Flying is stressful enough without getting kicked off a plane by US Marshalls or stung by a scorpion that fell on you from an overhead bin.
A number of travel incidents surrounding overbooked flights, belligerent passengers and staff, and technical glitches have made headlines throughout 2017.
Here are the craziest things that happened to travelers in 2017.
A passenger was forcibly dragged off an overbooked flight after refusing to give up the seat he paid for.
On April 9, passengers on an overbooked United Airlines flight from Chicago to Louisville were asked to give up their seats for crew members that were needed for another flight. When no one volunteered, the airline chose passengers to boot off the plane. Among them was Dr. David Dao, who refused to leave because he said he had to see patients early the next morning. Aviation officers were called to remove him, and videos show him being forcibly dragged off the plane. It resulted in injuries that sent him to the hospital.
Videos of the bloodied Dao being dragged off the plane went viral, resulting in calls to boycott United. Dao eventually reached a settlement with the airline, and the two aviation officers who "improperly escalated the incident" were fired.
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A passenger was stung by a scorpion that fell from the overhead bin during his flight.
Richard and Linda Bell were on a United Airlines flight home from Houston to Calgary when a scorpion fell out of an overhead compartment and stung Richard.
Another passenger stomped on the scorpion to kill it. Bell showed "no sign of distress" according to an EMS spokesperson and declined medical attention when he landed.
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A family says they were booted from a flight and threatened with jail time because they refused to give up their toddler's seat — which they had paid for.
When a Delta flight from Hawaii to Los Angeles was overbooked, Brian Schear and his wife Brittany said that airline staff told them they had to hold their two-year-old son for the entire flight so that someone else could have his seat. The couple argued that they had paid for the seat and shouldn't have to give it up, but the couple says that staff threatened to put them in jail if they didn't comply.
An eight-minute video of the encounter has since been removed from YouTube, but Delta apologized in a statement.
"We are sorry for the unfortunate experience our customers had with Delta, and we've reached out to them to refund their travel and provide additional compensation," the company said. "Delta's goal is to always work with customers in an attempt to find solutions to their travel issues. That did not happen in this case and we apologize."
Read more here.
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