On a flight to Melbourne one passenger found herself amid five full rows of horn-blowing, fully made up clowns on their way to a clown convention, three musical theatre performers walking up and down the aisle singing ‘No business like show business’ and an impromptu limbo challenge with a scarf by passengers waiting in line for the bathroom.
Dressing up was popular too with one person seated next to a large, straight faced man in full Superman gear, including tights, from Brisbane to Los Angeles, and on a flight from Australia to Malaysia a teenage girl in a chicken suit including big feet, or the man who only spoke to the passenger seated next to him through his hand puppet.
Unusual ‘non-human’ passengers included a duck and a chicken who were duly assigned their own seats on a flight from Spain, a goat who popped his head out of a bag 20 minutes into a flight, a crate of live yabbies (small crayfish) who escaped into the cabin on a domestic Australian flight and a flight to France with a passenger mirroring her pink poodle seated beside her with identical hairdos, outfits and glittering accessories.
Creepy encounters included a Danish passenger who clutched her bag full of dolls whispering ‘mine’ the entire flight, and a Japanese man who slept completely upside down, his head in the seat, and stayed that way for six hours.
The importance of a portable cosmetic mirror in a handbag was highlighted by a woman who applied big spots of lipstick to her face believing it to be concealer make-up, while an air-hostess discreetly and progressively smiled at each of her passengers hoping to find the owners of a pair of dentures left in the washroom.
Possibly the most amusing was the pilot who, while flying, pointed out his ex-wife’s house and the car of the man she’d been having an affair with parked in his driveway, sharing his bitterness with all his passengers over the intercom.