While having a difficult flight (one of those rare ones), I noticed some things that passengers do that are totally annoying, yet very preventable. Normally my blog entries are of a more positive nature, but after getting screwed over by China Eastern Airlines (I’ll save that for later), I thought to release a bit by writing this in hopes some of you out there who may be offenders, can avoid doing some of these thing in the future.

Without further ado, here is my list of the top seven things that airline passengers do which annoy the hell out of me (and many other passengers for that matter):

1.  While boarding the Plane, you leave your big backpack on and/or you carry a side bag and proceed to ignorantly hit everyone in their heads and shoulders as you make your way down the aisle to your seat. I’m not sure why you don’t realize that you’re not the only one on the plane or if you’re so self involved that you don’t realize your bag is hitting people in the head but please stop. Now.

2.  When boarding is being called, you ignore the fact that your group or section number has not yet been called, rush the podium, and push people out of the way to get to the gate/tunnel. Here’s some news for you: we’re all going to the same place. The point of boarding in sections is to make it more organized and by budding and being pushy you’re disrupting the order.   Nothing will happen if you wait until your turn.

3.  You sit in the wrong seat either carelessly or on purpose (99% of the time you take someone’s window seat), and then when the passenger entitled to the set comes along, you ask him if it’s okay if you still sit there.   I see this one frequently, especially with a lot of the Chinese passengers who play dumb thinking if they smile and nod at you long enough, you’ll give up and go away.

I’ve let this happen to me a couple of times. The most regrettable time was a trip from Los Angeles to Toronto. I wisely planned ahead (unlike some people), and requested a window seat as I much prefer them for flights longer than a couple of hours. A few minutes into the flight some Swiss guy approaches me asking if I would swap seats with him (he had a middle seat), because he wants to sit with his wife who was sitting next to me. Back then, I didn’t like saying “no” to people so of course, I said “yes”. Inconvenient? Hell yeah. For one, my carry-on was now going to be 20 rows behind me when the plane landed which means I’d have to wait to be the last guy off the plane. What was worse, when I got to my new seat, it turned out the TV at the seat wasn’t working. #igotscrewed

Look at your ticket, sit in your seat, and leave everyone the hell alone if you didn’t plan in advance.

4.  You fart nonstop thinking no one will be able to either smell it or figure out that you were the source. Stop. Please. You’re gassing out the entire plane to the extent the oxygen masks will deploy. Biologically it is true that you will need to fart much more when you fly due to the air pressure changes. Some of the seats do seem to absorb the smell more than say if you weren’t in a plane at all, but we know who you are and we’re asking you to stop spraying us with your nerve gas.

 5.  You recline your seat all the way back before the plane takes off, and even leave it like that when drinks are served. Yes, the flight attendant will ask you to put it straight, but you seem to forget that there’s a human behind you whose knees are getting smashed and they can’t lean over to eat or drink because your seat is pushing into their head. Be a little courteous, especially in this era of airlines cramming as many people as possible into planes with hardly any space between seats.

6.  When you sneeze or cough, you don’t cover your mouth/nose. Do you realize that when you sneeze, the stuff coming out of your mouth is literally flying out at over 100 km/h? In the enclosed cabin, you’re basically spitting and sneezing into everyone else’s face, drinks, and food. Airlines claim that they use hospital grade filters in the cabin, that doesn’t stop your spray from infecting everyone.

 7.  Because you’re either too tall, wide, fat, or any combination of these things, you proceed to occupy everyone else’s seat space. What do I mean? You decide to stick your legs through the foot space in front of my seat instead of yours!! Sorry, but in economy there’s hardly enough leg and foot space to go around, so when you do that, where the hell do you expect me to put my feet? Or perhaps instead of trying to share the armrest, you overtake the entire thing with half your body overflowing into my seat area. Totally unacceptable. I should not have to suffer because you do not fit. Please don’t make your problem everyone else’s.

So that’s the list…for now. I’m sure I’ll find something to gripe about in the next couple of weeks. In the interim, if you’re not for us, you’re against us. Basically that means that if you’re doing any of these things, you’re probably pissing off some more conscientious people around you and when you’re travelling, that’s never a good thing. The more we work together, the better everyone’s adventures will be!

Wheels up.

AB3, BIB, MBA, JD
"Be kind. Have fun. Enjoy life."