What is the most unusual baggage anyone has ever seen loaded onto a plane.
I was flying from ATL to MSP 2 weeks ago, and was talking to a guy who worked for NW and was currently taking on a job at DL, when he motioned to me and asked if i had ever seen this before. I looked out the window and a Dunbar armored truck was parked next to the plane unloading stacks of $20's wrapped in plastic. The truck was "slam packed" floor to ceiling, front to back with money. i snapped a picture with my phone, because i had never seen this before. Neither had the exNW exec next to me. I just though this was weird for a commercial airplane. Must have been at least a couple million if not more.
Kip

I've flown a lot of business travel and hate the Greyhound season.

This season is when people who fly once every 3 - 5 years go on summer vacation.

Almost without fail, I see at least once a year, someone carrying on a pink flamingo, sometimes with a propeller in the bird's beak.

It's a normal practice to ship money on commercial flights.

$100M plus was shipped weekly from NY Banks to Moscow on DL flights back in the 80s until it was investigated and proven that it was the Russian mafia doing a little "laundering" of proceeds from their illegal activity in US and with the help of some bankers in NY.

That said, it's a normal procedure to ship cash from one bank to another somewhere in the world and they do use commercial flights.

In the days before Junior Jets, I was aboard a flight from Pittsburgh to Columbus, when I looked out the window to see them loading a long cardboard container marked "Human Remains" into the baggage compartment right below my feet. I assumed this was only an outer box to protect something more durable inside.

There were only three or four passengers on a USAir flight from Des Moines to somewhere east some years ago. When I commented to the FA that the flight would no doubt be cancelled, he told me the run was highly profitable because it carried freshly printed magazines in the cargo hold. The passengers were only a bonus.

Shipping bodies by air is very common. Most interestingly, funeral directors can accrue frequent flyer miles on them!

Most cargo is worth more to the airlines than the passengers in terms of revenue.

Years ago I boarded a small Caribbean airline for an inter-island flight behind a lady who had a chicken in her carry on.

I wonder if the chicken got ff miles?

I didn't think chickens could fly. ;-)