Aviation Facts

Larry Walters tied 42 weather balloons to his lawn chair and rose to 16,000 feet over Los Angeles.

Should there be a crash, Prince Charles and Prince William never travel on the same airplane as a precaution.

Today's top fuel dragsters take off with more force than the space shuttle.

The longest recorded flight of a chicken is 13 seconds!

There are only 14 blimps in the world.

A small airplane can fly backwards.

Originally, BMW was an airplane engine manufacturer.

The average economy airline meal costs the airline $4-15. The average first class meal: $100 or more.

The distress code 'Mayday' comes from the French for help me, M'Aide!

In 1972, Vesna Vulović, a Serbian flight attendant, survived a fall of 33,330 feet when her plane exploded over Czechoslovakia. She held the Guinness World Record for the highest fall survived without a parachute until her death in 2016.

There’s a company that provides private flights for individuals who want to join the “mile high club”. For $425.00 you get a 1 hour flight, chocolates, champagne, and a curtain.

French entertainer Michel Lotito ate an entire Cessna 150 airplane over a 2-year period (1978-1980), and consumed an estimated nine tons of metal during his career from 1966 to 1997.

In 1971, a man named Dan Cooper hijacked a plane, extorted $200,000, parachuted into a stormy night, and vanished without a trace. The only clue ever found was $5,800 of the ransom, rotting on a riverbank years later.

In 1990, the cockpit windshield of British Airways Flight 5390 blew out at 17,400 feet. The captain was sucked halfway out of the aircraft. A flight attendant grabbed his legs and held on for 20 minutes while the co-pilot made an emergency landing. Everyone survived. The cause? 84 of 90 windshield bolts were the wrong size.

In 1987, American Airlines sold a lifetime unlimited first-class pass for $250,000. Steven Rothstein bought one. He flew over 10,000 flights. Breakfast in London, dinner in Tokyo. He even booked a fake passenger named "Bag Rothstein" to keep the adjacent seat empty. American Airlines estimates he cost them over $21 million before they revoked his pass — and handed him the termination letter at the gate.

UC Davis engineer David Phillips spotted a Healthy Choice promotion offering airline miles for pudding barcodes. He bought 12,150 cups for $3,140, earned 1.25 million frequent flyer miles, donated all the pudding to the Salvation Army, and claimed an $815 tax deduction. Adam Sandler's Punch-Drunk Love was based on him.