Not me, but there was something unusual I once saw carried onto a plane. I was flying from Beijing to Urumqi in Xinjiang province, China (out near Lop Nor where the Chinese tested their atomic bombs). There'd been a world university games in Beijing and some of the Russian athletes were returning home after the games - Urumqi is almost as close to Moscow as it is to Beijing.
One of the Russian athletes was a pole vaulter and he carried his pole onto the aircraft with him. Well, the airline staff really lined it up and just managed to slide it in through the rear door over the top of the seat backs and taped it to the legs of the seats so that it was out of the way on the floor to one side of the aisle. Everyone just stepped over it getting into their seats.
Mind, I once flew from Saigon to Da Nang and someone had chickens with their legs tied together on their lap.
Me, I once kept failing the x-ray test at a small airport in Tanzania. Took all the money out of my pocket, took off my belt, they waved the wand all over me, and still the bloody thing went "bing bing". I'd been visiting a gold mine up the top left hand corner of Tanzania, and the security guy suddenly said, "Boots!". Of course I was wearing steel capped boots, this is in the days before you had to take work boots off like you do in Australia now. He pointed at a concrete pillar and said, "Kick," I kicked and evedently showed no pain, and he waved me through the security check.
