USA TODAY's top 10 Travel stories of 2019: Hurricane, scorpion on plane, jetway births

Before we officially put 2019 in the rearview mirror, we're taking one last look back at the travel stories that had readers clicking – and talking – this year.

Surprisingly, the ongoing saga of the Boeing 737 Max groundings and the tourist deaths in the Dominican Republic that were initially linked to tainted alcohol (but were later attributed to natural causes) didn't make the top 10. Nor did the furor over rising resort fees or the trend toward banning Uber and Lyft from picking up passengers at the curb.

Read on to see which stories did.

10. Viking Sky evacuates after issuing mayday off Norwegian coast

On a Saturday in late March, the oceanliner Viking Sky airlifted more than half of its 900 passengers after experiencing engine troubles and a harrowing encounter with rough waters and high winds off Norway's western coast. The next day, the ship limped into port with the aid of a towboat.

Passenger Carolyn Savikas of Pennsylvania described the terror to Norway's VG newspaper, saying she heard a "terrible crash" and the ship rocked, causing water to rush in.

"We were in the restaurant when a really huge wave came and shattered a door and flooded the entire restaurant," she said. "All I saw were bones, arms, water and tables. It was like the Titanic – just like the pictures you have seen from the Titanic."

9. Southwest passenger bombarded by 'inappropriate photos' from stranger on flight

Kat Pitman was settling into her aisle seat on a Southwest Airlines flight from Louisville to Chicago on a Friday morning in June, texting her husband, when her iPhone buzzed.

She looked down to see an AirDrop request. Someone whose name she didn't recognize was sending her a pornographic image. The sender's name? A NSFW take on Bilbo Baggins from "The Hobbit.''

"It was just very explicit. It just shocked me,'' the 40-year-old frequent flyer said in an interview with USA TODAY. She said she was "amazed" when flight attendants picked up the intercom and told "Mr. Baggins'' to immediately stop AirDropping.

And thanks to Pitman and Mr. Baggins, iPhone users realized they should change their Airdrop settings so that they can't receive files from "everyone." (If you haven't yet, here's how.)

8. The haunted house you have to sign a 40-page waiver to enter

In October, a haunted house that took blindfolded "contestants" to locations in Tennessee and Alabama went viral for its hair-raising requirements for entry. Participants had to clear a background check, pass a doctor's physical and mental exams, and sign a 40-page waiver. If they got through all that – and survived the haunted house itself – they got $20,000.

Plenty of speculation and outrage arose online over how safe the extreme haunted experience really is. Creator Russ McKamey told USA TODAY, "It's all entertainment. Halloween is nothing more than a big play. (The Manor) is just putting on a big show. That's all it is, just a big production."

7. United Airlines flight attendant walks on aircraft's wing in mid-air

Sabrina Swenson, a United flight attendant based in Frankfurt, Germany, decided to go big for her 50th birthday last winter: She strapped herself to the wing of a Boeing Stearman plane in Sequim, Washington, and went for a ride over the Olympic Peninsula.

"My time wing walking in beautiful Sequim will live on in my memory until my last day," she wrote in a blog post on United's website. "You simply don't forget one of the best days of your life!"

6. Hurricane Dorian: How popular Bahamas destinations fared

Hurricane Dorian was expected to focus its wrath on southern Florida – and Alabama if you believed President Trump's Sharpie-edited map – but the storm stalled over the Bahamas over the Labor Day holiday, pounding the Abaco Islands and Grand Bahama, killing more than 60 people and leaving 70,000 homeless.

With sustained winds of 185 miles per hour, the Category-5 Dorian was the strongest and slowest hurricane to hit the Bahamas since records began in 1851. It was a devastating blow for a country where tourism accounts for 60% of the gross domestic product (the most of any Caribbean nation).

More than three months later, the country is still trying to return to normal. Grand Bahamas International Airport reopened to flights in late November while Marsh Harbour Airport on Great Abaco didn't reopen until Mid-December.

5. Delta ranked best airline in annual list; Frontier worst

Not a week goes by that we don't see some kind of ranking of U.S. and international airlines, sorting them according to factors like on-time performance statistics, family-friendliness or onboard water quality.

In April, Delta topped the 29th annual Airline Quality Rating, which took into account metrics like mishandled baggage, consumer complaints, on-time performance and involuntary denied boardings over the course of 2018.

The study, a joint research project of the W. Frank Barton School of Business at Wichita State University and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s Prescott, Arizona, campus, found that overall, the airline industry improved in every area but on-time performance, the most heavily weighted element. It also found that 2018 saw the lowest rate of bumped passengers, the lowest rate of mishandled baggage and the lowest rate of customer complaints for the industry since the study began in 1991.

Frontier's last-place finish was attributed to its poor on-time record (nearly one out every four flights was delayed), lackluster cabin features and high rate of customer complaints.

4. United Airlines passenger stung by scorpion on flight to Atlanta

United might want to beef up their pest patrol efforts after passengers on a June flight from Venice to Newark discovered their plane was infested with ants. A scorpion bit a woman on a December flight from San Francisco to Atlanta, giving us ideas for a sequel to the 2006 Samuel L. Jackson movie "Snakes on a Plane."

3. Shark attack: California student killed by trio of sharks in the Bahamas

Hurricane Dorian wasn't the only sad story in the Bahamas in 2019. In June, California resident and Loyola Marymount University student Jordan Lindsey, 21, was attacked by three sharks while snorkeling with her family near Rose Island.

Officials said her arms, legs and buttocks were bitten and her right arm was severed. She was taken to a local hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

“There was no medical attention provided to Jordan,” the Lindsey family said later in a statement. “They had no first aid kit – no basic supplies for any type of injury. It felt like a lifetime as they waited for a boat to arrive.”

The family called on tour companies to change their safety protocols and tourists to be more aware to “ensure a tragedy like this does not happen again.”

2. Why economy passengers should stop reclining their seats

If you're a regular reader of travel columnist Christopher Elliott, you know he has some strongly held convictions about how airlines treat passengers – especially those sitting in economy – and how those passengers treat each other.

In a November column, he argued that with airlines giving passengers as little as 28 inches of legroom, "Reclining your airline seat is unacceptable because we're officially out of space. It's rude – and it's wrong."

Plus, as he noted, "If you recline your airplane seat, you'll probably end up in someone's lap. Literally."

1. Woman gives birth on American Airlines jetway

An American Airlines flight landed with an extra passenger the day before Thanksgiving when Nereida Araujo gave birth to a healthy baby girl on the jetway of Flight 868, after landing in Charlotte, North Carolina, from Tampa, Florida.

"Baby Sky decided to enter the world on a plane," Araujo wrote on Facebook. "Mommi (sic) handled it well thanks to everybody who assisted us with love & care."

For those wondering why she was flying at all, Charlotte TV station WSOC reported Araujo was 38 weeks pregnant and cleared to fly by the airline and her doctor.

Sky wasn't the only airplane baby of 2019: In February, an expectant mother gave birth to a baby boy thousands of feet in the air on a JetBlue flight from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The birth of the airline's "youngest customer to date" coincidentally happened on a plane named "Born To Be Blue."

Dishonorable mention: The guy who claimed he had a plane to himself

Filmmaker Vincent Peone went viral in August when he documented what it was like to have a Delta plane all to himself – a rarity in this age of overbooked flights. But it was too good to be true: It turned out the plane departed without him.

Three days later, he broke his silence, tweeting, "The story took off fast, but the plane did not."

He wrote, "My video is 100% true… and then I stopped filming. After the private jet broke down again with mechanical problems, I took a normal one the next morning. The footage I have tells a short, funny and positive story – because those are the kind of stories I like to tell. I make comedy!"

The media outlets who reported the story weren't amused when Peone went radio silent for several days after the initial story, refusing to answer questions after the truth got out.

Contributing: Dawn Gilbertson, David Oliver, Julia Thompson, Morgan Hines, Hannah Yasharoff

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: USA TODAY's top 10 Travel stories of 2019: The stories you cared about