Before you check-in, check out these bizarre flying facts

Cheapflights.co.uk brings you some little-known odds and ends that show how flying can be a funny business. Cheapflights.co.uk has brought together some interesting snippets of information to show the lighter side of the aviation world.

Waiting at airports can be a bit of a bore, so perhaps you might want a meal delivered from an exclusive London restaurant while you wait? Antonio Banderas did, and ordered a take-away curry from Tamarind in Mayfair while waiting at Luton Airport – all at the small price of £700.

Custom agents often get some nasty surprises, as these two stories show. In Florida custom agents opened a suitcase to be greeted by a human skull, complete with skin and hair – the woman owning the case had travelled from Haiti and said the skull was to ward off evil spirits. Meanwhile, in Boston, security agents caught a passenger trying to sneak a severed seal head onto a plane inside a cooler.

In Saudi Arabia, however, it was the passenger who got a nasty surprise – in return for taking two chocolate liqueurs into the airport a Filipino man was sentenced to 75 lashes for possession of alcohol.

Airports are used to being at the whim of the weather. Sydney’s Bankstown airport had to close for four hours in 1962 due to westerly wind causing a thick dust haze . More recently the entire Mackay Airport in Queensland was closed down for nearly an hour, not because of the weather but due to an adult toy which accidentally switched to vibrate .

David Soskin, CEO of Cheapflights.co.uk, adds “Here at Cheapflights we know that things don’t always run smoothly in the world of flying. I’ve been a victim myself after being told at a small US country airport that my pastrami sandwich could not come on board with me if it had mustard or mayonnaise in it!”