The plane that was crashed in the movie The Dark Knight Rises with the use of computer-generated special effects actually did crash the next year, killing two people on board.

Jets leave a white trail across the sky for the same reason that you can see your breath in the winter: it’s carbon dioxide and water creating visible moisture.

In 1986, Soviet pilot Alexander Kliuyev made a bet with a co-pilot that he could land an airplane blind. He curtained the cockpit windows  and crashed the plane into a landing strip, killing seventy out of eighty seven passengers.

MI-5 once had a plan to use gerbils to detect terrorists and spies at airports. This is because their sense of smell can acutely detect increased adrenaline in people. The project was scrapped when the gerbils proved unable to tell the difference between terrorists and those who were terrified of flying.

In 1987, Steve Rothstein bought a lifetime, unlimited first-class American Airlines ticket for $250,000. He flew over 10,000 flights, costing the company $21 million. They terminated his ticket in 2008.