United Pilot Forgot 10 Bullets In Luggage And Flushed Them, Delaying Return Flight Four Hours

If not for a missing ring and a dutiful flight attendant, the tale of the flushed bullets may never have come to light. And the person responsible for this hard-to-confirm incident is the last person you’d expect — the pilot.

In a rather colorful account of the June incident, the Aviation Herald said that it spent two weeks trying to get someone to confirm that a United Airlines captain flushed 10 bullets down the toilet midflight from Houston to Germany.

“(We) stat(ed) all inquiries to Authorities in Germany and the USA that the story is so extremely unbelievable that it must be true again, but remained unsuccessful,” Simon Hradecky wrote.

The “unbelievable” story took place on June 23, when an unnamed pilot realized after takeoff that he’d inadvertently brought 10 bullets along in his luggage, the Associated Press reported.

Pilots have been allowed to carry guns on board since 9/11 in an attempt to make it more difficult for terrorists to hijack planes. This time, he rightly did not bring his weapon aboard, because the destination — Germany — has strict gun laws.

So he plopped them into the trash, which was fully accessible to passengers.

Enter a passenger with a missing ring, and his ill-advised act was quickly discovered. While searching for it, a flight attendant checked lost and found, and then the trash. She didn’t find the ring — she found the discarded contraband instead.

She informed the captain, who made the next best decision — he flushed the bullets down the toilet. A little while later, she followed up on her discovery, and the pilot realized that she wasn’t going to let it go — as she shouldn’t.

So he alerted German authorities, realizing that the attendant was likely going to do it herself.

According to United Press International, the plane taxied to a “remote area,” passengers disembarked, and the waste tanks were emptied; firefighters arrived in protective suits to search for the flushed bullets. It took two sweeps, but they found them all.

Surprisingly, it doesn’t appear as though the pilot — who likely has years of seniority since he’s a captain — has been fired, and he probably won’t face criminal charges. United is investigating the incident.

Because of the incident, the plane spent six hours at the airport and departed for a return to Washington D.C. after a four-hour delay.

[Photo Courtesy Justin Sullivan/Getty Images]