Air Travel Rant - Annoying Passengers

Usually when there are complaints to be made about travel, it will be to do with a provider whether it is a tour operator, tourist venue, airline or hotel.  Some of you may have seen my periodic twitter rants on travel complaints – instead, mine is directed at fellow air passengers.  In order, here are the five of the things I particularly find annoying.

1. Bare feet – as far as I am aware, no airlines that I have flown with have a policy on bare feet during flight.  They do however, mandate that foot wear must be worn for boarding or disembarking (not ‘de-planing’  – if this was to be an appropriate term, then getting on a plane would be called ‘planing’ - which joker came up with that moronic term! – apologies for the extra little rant on the side here.)  Imagine you have just reclined back in your seat and have just closed your eyes – all of a sudden you become aware of the pungent smell of foot odour.  Just because they have boarded from exotic places such as Bangkok or Singapore does not make the fruitiness of the flavor any more tolerable!  You then look down and see the distorted looking nails from chronic fungal infection, not to mention the peeling skin from tinea.  Apart from the assault on our visual and olfactory senses, you see these people put their foot up on their knee and see it touching the seat in front and side of the cabin smearing the foot love on the internal plane surfaces.  You then see the love metastasise as they climb over the two seats to reach the aisle to go to the toilet.

Lovely tinea of the feet

Lovely fungal nails

2. Legs apart syndrome.  Yes, this is the man with the hydrocele.  These men have pathologic scrotal swelling that necessitate them to sit with their legs apart so that they invade your personal space.  There is an unwritten rule that the airspace immediately in front of your seat is for your personal use.  Of course there could not be any other reason why somebody would sit with their legs so widely, would there?  To remedy this, it sometimes takes an applied equal and opposite force but eventually your fight to reclaim your airspace will prevail – as gross as it is to have such a large surface area of contact with a total stranger, just close your eyes and chant “Newton”

Hydocele is a good reason to have to sit with legs apart

3. The super halogen light effect – the cabin lights have been dimmed and all the windows have been closed except for the jerk across the seat row next to the window who decides to open it so he or she can read.  It’s like a super powerful halogen light that is shone on to a stunned kangaroo and is about to be shot.  During a night flight when trying to get some sleep, you can forget it.  Flight attendants can ask them to close the window but if passengers do not wish to, they will not go as far as instructing them to do so as it is not against the rules (airline dependent of course).

4. People who won’t shut (shout) up.  When you have trouble hearing, there is that natural tendency to speak louder.  When they natter for hours like they’re speaking into a mobile phone with poor reception.

Almost enough to make you re-think your support of gun control

5. People hogging the flight attendant.  You are trying to get the attention of the flight attendant who has been quarantined by passengers who don’t want to stop telling him or her about every detail of their holiday. 

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When there are no specific rules to say that something cannot be done, I have found flight attendants to often be reluctant to take action.  As much as you do not wish to have conflict, so do they.  For a growing number of airlines, they really don’t give a damn about your comfort, they just want to get to the end of their shift – another flight down before they reach their retirement work entitlements.

Generally, I can put up with crap from airlines, tour operators and hotels.  For the most part they either genuinely try to fix any problems that arise or are totally disingenuous about concern for your inconvenience and don’t give a damn (if you fly a budget airline, what do you expect?).  For selfish fellow passengers, I think it is time to make a stand and ask them to correct their behavior with the threat to shame them through social media – lets not put up with this crap anymore.  

What annoys you about fellow passengers?

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Since posting this blog piece less than 24 hours ago, I received this tweeted comment which I just had to share with you.  It makes you sick thinking that some poor punter will pick up this magazine that has had a foot smeared all over it.