2023 proved that airline nightmare stories are a recipe for viral success

• From delays to diarrhea-prompted diversions, there was a deluge of viral nightmare flight stories in 2023.
• A media professor told BI these videos are compelling because they can be consumed like reality TV.

Horrific turbulence, sleeping in the airport, diarrhea at 10,000 feet, and getting stranded for days: If you find yourself in any of these unfortunate situations and you want to go viral, consider pulling out your phone to record.

Nightmare airplane content has been popular online for years, but the genre seemed to reach new heights of virality — and sheer strangeness — in 2023. This year, TikTok was ablaze with people sharing their awful airport and on-flight experiences.

John Wihbey, a media and technology professor at Northeastern University, told Business Insider that plane videos are especially "compelling" and compared them to a "reality TV thing that is actually real-life.

He also believes that this genre of content is likely being algorithmically boosted by platforms like TikTok because it's become so popular and engaging.

How airplane chaos conquered the internet with its uniquely human drama

There's been a surge of popular videos from people documenting dreadful airplane experiences — from a man who was trapped in a tiny Italian town for two days to a woman who said she missed three flights in a single day.

In March, a man went viral after recording how he got stranded in an airport hallway for hours after a WestJet employee led him the wrong way. Recently, a woman gained traction with a moment-by-moment clip showing how she and her seatmate braved a vicious bout of turbulence.

Perhaps the most viral airport incident this year was about a woman who was ejected from an American Airlines flight after she accused another passenger of being "not real." It spawned endless memes.

Another national story from September, about how a Delta plane to Spain was diverted after a trail of explosive diarrhea was discovered on the flight, inspired numerous viral reactions, including a storytime from the comedian Margaret Cho about her own unfortunately related experience.

Every week, there seems to be a new viral nightmare. But even non—personal plane content has gone viral this year.

Creators have amassed hundreds of thousands of views with videos offering tips on how to sleep in the airport, reacting to new innovations, like the much-hated "double-decker" seats, and arguing about who deserves what armrest.

And not all plane stories that have gone viral are horrifying, either. One nightmare-turned-fantasy TikTok involved a man who got an entire American Airlines flight to himself after his airplane was delayed by 18 hours.

Wihbey told BI that airplane content is captivating because it's a "unique situation in human life" that produces "good drama."

"You're in a very public situation that is highly constrained, and you don't know anyone typically," he said. "It's also something that I think everyone can relate to: which is, being alone and in a possible situation, stranded for 7 hours on the tarmac or wherever it is."

Wihbey gestured at how air travel involves a series of "uncontrollable" happenstance events that can make it especially intriguing.

"It always seems like it's out of your control, and there's something almost metaphorical about it that people probably enjoy," he said. "There's a certain drama; there's a beginning, middle, and end."

In many of the most popular airplane videos, there's an episodic component, where people share multiple videos with updates or stitch clips of them at different parts of the journey. Ayden Schumacher's video about how he was trapped alone in an airport hallway was filmed like an intimate YouTube vlog.

Whihbey believes TikTok's algorithm might be boosting air travel videos

Airplane content might have become such a recipe for internet success because TikTok's algorithm is recognizing it as a distinct genre and boosting it, Wihbey said.

"I'm sure the air travel genre is pretty discernible, algorithmically, as the classifier looks for certain characteristics, the scenario probably looks pretty much the same," he said of the videos, which typically include similar shots of airplanes and airport lounges.

"I think the algorithm picks up on the human attention and then drives more people to other similar videos," he added.

TikTok did not immediately respond to BI's request for comment.

A TikTok hashtag for "airplane" has over 20 billion views. The genre is massive, spanning everyone from travel influencers and nightmare documenters to people who make comedy skits about airline antics.

Wihbey described TikTok plane content as a kind of evolution of the "citizen reporting" or "accountability journalism" of people tweeting questions at airline companies.

"We all remember rage-tweeting at the airlines on Twitter whenever things were going badly and there were lots of delays," he said. "TikTok is a much more obviously engaging format to try to send up or criticize or prod the airlines."

The comment sections of these videos are often filled with people commiserating with the subjects and sharing their own related experiences, and tagging the airlines to seek retribution.

Wihbey compared air travel to the pilgrimage in "The Canterbury Tales," and said there's an "inherent human interest" in this kind of havoc that involves people from "all walks of life" battling against common enemies like discomfort, wasted time, and corporate airline companies.

"There's a certain, I don't know, 'Everybody's in it together' kind of drama," he said.