Most of us know the sometimes claustrophobic and uncomfortable crush of flying. It's not always fun to be crammed into a metal tube careening through the sky with strangers all over the world, but hey, how else are we supposed to get to Hawaii or Grandma's Thanksgiving on time? When it comes to these situations its best that all involved try to be polite and courteous to passengers and staff. Unfortunately, the people in these stories didn't get the memo or just left their manners back in the storage bin. Beware of the skies, they're chock full of entitled morons. Content has been edited for clarity.
Bottoms Up From Here To Eternity
“One day, I was heading to the plane and I get a call from the ramp agent saying we need to have the police come. I immediately think, ‘Great, one of those days huh?’ and rush there. When I arrive, everything seems ok, however the closer I get to the doors, I can hear louder and louder screaming. I look inside and I see the cabin crew all in the first row watching the rear of the plane where four cops are trying to handle some guy resisting arrest and shouting with everything he has in his lungs. I kid you not, it took them almost 10 minutes to be able to take him out of the aircraft and he still wouldn’t shut up, so I asked the cabin crew for the report I had to submit to my manager. Here’s what I read:
Passenger seemed very kind and very well-behaved until lunch time. He requested a second meal and, since we had some spare and he was very kind, we gave him one. He thanked my colleague, then took the bag from the overhead bin and pulled out 3 bottles. He drank as much as he could from the first one in a single sip, then he opened the other 2 and poured them all over his head, spilling of course some on the passengers next to him. My colleagues were in shock as they asked him what he was doing and to move to the back, which he agreed to, and then he pulled another bottle from the bag and drank some more. At that point, he became an uncontrollable mess of a shouting inebriated man, saying the worst things about our airline and how happy he was to ruin our flight.
And as I went to check his name, I immediately remember another report I had to submit about this guy: a few months prior to this pleasant display of mannerism, he lied to me about the breed of his dog when I booked his ticket and the cargo hold. I couldn’t know at the time of course, I only found out once he came to check-in counter and I asked the documents for the dog: turned out it was prohibited in the country he was going to, so he was rejected the check-in unless he left his dog to his relatives and flew alone.
He looked at me, smiling then shouted:
‘I WILL CURSE YOU FROM HERE TO ETERNITY.’
Well then, I admire you for your dedication kind sir.”
This Crummy Passenger Is Selfishness Defined
“I’m pretty tall, with most of the length in my legs, and I fly a lot, so I’ve run into a pain or two. Almost every plane I get on, my knees are already touching the seat in front of me. If the person in front of me reclines, the only way for me to sit is to straighten out my legs and shoot them underneath the seat in front of me.
I was probably 16 years old and the guy in front of me couldn’t have been more than 24. He reclined his seat, practically hitting me in the chest. I could smell his hair, he was that close. We asked him to put the seat up a bit, but he declined. The seat was clearly broken and reclined a good six inches past the other seats in his row, so we called over the flight attendant. She also saw the problem and asked him to put his seat up, and told him it was broken. HE SAID NO, AND SHE SAID THERE WAS NOTHING ELSE SHE COULD DO!
Great, thanks. Luckily my mom is the ‘pack everything you may need on a plane’ type, so I got an idea. I started eating pretzels with my mouth wide open and got crumbs all over his head and shoulders. He didn’t notice until the crumbs were bouncing off his shoulder and into his lap. It was gross. He finally turned around with a look of disgust and asked me to stop. I got great pleasure in telling him no and showing him the rest of the bag of pretzels I had to eat over him.
He put the seat up after that.”
If It Weren’t For This Flight Attendant It Would’ve Been A Long Flight To London
“I somewhat live on a plane, flying 200k+ miles a year.
I was on a flight from Singapore to London where they give out pajamas. A group of four South Africans that were getting toasted at the lounge stumble onboard and start acting like knobs to the FAs, demanding all sorts of stuff. Somehow the crew didn’t turn them off and the plane took off. After take off, two of the geezers go and get changed in to the PJs in the toilets and come back just wearing the bottoms and no top, sit back in their seats and continue drinking.
The chief FA came along and spoke to them after they argued with an FA about putting their shirts on. They argued with him. So then the freakin’ captain came down and tore them a new one. It was brilliant, we’d have all clapped but we didn’t want them to get angry with us.
The crew handled it brilliantly and the captain gave us all 40,000 frequent flyer points for the disturbance (thank you Qantas).”
It’s Called “Plane Etiquette,” Look It Up, Sweetie
“I am a college student, and thus naturally, people (especially couples with babies) think that it would be much easier to force me into switching seats.
There was this one time I was on a really long flight from Chicago to India. I usually never haggle much about seats and am pretty cool about switching if people ask me to. This time I was fortunate enough to get one of those front seats with a lot of legroom. I knew this seemed too good to be true, and at any moment, a couple with a baby would ‘request’ the seat.
Needless to say, minutes later, this couple came up to me (with the flight attendant) asking me to switch because they had a baby and the father was sitting next to me. The mother had a middle seat way back into the plane for a very long flight. I was hesitant, but with three people awkwardly waiting for me to say yes, I eventually caved.
As I was moving my stuff, one of my small empty plastic bottles fell from my bag and nearly hit the father. Now, you have to understand this was one of those light plastic water bottles that could barely hurt if you tried to hit someone with it let alone when it falls from the bag. But for some reason, that angered the father into believing that it could have somehow seriously injured their baby. Even after apologizing to him for a solid minute, he kept shouting at me about how careless I was and that I need to learn plane etiquette.
That just did it for me. I told him that I was no longer comfortable with the switch and just went back to my seat and pretended to fall asleep. He tried his best to annoy me (fighting me on the hand rest and making it hard for me to move around), but I never felt so good about my ‘plane etiquette.'”
Some People Are Are Just More Than Entitled
“I was on a Vegas to Boston flight when a passenger passed away in his sleep. The whole situation was heartbreaking and the flight attendants were clearly shaken. We stopped in NY for emergency personnel to attend to him. The whole process was very quick and and the pilot and staff handled it like champs. Just as we were about to take off, a guy in the front row asks the attendant if we would all get free drinks due to the inconvenience. I’ve never wanted to yell at a stranger so much in my life. The next day, I got an email from the airline with a $50 voucher to apologize. I didn’t want it nor expect it and wondered if it happened because that entitled idiot complained about the diversion. I did tweet the airline to compliment the staff on their handling of the situation – they deserved it.”
Okay, Now This Guy Is Just Being Ignorant
“One time on a flight, I had a slight cold and the air was pretty dry, so I was coughing a lot. I was sitting in a middle seat so I didn’t want to drink too much water and have to constantly get up to pee, so I resolved to just coughing into my scarf, trying to keep the noise and disturbance to a minimum. Two rows in front of me, I see a gentleman staring at me every single time I cough.
Now, I understand that you don’t want to be stuck in a limited space with someone sick… but if you’re flying in the winter, sick passengers is something you’re going to have to risk. And again, I was being very careful to cough into my scarf or suppress it so as to not disturb the people around me.
He spends the whole 3 hour flights staring at me and muttering at me but I just ignore it. When the plane finally lands and we are getting off, I see him up ahead, standing to the side, talking to a flight attendant.
And he is talking to the flight attendant, he is glancing at me and saying, ‘How can you let those type of people on the plane? They could have SARS or something.’ I’m Asian. The flight attendant is just smiling and nodding but I can tell she’s just ignoring him like I was.
I was pretty offended he thought I had SARS just because I was Asian and coughing. At baggage claims, I made sure to stand near him and cough without covering my mouth.”
This Flight Attendant Had The Last Laugh On This Piece Of Work
“I once got stranded at Newark for 22 hours(!) after our flight had an unfixable fault and was cancelled late at night. We got put up in a hotel but understandably by the time the new flight rolled around (earliest they could fit in a new flight), everyone was quite tired and agitated.
As we are waiting to board the new flight, the flight attendant announces they would be boarding people with additional needs and families with young children first, followed by first class, then premium economy etc etc. All pretty standard stuff, obviously it can take a bit longer for people in wheelchairs to board so makes sense for them to go on first – it’s common on most airlines I believe.
Anyway this business dude races to the front of the crowd and starts yelling at the attendant, saying it was already DISGUSTING that he had lost a day due to their INCOMPETENCE and now he had to WAIT even longer despite being a first class passenger and paying $$$$ every year to fly with them!!
The worst part is he’s looking at others in the crowd to back him up, like it’s perfectly reasonable to scream at this woman who like us had also been stranded and had most likely had very little sleep, and was doing her best to do her job in this difficult situation.
But she was awesome, without missing a beat she smiled and nodded and said ok sir, then made a big point of leaning into her mic and telling the waiting line of people in wheelchairs and mothers with babies that this gentleman needed to board before them and could they please wait.
Literally every single person at the gate is looking at this guy with disgust as he tries to backtrack and say he doesn’t mind waiting for the first group, but the attendant says no no you made yourself quite clear – let’s get you boarded, the others will have to wait. He is humiliated as he sheepishly walks by. She handled it perfectly.”
Those Don’t Go In The Toilet, Sir
“I used to work as an aircraft mechanic a couple of years ago.
I was doing some work for my friend’s handling company at the local airport, servicing the private jets that came through. There was this one guy who’d fly through twice a week, every Monday and Friday. Typical Business Guy, he never said much. The aircraft had just came back from a lengthy flight and the toilets needed servicing as it had been a few days since it’d been done according to the log book. An item had become stuck in the pipes, normally what I’d do would be to pressurize the system on the ground with the ramp guys and just flush it, but this guy didn’t want us to do that for some reason. He was being really sketchy and telling us to ‘just leave it as his ‘guys were gonna sort it out…’ So naturally, I thought forget you, I’m the engineer here I’m gonna do it my way and with some gentle persuasion of a giant hoover the blockage came out into the truck. We fished it out the other end, it was at least 10 Trojan rubbers. Instead of throwing them in the waste bin, this guy had been flushing them down the toilet. They just got more and more clogged to the point where the system wouldn’t pressurize and it was unusable.
I mean, it’s none of my business what he does on his plane but he complained about me, said I’d put them there and called me everything under the sun. If you don’t wanna feel embarrassed, then don’t do it.”
“I’m Sorry, I Can’t Fix This Right Now”
“I was (still am, but working on it) a fat guy. My new employer sent me out to the UK. Admittedly, I understand that being fat makes flying with me a pain to deal with (at the time 5’6” and like 370). To my benefit, though, I do try and squeeze myself into a corner or out into the aisle. I do whatever I can to minimize the frustration of my neighbor. I don’t put the seat back. I don’t use the table. I ask if they want the window raised or lowered (if I’m a window seat). I don’t talk, fart, eat, get up to use the restroom (I’m actually too scared I would get stuck). Essentially, I understand I suck to fly with and I do my absolute best to minimize your hatred of me, which I admittedly deserve.
To that end, however, I remember flying out to Heathrow, and about 20 minutes into the air, the guy looks over at me and says, ‘This isn’t going to work.’
I looked at him back and said, ‘I’m sorry?’
He stated, ‘Look, this isn’t going to be a comfortable flight for either of us, one of us needs to move,’ and looked pointedly at me.
I told him, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t fix this right now.’
So he hit the light and called out, ‘Excuse me, ma’am,’ to the flight attendant at the front of the class cabin. She came back and he said as loudly as he could without actually shouting, ‘Look, I have a problem with this guy here, one of us needs to move, and it should be him.’
To her credit, she surveyed the cabin and saw only middle row seats were available and seemed to understand the situation. ‘Sir, you may move to any of these open seats,’ looking at him.
I don’t enjoy being ‘that guy.’ I won’t lie, I took up more than my fair share and couldn’t pay for the second seat: it was a business trip. The company would only buy one ticket. It was international and I had just switched jobs and couldn’t afford an international flight ticket. Had I refused, I’d have lost the job.
I’m working on the whole health thing. As for being treated with respect: One thing I learned is that no one deserves anything. Got to the UK and I swear it felt like I was the fattest dude in all of Reading. You could feel the animosity of some of the Brits as they saw my fat American self walking around London. LOL, I’m pretty sure a few people were taking pictures to laugh at. It is what it is.””
Take This Trash And Shove It
“Former flight attendant here.
I remember flying into SFO and going through the final walkthrough-asking everyone to wake up, buckle up, headrests forward, tray tables up, and collect trash. Halfway through, the pilot said, ‘Flight attendants, be seated immediately,’ which indicates a lot of upcoming turbulence.
So I quickly started to trot through with my trash bag bag to my jump seat when a man yelled, ‘HEY!’ I was a few rows past him and he had his cup and wet napkin in his hand. I quickly said, ‘I have to sit down,’ and turned back towards the back galley.
I then felt something hit me. I looked back and he had thrown his trash at me and was staring at me like the little moron he was. I heard a few people gasp and everyone in the last eight rows or so was tuned in to the drama. I pick up the trash, walked over to his row, and said, ‘I am sorry, I cannot take trash right now. The pilot has indicated that I need to sit down,’ and tossed the trash back on his lap.
He just kind of stared at me with a defiant look in his face and held out the trash again as if I was going to take it. I turned and left and I heard him yell a few more times but he didn’t throw anything.
I have had a lot of ridiculous passengers before but for some reason, that one sticks out.”
Something Wasn’t Right With This Family
“Mid – 90s. There was this kid in customs (Toronto to Houston flight) who was going nuts. He driving people crazy in the departure area. On the flight, he had a full-sized metal Tonka truck that he was running up and down the aisle with. He smacked me on the head and nearly hit my mom in front of me. I grabbed it before he could hit my very frail and on blood thinners Mom. I gave it to a crew member who refused to give it back to the family.
The family refused to seat him, until it was announced that there would be no food or beverage service until the aisle was cleared. Another woman grabbed the kid and returned him to his family. They let him run loose again as soon as service was over. Finally, someone from the cockpit had to come back and tell the family we couldn’t start the landing approach until the brat was in his seat. They put him in his seat – screaming bloody murder. As soon as descent started they let him up and he was running up and down the aisle as we landed.
The family was so dense that when the captain ordered everyone to stay in their seats and that only families with small children would be allowed to deplane at first – they smirked their way down the aisle. Mom walked with a cane, and the crush getting off was hard for her. Since we were home we just waited till the aisles were clear. When we got off, you could hear the kid screaming half way down the tarmac. A police officer was holding him and the rest of the family were in handcuffs.”
Out Of The Way! I’m A Nanny!
“I was a kid flying out to Utah to start my teen tour. About halfway through the flight (departing out of NY) the captain got on the speaker to announce an engine had failed and we needed to make an emergency landing in Chicago. Needless to say, we got a little concerned.
Except for one passenger, who stormed up to the flight attendant and explained she was a nanny and needed to get to Utah to attend to the children she took care of. I’m not exactly sure what she was hoping, that the pilot, upon hearing that a babysitter was on board would risk the lives of everyone to fly us all through, or that the flight attendant would be so moved by this story that she would climb out on the wing and repair the engine mid-flight.
Alas, there was no emergency jet pack to give this passenger to blast away from the plane to get to Utah on time, and she was told to sit down.”
THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN
“I was probably that guy. I was flying back from an overseas vacation, as were most of the other people on the plane. Very early flight. Over international waters, they try to sell you all sorts of duty-free stuff like perfume and bottles. And also credit cards. They’d turn the PA system on blast and every 15-20 minutes or so would bother the whole plane by trying to sell this junk.
Now, it’s about 6:30am and I’m rocking the worst hangover of my life and running on about 3 hours of sleep. All I wanted to do was sleep on the flight on the way home, and looking around the plane, I can assume that most everyone else was in a similar situation.
After about the 5th or 6th time of being woken up by these loud flight attendants, I called one over and said something like ‘Okay, you’ve already advertised the duty-free perfume and stuff three times and already told us about the credit card deal three times. Can you please knock it off so we can get some rest?’ They kept doing it. I asked again. They kept doing it.
Finally, I hit my breaking point when they tried to sign us up for a credit card for the 8th freaking time and yelled ‘SHUT THE HECK UP ALREADY!’
Then the rest of the plane chimed in… ‘Yeah, shut the heck up!’ and ‘We’re trying to sleep,’ and ‘Nobody wants the dang credit card.’ For the rest of the flight, every time they said anything over the PA system, more and more people joined in telling them to shut up. Toward the end of the flight, they tried the credit card thing one last time. The PA system made a ding noise every time they turned it on before they started speaking. So the PA goes DING and this dude in the back of the plane says ‘ONE, TWO, THREE!’ then the whole plane yells ‘SHUT THE HECK UP!'”