Speeding through the sky crammed into a cylindrical metal box, kept aloft by technology almost none of us really understand: you could argue that we don't talk enough about how weird flying truly is. Though barely a century old, the aviation industry is part of the furniture for millions of people across the globe, but it still yields a steady stream of peculiar quirks and unusual occurrences that would look very odd in any other context. 

Read on for our round-up of fun facts from the weird and wonderful world of flying, as well as the strange flight stories that made the news...

When you see a plane pass above you in the sky, there's a decent chance it has no passengers. A 2022 report by The Guardian revealed that 5,000 completely empty 'ghost flights' had passed through UK airports since 2019, plus 35,000 more flying at under 10% capacity. Air travel releases more carbon emissions than any other consumer activity, and the revelations infuriated climate campaigners, particularly since there's no official explanation for why the flights are flying. The most common theory is that they exist to retain coveted slots in airport timetables.

Etihad Airways did not seem to have pet owners' best interests in mind when they announced that animal passengers would now cost flyers £1,192 ($1,500) a head, rather than the £178 ($200) charged previously. But one very specific creature was not only exempted from the rule changes but can travel completely for free. Falcons are culturally hugely important in the United Arab Emirates – Etihad is one of the UAE's two flag carriers – and are the country's national bird. Travellers can board with one free falcon per person, plus two per additional seat.

In legendary 1970s comedy Airplane! pilots, passengers and crew are all struck down by a mysterious (and amusing) illness, causing the plane to career out of control with fortunately non-fatal results. The reality would be far less funny, and, although it's not stipulated by law, most airline pilots eat different food to both the passengers and each other. In 1975, Japan Airlines served up a stomach-churning cautionary tale: 197 people suffered severe food poisoning on a flight between Anchorage and Copenhagen thanks to a contaminated batch of ham omelettes. The incident caused 144 hospitalisations, but the unaffected pilots had both eaten different meals.

Short domestic flights have a bad reputation among environmentalists, but this one-minute-and-14-second hop between Westray and Papa Westray in Scotland's Orkney Islands takes things to a whole new level. Loganair flight LM711 is the world's shortest scheduled flight, running two to three times daily between the two islands, which house around 700 people combined. The small Britten Norman BN-2 Islander can cram up to eight passengers into its shoebox cabin, each paying £17 ($21) a head. The route is shorter than the runways of most major airports, and, in favourable winds, can take as little as 53 seconds.

There's a reason that even business-class caviar tastes rubbish at 30,000 feet (9,000m). The pressurised cabin and exceptionally dry onboard air render your taste buds up to 30% less perceptive, meaning that even the best airline food often fails to impress. That's not to say it's all gourmet grub, and famously foul-mouthed foodie Gordon Ramsay once remarked there was "no way" he'd eat in-flight meals. "I worked for airlines for 10 years," said the Michelin-starred chef, "so I know where this food’s been and where it goes."

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Atlanta International Airport has been the world's busiest airport for 24 of the last 25 years, and it would have notched 25 straight if it weren't for COVID-19. The pandemic scrambled airport timetables the world over, and in 2020 China's Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport temporarily overtook Atlanta with 43,767,558 total passengers for the year, before Atlanta retook top spot in 2021. Atlanta International is within a two-hour flight of 80% of the US population and is a popular pitstop for international passengers flying on to other destinations.

See how travel has changed in every decade from the 1920s to today

How best to simulate a bird flying into an airplane engine at high speed? Fire a bird into an engine at high speed, of course. A regular feature of aircraft safety tests from the 1940s up to the present day, 'chicken guns' are specialised compressed-air cannons used to hurl chicken carcasses into jet engines and windshields to ensure they could stand up to bird strikes once airborne. The first known chicken gun debuted in 1942 and could launch chickens at 400 miles per hour (640km/h), while modern models have modular barrels to accommodate different sizes of bird. The guns are sufficiently complex that few airlines have their own, and conduct the tests at contracted facilities.

Of all the different fears people can have, a fear of flying is perhaps one of the more intuitive. Humans aren't really designed to fly, and the idea of a giant metal box staying airborne for hours makes zero sense to the average passenger. It's in this spirit that several airlines offer special 'fear of flying' courses, mostly promising to demystify the science behind air travel and highlight the industry's excellent safety record. Virgin Atlantic, British Airways and budget European carrier easyJet are among those to offer courses.

Nervous flyers can take some comfort from the industry's statistically superb safety record. In the film Rain Man, Dustin Hoffman famously claimed that he only flew Qantas because "Qantas never crashed", and though it wasn't technically true (the last accident involving a Qantas plane happened in 1951), there are several international carriers that have never recorded a major incident. Middle Eastern operators Qatar Airways, Emirates and Etihad Airways, along with budget European options easyJet and Ryanair, are all among those without any fatalities.

It's an urban myth that planes dump human waste straight into the air. In reality, plane toilets use vacuum technology to suck waste into a tank (flushing toilets would add too much water weight), which is then siphoned off after landing. Sadly the myth persists because, every now and then, accidents happen. In 2021 a man relaxing in his backyard in the English town of Windsor was showered with raw sewage by a passing plane, splattering his flower beds, his garden furniture and him. Windsor is right under the London Heathrow flight path, and the incident was chalked up to a low-altitude mechanical malfunction.

A plane window might seem like the last place you'd want even a pin prick-sized hole, but this tiny opening drilled into the inside pane could conceivably save your life. Plane cabins have to be pressurised to keep oxygen levels comfortable (breathing at cruising altitude would otherwise be impossible without an oxygen mask), and the little hole helps balance the pressure difference between the cabin and the air outside. Should the cabin suddenly depressurise, passengers would have around 20 seconds to don oxygen masks before losing consciousness.

In the rare event that a plane does go down, the seating plan matters. In an article on The Conversation, aviation expert Doug Drury revealed that the middle rear seats of a plane are the safest, with a 28% fatality rate during crashes, compared with 44% for the middle of the plane and 39% for seats at the front. Middle seats tend to be safer than window or aisle seats, as the passengers on either side of you act as a minor buffer. But there's no need to frantically reassign your seating for any upcoming flights – Harvard University estimates that the odds of dying in a plane crash are roughly one in 11 million.

Two Ethiopian Airlines pilots were left red-faced after seemingly drifting off in the cockpit of their Boeing 737-800, en route from Khartoum to Addis Ababa. Air traffic control was unable to reach the plane as it cruised past its destination at 37,000 feet (11,300m), only re-establishing contact when a siren went off in the cockpit to signal the disconnection of the autopilot and wake the snoozing crew. The aircraft eventually landed 25 minutes late, the passengers none the wiser about the delay.

Even air travel isn't safe from 'Netflixification'. American ultra-low-cost carrier Frontier Airlines offers an annual all-you-can-fly subscription service, named the 'GoWild! Pass', that will allow passengers unlimited access to flights to all the airline's destinations through the United States and Central America. Currently, you can snap up discount prices at £318 ($399) for a summer pass, which stretches from 1 May to 30 September; or £477 ($599) for an annual pass. Meanwhile a monthly pass (valid for 30 days after purchase) is £39 ($50), plus a £79 ($99) enrolment fee. Naturally there are some T&Cs: holders can only book domestic flights the day before and international flights up to 10 days before, while there are blackout periods ahead of particularly busy days and weekends. New for 2024, you can now earn air miles on all GoWild! purchases.

For world's tallest woman Rumeysa Gelgi, Ryanair was never an option. At 7ft 1in (2.15m) tall, the 27-year-old barely fits into the fuselage let alone an economy-class seat, and she always assumed she'd never be able to fly commercially. That changed in September 2022, when Turkish Airlines removed six seats to accommodate Gelgi on a gurney, allowing her to rest comfortably for the 13-hour journey between Turkey and San Francisco, USA. Gelgi's proportions are caused by Weaver's Syndrome, and she's held several size-related world records since her teens. Although it was her first flight, she told her Instagram followers: "it certainly won't be my last".

Between the large, red-lettered signs, the frequent reminders on the tannoy and a bit of common sense, it's hard to fathom how you could not realise that planes are no-smoking. But nothing could deter one foolish flyer on a Tel Aviv-Bangkok service in October 2022, who lit up in the bathroom and promptly triggered the smoke alarm. Like any sensible person he then attempted to hide the evidence in the bathroom bin, igniting its contents and causing a full-blown fire. Cabin crew were able to put out the blaze with fire extinguishers and the flight touched down on time in Thailand.

We're not aeronautical engineers, but we're pretty sure no flight plan includes part of a plane engine detaching and plummeting into someone's back garden. Unfortunately for Louis Demaret and his family, residents of the Belgian town of Waremme, that's exactly what happened in September 2022 when a cowling came loose from a passing Air Atlanta Icelandic Boeing 747, thudding into the roof of his garage and coming to rest on his lawn. Planes shedding parts is rare but not unheard of, and fortunately nobody was injured.

United Airlines passenger Christopher Ambler was left fuming in March 2023, when his £364 ($450) bottle of Glenmorangie Highland Single Malt whisky went into his checked baggage unopened, but came out unsealed and a third empty. "Your baggage handlers are thieves", the disgruntled passenger tweeted at the airline, along with a photograph of the conspicuously part-drunk bottle. United replied that he should file a complaint at the Baggage Resolution Center, and DM the airline his confirmation number.

The airline industry is facing a summer dilemma as travel demand increases and aircraft deliveries drop. The number of international travellers is expected to hit 4.7 billion in 2024, compared with 4.5 billion in 2019. Problems with production at Boeing and Airbus are forcing airlines to spend billions of dollars on repairs to keep older planes flying, while some will need to cut back their schedules to cope with the lack of aircraft.

It's official: no one died in a passenger-jet plane crash in 2023, making it the safest year in aviation history. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) revealed that one fatal accident involving a domestic flight in Nepal, which killed 68 passengers and four crew, was a turboprop plane, and therefore doesn't affect this new record. The IATA report said that while there was a 17% increase in aircraft movements compared to the year before, the accident rate decreased. There were also no hull losses from passenger jets in 2023 either, meaning when a plane is beyond repairable.

Now check out these stunning images from the early days of flying