Weird news - Passengers removed from flight after tossing noodles at crew

After the 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, the concept of flight security has become much more serious. It's not just hijacking (increased security measures ensures that it is more difficult to hijack a plane nowadays, and the penalties are much more significant), but even tantrums by passengers that were tolerated earlier, when airlines did not want to get some sort of action against misbehaving passengers are not tolerated now. At the minimum, when there is some sort of misbehavior by passengers, the crew and pilots would land at the closest airport possible, deplane the passengers who are involved, and in many cases, the local police would get involved and charges would be filed against the misbehaving passengers.
This is even the case when passengers have not really misbehaved, but have made some sort of joke about terrorism or bombs (acting weirdly since it would be clear that in an enhanced security environment, making such jokes is likely to get them into more trouble, as has happened once in a while). But when passengers take actions against cabin crew, there is very little tolerance for such actions and passengers are quickly offloaded. Consider this case where the passengers asked for some seat arrangements that was not possible by the cabin crew, an argument occurs and the passengers throw water on the crew and also throw hot noodles. In the current environment, pilots would typically try to deplane such passengers (link to article):

Chinese authorities vowed to severely punish Chinese travelers who threw hot water and noodles on a Thai flight attendant and threatened to bomb the plane after they became enraged over sitting arrangements. A Chinese passenger berated a crew member of the budget airline Thai AirAsia before pouring hot water and throwing noodles at her during a charter flight to Nanjing last Thursday. The flight returned to Bangkok and the pilot asked the passenger and her entourage of three others to disembark. They were reportedly upset after being told they couldn't sit together and even after a flight attendant helped them change the seats. In footage aired by China's state television CCTV, a male passenger loudly threatened to bomb the plane. He later said the attendant was scalded by accident during a tussle over a bill they had requested for the hot water.

Weird news - Family defy no-smoking warnings on plane, forced to get off

There was a time when smoking was considered fashionable, and there were very few restrictions on smoking. It was only in the past few decades that the health problems of smoking became clear, and the restrictions on smoking started growing. Of particular concern was the impact of smoking on those who did not smoke themselves, this being called as 'second hand smoking', and more restrictions implemented to ensure that people who did not smoke did not get affected by those who did so. As a result, there were more laws passed to ensure that if people did smoke, they were prevented from doing so in a way that the smoke would impact others; one of these was about ensuring that smoking is totally banned on planes.
Given the closed environment of an aircraft, there was no way to ensure second hand smoking prevention, unless smoking was totally banned on a flight. Now it is strictly enforced, and there are warning messages that come on in aircraft, calling out that people cannot even smoke in the bathrooms (and in fact, there would be smoke detectors meant to prevent people from smoking there). Combine this with the fact that in this age of aircraft security, any unrest or disturbance on a plane is treated as a security problem and if the situation gets out of hand, then the plane can even land and the concerned people handed over to security (link to news article):

A family of three -- a father, a mother, and a son -- were arrested after they refused to stop smoking inside a plane, forcing the aircraft to land in the island nation of Bermuda. The flight from Halifax in Canada to the Dominican Republic landed in Bermuda, and police boarded the plane and arrested the three passengers, the Daily Mail reported.

Such a diversion can be pretty bad for the schedule of everyone concerned, since this causes delay in the transit of everyone, and if the time takes longer, then people may even need to stay overnight.

Weird news - Airline shuts down leaving passengers in the lurch

An airline, when in operation ferries a number of people to and from different locations in a country our around the world. People book their tickets and plan their leisure time based on these to and fro journeys. So what happens when the airline suddenly comes to a halt (because of lack of money or other such reasons) ? People get really stuck, sometimes in places distant from their home cities and without a way to get back. Buying alternate tickets on other airlines can be expensive at short notices and the entire vacation can get badly ruined because of such cancellations, and lead to monetary losses as well, with the possibility of getting the money back also not possible (refer this case)  

Thousands of travelers have been left in the lurch around the world after the carrier Air Australia went into administration and grounded its fleet Friday.

"It currently appears that there are no funds available to meet operational expenses so flights will be suspended immediately," the company said in joint statement Friday with its newly appointed administrators, KordaMentha.

About 4,000 passengers in total have been left stranded in Hawaii, Thailand, Indonesia and Australia as a result of the suspension, said Michael Smith, a spokesman for KordaMentha.