Tag Archives for passengers.
A traveler woke to find her neighbor peeling nuts and scattering the shells across the cabin floor. What followed wasn’t a safety scare—it was a lesson in just how low some passengers let standards sink at 35,000 feet.
A flight attendant confiscated alcohol from two passengers, while another passenger on board the aircraft filmed. The two women had open mini-bottles that they’d brought on board themselves. They weren’t being discrete – they were cheersing across the aisle of what appears to be a United Airlines Boeing 757.
Here’s a new twist on the age old marriage proposal in the skies. A woman who met ‘her soulmate’ online 10 days earlier showed up at the Las Vegas airport to propose to him.
Since meeting they had video chatted every night, but they had never met in person. This would be their first time seeing each other in person – and he doesn’t know she’s coming.
Thai Airways pulled out a tape measure when the women checked in at the Bangkok airport. “She then pulled out a measuring tape and wrapped it around my daughter..moving her arms outstretched, before trying to do the same to me and [my other daughter]” the mother said.
There are all sorts of tales and frustrations around passengers crowding the boarding line. Those who line up early, blocking the way for passengers in early boarding groups, are sometimes derisively referred to as “gate lice.” The sort of passenger who doesn’t know the drill, that it isn’t time for them to board yet, is the once a year (at most) flyer sometimes referred to as a “kettle” (as in ‘Ma’ and Pa’ Kettle).
But Ms. Blumenthal turns this elitism on its head, offering us the platinum push off to describe the elite who knocks everyone out of the way as their boarding group is called. Her husband, she says, is a master.
The plot of Falling Down appears to re-create itself in Spanish, where a man is mad as hell and not going to take it anymore to borrow from another Hollywood classic. Is he frustrated by American Airlines? Raging against machines taking over simple tasks once employing people? Or frustrated by his own circumstance?
A man storms away from the desk at his gate, throws down the boarding group sign, where an American Airlines employee puts it back up. Meanwhile the passenger has taken off his shirt and allows his pants to sag. He grabs the reaches for the back of the employee’s neck. The employee goes about his business while the man rants in the gate area.
A many of the world’s airports it’s a long walk from check-in to the gate. Some of that delay is due to immigration and customs formalities, but at newer airports that also usually means walking through a maze designed to move you past as much high-end retail as possible. That’s because expensive retail generates big revenue for the airport.
Sometimes you start to think: there has to be a better way.
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
Passengers aren’t supposed to be able to board the wrong plane. Boarding passes are scanned at the gate. There’s a manifest — airlines know how many people are supposed to be onboard. When passengers are in the wrong seat, there’s usually another passenger assigned that will say something. But it happens. Occasionally one person, or a couple traveling together, wind up in the same city.
United Airlines introduced the first ‘non-smoking section’ on its planes in 1971. Smoking on US domestic flights was first banned in 1988 (for flights up to two hours) with all domestic and international flights required to be smoke-free by 2000. Since passengers sometimes disobey the law you’ll still find ashtrays in lavatories.
Usually though passengers aren’t so brazen as to just sit at their seat and light up. But our hero on a Spirit Airlines flight decided to throw caution to the wind. And it was captured on video.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
