18. Some lady going absolutely nuts on customer service because her passport didn’t match her ticket (one included her middle name) and they weren’t letting her get on the plane.

19. I sat down at a gate and overheard an employee telling a man that he was too intoxicated to fly and would have to be rebooked for the next day. He disagreed, but they were having a calm discussion. It was weird- he didn’t seem drunk to me, and he was clearly annoyed but not belligerent.

20. Considering how often I fly out of the world’s busiest airport, I surprisingly haven’t seen any noteworthy incidents there.

21. Had to stand in a line for over 8 hours. People got super mad. Lady in front of us screamed at the airline workers and her kid started doing it too. Like an 8 year old. A cop came and they all left 🤷🏻‍♀️

    Like it realllllllllllly sucked, but I managed to not scream at anyone. People are crazy.

22. Probably when I was annoyed at a TSA agent for not just letting me walk over to a Cinnabon kiosk to pour the water out of a Yeti I forgot to empty, and making me walk out and back thru security again. I know, my fault, but traveling is stressful.

23. Not really much besides TSA being dicks. I’ve met a lot of nice TSA agents too but some are so insufferable.

24. mine, when i was on the verge of passing out and i asked airport lady for help and she basically told me to go f myself

25. During boarding a guy was pissed that a flight attendant turned his bag 90 degrees so they could put more bags in the overhead. Said “Don’t touch my bag” real pissy. Flight attendant apologizes and tries to have a reasonable conversation about it and the dude gets even pissier. Her attitude did an abrupt 180 and asked him if he wanted to fly today. He got more pissy. She took his bag out and handed it to him (“I TOLD YOU NOT TO TOUCH MY BAG!!”) and he got up and left.

26. A guy was yelling at an airport worker because about something negatively affecting him relating to a flight. I overheard him yell about other crappy experiences so I gathered his plane journey has been horrible so far. The guy even did the thing of talking loud enough about the airport workers giving him a hard time to try to rally others to his plight.

    Overall, I wasn’t paying attention enough nor knew the whole situation to make a judgment on the situation. Just seemed like it sucked for both parties.

27. During an uncomfortable layover from an already long flight, I was sitting in the cramped terminal opposite a middle aged man that had fallen asleep in a seated position with the most aggressive manspread while crammed between a woman trying to read a book and some very polite international students. Some how…some way…the man had grown a raging boner in his sleep that had managed to free itself from his underwear slit and rose through his undone zipper before finally standing triumphantly erect like a little skyscraper from his groin. One by one many of us started to get in on the surreal situation from the muffled sniggers, but the woman to his left was far too engrossed in her book to realise until the wildest shit I’ll never forget happened right across from me. His goddamn boner began twitching, and then he started making awkward sounds, and then before anyone could process the reality of what we were witnessing a stream of fluid began leaking from this bloke’s erection which caused myself and the group of people I’d been watching the developing scenes unfold with to let out an audible OMG, which got the reading lady’s attention finally….but it was too late. The launch sequence had activated and this poor dude woke to find himself in the throes of a public wet dream as his boner took on a life of its own and began seizing back and forth releasing these half foot fountains of semen as everyone sitting around him ran for their lives. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent.

28. I once had a TSA agent tell us we couldn’t take a little bottle of hot sauce in our bag and we should instead check it as a bag by itself.

29. I’ve never seen such a thing

30. There was just a massive fight at DTW like two days ago lmao

31. I’ve been lucky to never have witnessed a confrontation of any kind in any airport, and I fly a lot.

    Apparently my grandpa saw some stuff the other day when there was a mass Cancelation of flights though. The airlines strung people along for 6 hours before finally telling them they were canceled right before Christmas, so it makes sense I guess.

32. Spirit arilines moving our gate but not putting it on the screen. Obviously everyone was asking them where the gate was and they were being extremely rude. Then the flight kept getting delayed but they weren’t telling us. Pretty much everyone on the flight was getting upset. Multiple arguments happening at the same time for an hour or 2.

33. Watched a guy yell at a gate agent for a flight delay.

34. I was flying to FLA on spirit, I think. This guy brought a huge backpack and tried to pass it off as a carry on bag. They wouldn’t let him because it was too big, and showed him the little box that you can measure your bag to see if it’s the right size. He started shoving the back pack into this thing and jumping on it as he was screaming at the flight attendants as they just stared at him and rolled their eyes.
    Then he kind of got it in and was screaming, See it fits!! And then he tried to take it out but it was stuck so he started throwing the box with his backpack everywhere. If he wasn’t being such an a** I was going to go over and just pay the $30 or whatever it was to include a carry on. But he was so rude about everything.
    He ended up having to unpack his bag to get it out and then proceeded to start making a big show of throwing things out in the garbage can, like clothes and a jacket, so he could get it to fit. Yelling and being obnoxious the whole time. Thankfully I did not have to sit near him on the plane.

35. Overbooked flight and the last one of the day. I’m flying solo in business class. Parent with child is not allowed to have the child sit on her lap because said child is too big. I refuse to give up my seat and she just went off like a banshee. Her husband and another kid were back in economy in 2 seats. I felt a tad bad for her until she threw a baby bottle at me. She got escorted off the plane by TSA.

36. Unruly, angry male boomer at the gate and on the plane. I was with my mom to Florida just after 9-11, so flying caused some anxiety. The crew threatened to ground the plane and had him arrested. The guy was yelling, cursing, throwing tantrum. People were definitely scared. My mom certainly was.

37. The usher, or whatever he’s called, told us to get into a single file line and then screamed at us for not getting into 3 lines and threatened to not let us board.

    It was just miscommunication but anywhere else that would’ve been a fight.