Flight Attendant forum ‘A Fly Guy’s Cabin Crew Lounge’ has employees talking about how they keep customers from disturbing them, including just asking the pilots to put the seat belt sign on when there’s no turbulence expected.
Flight attendants sometimes call and ask the pilots to put on the seatbelt sign cause they want an annoying passenger to leave them alone…
So if you spent any time disturbing crew during a break in the galley or doing your stretches in their space, you might have inspired a seatbelt sign in your honor.
Flight attendants are chiming in with agreement,
“Its passive-aggressive, but it works”
“I will always call to the other end of the plane for them to save me”
“Yup. Affirmative. Lol.”
“Guilty!!!”
“But of course”
I suppose subtly trying to keep passengers in their seats and away from crew is better than the more blatant approach of building your own makeshift seatbelt barrier to block customer access to the galley as some American Airlines flight attendants have been known to do.
Credit: One Mile at a Time
To be fair, of course, some airlines like American have taken away almost all the work space in the galleys of their aircraft.
They’ve even moved lavatories into what used to be the area flight attendants worked and put a flight attendant jumpseat on one of the lavatory doors to make room, so that flight attendants have “nowhere to go other than stand in the aisle with all the other passengers looking to use the toilet.”
Earlier this month I wrote about flight attendants conspiring with their pilots to manufacture turbulence as an excuse so that they wouldn’t have to provide service.
We heard them agree that they would blame it on the weather. The flight attendants even asked if the pilots would announce it so they didn’t get the blowback. The pilots agreed to do it. Sure enough before we ever took off they announced it being because of the weather
— Chris Widener (@ChrisWidener) June 7, 2026
Passengers can be annoying! But when your customer-facing staff are scheming to avoid dealing with customers, that’s a broader cultural problem, and it exists at many airlines. It also comes back to:
- Whether flight attendants are only there for safety duties or to provide customer service
- Whether customer service roles are being monitored or rewarded
- Whether there’s sufficient real world training in actually dealing with customers, or if everyone is left to their own devices to figure out how to manage it.
With most U.S. carriers, the answers to – or the ambiguity in – the questions explain why crew try to keep everyone in their seats, avoid service when possible, and just make it through the flight undisturbed. While there are many fantastic flight attendants, they’re often fantastic because of their own drive and motivation rather than the training, incentives, and structures laid out by management. That’s why when this doesn’t shine through, it’s really the fault of management that passengers aren’t the reason their cabin crew are there, but are seen as an impediment to their jobs.
The seatbelt sign is a suggestion unless I here the pilot tell flight attendants to take their seats and they listen. If flight attendants can walk the aisles, so can I.
Air travel today has largely become a “best of the worst” experience. I’ve seen plenty of passengers who test everyone’s patience, so I don’t discount how difficult that job can be on a daily basis.
But if the seatbelt sign is being used as a tool to avoid doing the job, that crosses a line. It’s one thing to manage disruptive behavior—it’s another to manipulate a safety mechanism for convenience. That erodes trust, even if it only happens occasionally.
The reality is the job comes with the environment—long days in a confined space with a wide range of personalities. Dealing with that is part of the role. And when someone is being genuinely disruptive, there are straightforward, professional ways to handle it: set boundaries, direct them back to their seat, and move on.
Most passengers understand that crews have a tough job and are willing to give grace. What they don’t respond well to is feeling like the system is being worked against them.
What I find with most young flight attendants do a very slow walk of service, specifically in the premium cabin. Some of it is on purpose. Some of it is that they are disorganized and haven’t been trained properly.
If you took these same flight attendants and drop kicked them into 1985 where every passenger in coach on a LGA/ORD (or any East Coast city/ORD) flight got a beverage service and a hot meal service no one in that cabin would get any food and half might get a beverage.
@Alex — Same goes for ‘Airplane’ mode, but, roaming charges aren’t great either.
@D Fray — Nice use of an LLM. At least, AI seems to get the nuance. Psh.
@George Nathan Romey — Nice attempt at propagating fake unnecessary generational warfare.
Domestically you might not even see them until after the first hour. There they are with the carts with drinks and snacks. Now if you fly internationally lets say to Europe from the United States, as soon as the sterile period is over up they go. Service starts right away. Sometimes in bumpy conditions. They don’t care. It’s all about finishing as fast as they can and then cabin lights off while they all cycle through their rest periods. Just flew the other night on a 1+45 flight. Little bit of chop, FA’s announced no service for the flight. Meanwhile people in the cabin going to the restroom and such. F/A’s in the back galley playing with their cell phones. After that little bit of light chop, mostly smooth flight. Professional Candy Crush players.
@Coffee Please — Which airlines are you flying? AA, B6, DL, UA are my regulars, and I ‘see’ crew plenty, during boarding, upon reaching cruising altitude, and through de-planing, long-haul, short-haul, when up-front, and when in-back, all the above. This is just becoming a ‘FA-bashing’ session…
@1990
Trust me I have lots of experience. My most recent was with DAL and AA. DAL flight was the shortens of the three and provided excellent service from the flight deck to the F/A’s. AA’s for the most part were professional cell phone junkies.
@Coffee Please — Oh, boy… @Tim Dunn will be pleased to hear this! And, because something good happened involving Delta, and something bad happened involving a competitor, your experiences will be considered cold, hard “data,” not mere anecdotes.
Have personally witnessed a big time drop in “drive and motivation” amongst SOUTHWEST’s flight attendants, so sad.
@Doc423 — Is that because management is now beholden to the equivalent of private equity, or because ‘hurr, durr… workers-lazy’… /s
Coffee Please…how can I spot someone who claims they fly all the time but actually has flown about one flight in the last five years? That answer would be Cell Phones. I love all the comments about flight attendants on their cell phones all the time. You tell me what I’m talking about if you can actually figure it out.
@Flyer1
You have no idea.
the article seems to forget one element.. the entitled passengers on board.. specifically 2 groups.
sports fans and cruise people. they tend to want to mingle in the aisle the entire flight , getting in the way of crew duties, ignoring that other passengers would like some service too. it’s when they won’t sit down that steps need to be taken.
SWA. It’s my general expectation the “announcement” is coming before takeoff. FAs are primarily there to sit. How can they be here “primarily for your safety” if they do not leave the front or back of the aircraft?
@ coffee please, just want to check, You do know they now use company cell phones for just about everything onboard.. checking special meals, pre- orders, taking payments, checking connections.. your elite status, their schedules, allergens in the food… ??
Modern commercial airliners are statistically safer than escalators, yet flight attendants have consistently been brainwashed into believing that they are life-saving miracle workers “primarily there for safety.” The reality is that they are primarily flying waitstaff. In the recent Air Canada accident at LGA, everyone who survived the initial impact managed to get off the airplane without a flight attendant barking orders at them. I have total respect for flight attendants just as I do for all waitstaff. But they are not first responders on the level of those who rush into burning homes, no matter how much they may wish to think of themselves in those terms.
@Mike Hunt — “I have total respect for…” *proceeds to disrespect them*
Please, explicitly tell your crews exactly how you feel about them, preferably while boarding, and again before beverage and/or meal services. Then, if they even let you stay on that flight, please do eat/drink up! Yum!
@alex…Exactly!!! Thank you!!!
@Mike Hunt…I can see it now. 250 people onboard an 8 hour flight, no flight attendants and something goes wrong at 35,000ft. Mike to the rescue. Bahahahaha!!!
Considering that people have to use the rest room this is more than just an inconvenience.
If the airlines were smart they would have “mystery shoppers” to occasionally check crew performance and also to look for this issue (by comparing weather data/reports after the flight).
And this seems to be a US airline thing because since flying almost exclusively on non-US carriers with direct long haul flight to the US cities I need to get to I haven’t even had to think about these kinds of shenanigans.
@ EndlosLuft -+1. If pax need to use the lav and the light is on for a bogus reason like this, it’s going to train travelers to just ignore it. And that’s not safe for anyone long term. And you’re 100% right about non-US carriers. Particularly EU flights, jeez the seatbelt sign is generally off like 5 mins after takeoff.
FACT: It is written into the American Airlines union contract that “ample time will be given during every flight for crew members to practice the life saving skills embedded into avionic tutorials such as Candy Crush..”
So can you actually go to the bathroom if the seat belt sign is on, you’re not taking off or landing, and there’s no turbulence? People do all the time and I’ve never seen them stopped.
@1990 Conspiracy Theorist — To be fair, turning a three-row blockade of ‘cruise people’ into wrapped candies and making them disappear requires tactical skill. See Section 4, Clause B. Don’t minimize the training!