What could go wrong with a Pakistani military delegation flying from D.C. to Tampa for a meeting with the U.S. Central Command? How about getting kicked off a flight after being mistaken for terrorists by a scared passenger?

You know when you get a seat on an airplane that's closer to the door and it's awesome when you're deboarding? American Airlines has now named those seats "Express Seats" and will charge you more money for them. Happy flying.

There's "flying first-class" rich. And then there's "I own the damn airplane" rich. For three decades, photographer Nick Gleis has been capturing the spaceship-like interiors of planes owned by the second category—from arms dealers to heads of state.

As a reminder that sometimes air travel can be fun and freak-out free, here's a video of a Lufthansa flight attendant playfully pillow fighting with her passengers, somewhere between Tel Aviv and Frankfurt. Everyone laughs! No one disembarks! Peace.

In the wake of Steven Slater immortalizing himself with spectacular display of flight attendant rebellion, we call our attention to another act of mid-flight attrition: "cropdusting," when flight attendants walk down an airplane aisle and fart in seated passengers' faces.

JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater became an instant hero following his emergency slide-assisted resignation, prompted by abuse from a passenger aboard the flight. But now three other people tell the Wall Street Journal that Slater "instigated the confrontation." What gives?

You know a news story has hit it big when it gets its own animated reenactment by Taiwanese company NMA, as is the case with this rendering of the Steven Slater incident—beer-grabbing, escape shoot-sliding and all! Video inside.

Steven Slater—the JetBlue flight attendant who walked off the job via inflatable slide and was arrested by the cops yesterday mid-embrace with his boyfriend—is a free man tonight after coming up with his $2,500 bail.

French president Nicolas Sarkozy envies the size of Barack Obama's big ass presidential airplane, Air Force One, so much that he ordered a bigger plane, nicknamed Air Sarko One, for €176 million. Carla Bruni will be most impressed.

Canadian air force Captain Brian Bews is a lucky man. While training for an air show, he was beginning a maneuver called a High Alpha pass when sparks shot from the engine. He bailed out seconds before the plane exploded.

Following our earlier post about the enormous airplane in the middle of Brooklyn on Google Maps, readers sent in other airplane apparitions. One appears to be a real airplane, hidden in someone's yard. The other appears to be underwater.

Is someone in Bushwick hiding a ginormous 747* behind a bunch of trees in a park? Untapped New York has discovered a mysterious, airplane-shaped apparition on both Google Earth and Google Maps, in a place normally occupied by a playground.

Hearing a thud on his roof, a resident of Caddo Mills, Texas investigated and found a 100-lb. bag of marijuana had fallen from the sky. Turns out a low-flying airplane dropped four bags before being abandoned in a nearby field.

On Wednesday, an unidentified flying object was spotted near the Xiaoshan Airport in Hangzhou, China, causing 12 inbound flights to be diverted and temporarily closing the airport. An aviation official today said, "No conclusion has yet been drawn." [China Daily]

Michael O'Leary, the chief executive of discount airline Ryanair, says he'd like to sell five-pound tickets for "vertical seats," which is a not-very-fancy way of saying, "standing up on the plane the whole damn time." [Telegraph]

Just what airplane travel needs: more reasons for people to be loud and drunk. Continental Airlines, soon to merge with United, has created fun specialty cocktails, like mojitos, to serve to passengers. Nothing says party like a stuffy tin box!

What is the deal with airline food? Good question! Turns out, the deal with airline food is that it is made at facilities containing roach carcasses "too numerous to count." And that's just one of the FDA reports!

A participant in the "Red Bull Air Race: New York" zips through the sky over the Hudson River. Whose idiot idea was sending airplanes careening through downtown New York's air space? Another image below.

Google employee Dave Cohen saw Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on an airplane and buzzed about it. (That's Google for "status update.") Then Zuck "got yelled at to turn off his phone," so Dave turned on his phone to buzz that...

Every toilet on a British Airways flight from England to the Cayman Islands filled up. Passengers were told not to drink. Crashing into the sea is not the worst thing that can happen during a trans-Atlantic flight. Happy Sunday! [DailyMail]