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Drugs

A Plane Had to Turn Around Because It Stank of Weed

Can we stop doing wacky shit on planes, please? I'm just trying to go on holiday here, mate.

(Photo via Martin Roell)

And in yet another instalment of the increasingly regular series, "People Doing Absolutely Wacky Shit on Planes", a plane had to turn around because people were doing some absolutely wacky shit on it, i.e. they were toking on the devil's lettuce in the toilets.

To the Telegraph:

British Airways flight carrying holidaymakers to Crete was forced to turn back when a "nasty smell" filled the cabin.

Passengers complained of smelling a foul odour – reportedly compared to the smell of cannabis by some – on the flight to Heraklion after take-off from Gatwick on Thursday morning.

The pilot turned back as a precaution and the flight was met by fire crews when it landed 90 minutes later.

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Obviously, some notes:

i. I mean, let's just go ahead and assume that the smell here was actually cannabis and not a cannabis-derived smell, and that smell was happening because a person was honking on some cannabis on the plane, yeah? Because a lot of the reports are muddled – one passenger said it was a "nasty smell", another told the Sun that the smell was "unmistakeable", splitting the passenger sample set immediately into two, on one half the nerds – the oblivious nerdlords who wafted their hands and went "and just what is that nasty smell?" – and the other half the dads who used to be cool but now they just want to take the kiddies to Crete, and they can identify the smell of marijuana but don't like it. I mean, essentially what I am saying is: there were a fucking lot of squares on this plane to Greece.

ii. Massive shout out obviously to the dude who thought, in these times of heightened fear and clamped security checks, of guns to the head and military pat-downs, of air travel as tightly overseen as a visit to the bowels of the American government, someone went: "I reckon I can get a few zoots' worth of bud on the plane if I sock it."

iii. I mean, what kind of person cannot last the 3h 55m it takes from Gatwick to Heraklion without sparking up? Like, how many late-night cartoons does this dude watch? How many YouTube videos of slo-mo yo-yo tricks do they have saved to their hard drive?

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iv. I still not do not understand this Hot Yung Trend for turning aeroplanes around midair because they smell bad (see previous). If we could not use public transport because it smells worse than death then why are Virgin Trains allowed to operate? I digress, I digress—

Just going to have to spin my moral conundrumeter to see if this incident is Actually Good or Actually Bad, because I am a little torn: on the one hand, smoking weed is extremely cool and excellent and good, and comes with all this cool paraphernalia and merchandise (weed leaf socks, my dude!) that makes it feel like you're part of an illicit club or movement; on the other hand it does smell, and whoever did partake in the leaf midair ruined about 200, 250 people's holiday, at a guess. Is that Actually Good or Actually Bad? Is this an argument For or Against legalisation? It's really hard to know for sure.

Anyway, a British Airways spokesperson said, "Our pilot returned the aircraft to Gatwick as a precaution following reports of an unidentified strong smell in the cabin. We are sorry for the delay to our customers' journeys," so no harm, no foul, really. But I suppose at least this – and the bad shit, and the midair fight, and the two Scottish pilots who tried to fly drunk – at least all this is maybe, possibly, a trend towards more relaxed air travel in this post-9/11 world. Could one person smuggling a joint onto a Crete-bound aircraft and smoking it obnoxiously in the toilet signal a change of things to come? Possibly. Possibly. I salute you, Greek Ganja Liker. I doff my cap to thee.

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@joelgolby

More stuff about planes, lordy there is just so much to choose from:

Two Pilots Arrested In Scotland For Trying To Fly Drunk, Knight Them Immediately TBH

Someone Did a Shit So Bad On a British Airways Plane That It Had to Turn Around and Come Back Again

What It's Like to Be on a Plane When It's Hijacked