A New Age of Plane Etiquette

The topic has been beaten to death of late, but for someone who spends a fair amount of time on a plane, I felt I needed to chime in and have a little bit of a rant. I am not sure what changes once people enter an airport or when the cabin door of an aircraft closes, but it’s like they forget how to be normal members of society. Big name blogs and travel magazines have all had numerous opinion based articles about things like seat reclining rules, clapping when landing, and a ton of other topics, like how you shouldn’t clip your toenails mid-flight, in case you were thinking about it. I will go ahead a pick a couple of my favorites to comment on.

Clapping When Landing

Find me something more absolutely ridiculous than clapping when the plane lands. I have never ever understood this, and when it happens, the sound of those stupid smacking hands is like nails on a chalkboard.

Were you so utterly amazed and flabbergasted to the point of celebration that the plane landed? What in the hell did you think was going to happen? The whole purpose of the flight is to land. I want to ask these people, do you routinely get excited when other things that are supposed to happen, happen? Do you cheer when money comes out of the ATM? Actually, thats probably a poor example. I may have been guilty of that one.

I imagine these landing clappers in an Uber or a taxi on their way to a predetermined destination. The driver follows his GPS and right when they are about to arrive… an eruption of applause from the back seat. The landing clapper continues, “You did it uber man, you finished your job and the outcome is EXACTLY as it should have been. Fantastic stuff! Thank you!”

I hope just one landing clapper reads this and feels stupid. Please tell all the members of your landing clapper clan to stop. If you feel the need to commend the pilots and/or the flight crew on a job well done, do it on your own as you are exiting the plane.

I personally will never be a clapper no matter what, but I guess to be fair there are a couple rare situations where it can be at least tolerated. If the pilot puts the plane down in a nasty cross wind, or in near zero visibility, after a go-around, or maybe after a long delay circling the airport. Other than that, there is no need to clap for a routine landing.

Reclining Your Seat

The fact that this has even become a debate or a question bothers me. It’s straight forward stuff. If the airlines didn’t expect you to recline they wouldn’t give the option. Spirit Airlines for example doesn’t give you the option to recline. They don’t give you any options onboard really, except for contemplating suicide.

I’ll keep this one simple – I am going to recline my seat to the absolute maximum allowable pitch possible. I am going to smash that button on the arm rest down as hard as I can and lean back like my life depends on it, just to make sure I get every single inch of space.

Alright alright, I am not a complete monster I will at least check to make sure you aren’t eating or have a laptop out. Seriously though, when did reclining your seat offend so many people. The seats on todays planes are tight and uncomfortable as it is. At least allow me, and the other passengers, to enjoy those 2 to 3 more inches that we paid for. Really I just think of it as dominoes – if I recline my seat, you recline yours and so on down the line. No one is offended, we are all comfortable and have equal space. Except for the idiot that booked the first exit row because everyone knows that seat doesn’t recline.

Emotional Support Animals

Let me start by saying that I completely understand and I am all for the use of service animals. I have seen first hand the positive effects of emotional support dogs and the amount of good they can do. However, I think it is safe to say people are starting to use the term “service animal” loosely and its getting a bit out of hand.

Recently we took a flight from Newark to West Palm Beach (PBI) where there had to be at least 25 dogs on the plane, in the cabin. It seemed that every other person that boarded had some half tranquilized dog in their arms, leash dragging down the aisle behind them. Just out of sheer curiosity I asked one of the passengers, clearly a New York area snowbird heading south, how she was able to bring a dog on the flight without a carrier. The response? You guessed it… emotional support animal. Now I don’t want to judge, but when an A320 holds roughly 180 passengers and 25 of them have support dogs, you’re talking about 14% of the plane being emotionally unstable. A scary statistic, but more likely a whole bunch of liars.

The most famous incident of late was some wacko claiming she needed her emotional support peacock on the flight. I am no doctor, but if you are in need of an exotic bird to comfort you full time, you should probably instead think about pharmaceutical drugs – or a padded room.

The Boarding Process

The boarding process of a plane is the most simple process known to mankind, that mankind just cannot figure out. We are at the point now where airlines are ditching numbers and going with colors to try and help expedite the process along. Counting numbers 1 through 4 was just too much for the air traveling population. The order of those 4 digits, 1-2-3-4, is just such a complicated concept to grasp that the airlines figured, screw it – let’s go to colors! That’s scary we have to dumb it down to this level.

How about those sneaks who pretend they didn’t hear the announcement correctly and board with the children or people requiring extra assistance. This drives me absolutely insane. The kicker is they ALWAYS get away with it. I don’t care what airport, in what country there is always someone trying to pull this off and the gate agent always just lets them go. I don’t get it. The dialogue must be something like, “Sir, we are only boarding small children and people who need some extra time, but I’ll let you go this just this once since you walked all of 10 feet and are completely bullshitting me. Enjoy the flight.” This needs to stop. We as fellow passengers have to start calling these people out.

Lastly, the gate blockers. They almost always have the last boarding number but insist on standing right in the middle of the entire boarding operation. Countless times I have heard my number called and have stood behind a random person I thought was on line. They aren’t moving. Then you politely ask, “Sir are you in line?” They respond ,”Oh no, I am waiting for my number to be called”. By that point they are on to the next boarding group and you missed your spot because of some gate blocker. It is just terrible. Please sit or stand well away from the gate until your number is called. It isn’t hard, it’s a kindergarten exercise.