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Frontier Airlines arrival at Reagan National, 9/10/01: after a VERY hard landing, the flight attendant came up on the intercom and said, "Now let's get this straight, folks. That wasn't the pilot's fault, that wasn't the copilot's fault, it wasn't the maintenance crew's fault, and it wasn't the airplane's fault. That, ladies and gentlemen, was the asphalt."

Actual gripes and responses I saw over the years:

"IFF does not work."
"System normally does not work with switch in O-F-F position."

"Static on radio at altitude."
"Could not duplicate on ground."

"Dead bugs on windshield."
"Live bugs on order from supply."

"Aircraft made unusual noise in (deleted) G turn at 540 KIAS."
"Sound traced to partial failure of main wing spar due to extreme over-G condition. Thank God the engineers at MacAir knew some pilot would be crazy enough to try this."

Late one afternoon, the Air Force guys out at Area 51 are surprised to see a Cessna landing at their "secret" base. They immediately impound the aircraft and haul the pilot into an interrogation room. The pilots story is that he took off out of Vegas, got lost and found the base just as he was about to run out of fuel. They Air Force starts a full FBI background check on the guy and hold him overnight. The next day they are finally convinced that the guy really was lost and is not a spy. They gas up his airplane, give him a terrifying "you did not see a base" briefing complete with threats of spending the rest of his life in prison. They say Vegas is that-a-way on this heading and send him off.

The next day, here comes the Cessna again. Once again the MPs surround the plane, only this time there are two people in the plane. The same pilot jumps out and says" do anything you want to me, but my wife is in the plane and you have to tell her where I was last night....."

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A Huey Cobra practicing autorotations during a military night training exercise had a problem and landed on the tail rotor, separating the tail boom. Fortunately, it wound up on its skids, sliding down the runway doing 360s in a brilliant shower of sparks. As the Cobra passed the tower, the following exchange was overheard:

Tower: "Sir, do you need any assistance?"

Cobra: "I don't know, tower. We ain't done crashin' yet!"

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An Iraqi flying a Mirage F1 came upon a US EF-111A Raven at low level, and pursued it. As a bit of background to this, the Mirage is a reasonably decent aircraft at low level, but the EF-111A is something else. It's an unarmed electronic warfare version of the F-111 Aardvark, and has terrain following radar, which enables it to fly at Mach 1 or more, 60 metres above the ground (that's about 0.4 seconds away from the ground), while the pilot watches the view. It's one of the fastest aircraft in the world at low level. Maybe this Iraqi didn't know anything about the F-111, but he decided that it looked like an easy target, and pursued it at very low level.

The EF-111 crew were credited with a kill when the Iraqi (not surprisingly) slammed into the ground.