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Some examples from "Say heading"

A short tube

This one happened at a Navy training squadron. After landing, the new pilot wrote a technical complaint about the A-7 that he had just been flying with. “Pilot relief tube too short.” (The pilot relief tube is a device that allows a male pilot to relieve himself in-flight after he has been drinking too much coffee before climbing into the cockpit for a long flight)

When Maintenance investigated the complaint, they found that the relief tube was tangled around the base of the stick. After the problem was corrected, the pilot's ego was damaged considerably by signing off the maintenance form like this: “Pilot relief tube found to be of sufficient length for technical personnel.”

Digital problems
 

Aviation authorities recently admitted to a near-disaster which occurred during testing aboard a new, fully digital jetliner. The incident in question took place while the aircraft was during cruise. The co-pilot was apparently entering new navigational data into the craft's INS (Inertial Navigation System) when he mistyped a code. The INS came back with 'Invalid PIN number selected' and returned the craft's weight and balance data to the astonished crew. “We tried several more times,” exclaimed  the Captain, “and every time it was the same thing. On the third try it said “Access violation, contact your credit institution if you believe there is an error.” At this point all the plane's controls froze and it refused to respond to our commands. We didn't know what to do, so we got on the radio. Fortunately the home-base could be reached and there they traced the problem to the ATM-6000 INS computer, which was a modified version of a computer used in the United States for bank transactions. “Essentially, the INS decided that the co-pilot was trying to rip-off someone and locked the controls”. The company computer-nerd then assured the crew that the system would automatically remove the restrictions at the start of the next banking day.

“We told him that we would be in the sea by then!” exclaimed the frustrated co-pilot.

A factory team then determined that manual control of the plane could be re-established if a crewmember went back to the tail-cone and operated the elevators manually. Fortunately the rudder had a backup mode and with the crewmember operating the elevator they would have some pitch control. The plane was able to safely land on a long runway, where the software was reloaded and the credit histories of all crewmembers thoroughly reviewed.

Single engine
 

A light twin had just landed on Runway 29. Missing the last turnoff onto Taxiway Delta, the pilot started to turn left onto Golf when the controller spoke up:

Tower: “N1234, that taxiway is approved for single-engine use only.”

N1234: “That’s okay, I’ll just shut down one engine.”