We all hope for a smooth travel experience, but with airline passengers taking to the skies in record numbers these days, there’s a good chance we’ll encounter a few hiccups along our journey. Case in point: The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has reported an increase in unruly passenger incidents in recent years. And there are many other, often less serious passenger offenses that can make or break a flight. To find out which practices passengers find most irritating, we looked to a 2024 report from public opinion company YouGov. Here are the worst things you can do on an airplane, according to your fellow passengers.
The Most Annoying Behaviors on Airplanes
The survey asked participants to rate a wide range of passenger behaviors — from making a phone call to eating smelly food or removing shoes in-flight — as either “acceptable,” “unacceptable,” or “not sure.” A few behaviors were found acceptable by a strong majority of respondents. These included seemingly harmless acts such as pushing the flight attendant call button to ask for refreshments (67% found it acceptable), waking up a seatmate to use the bathroom (72%), or using a laptop on the tray table (81%).
Meanwhile, over 60% of passengers rated the following behaviors as unacceptable: not setting their device to airplane mode, exiting before people in the front rows, not listening to the safety demonstration, eating strong-smelling food, using both armrests when someone is sitting next to them, and leaving trash in the seatback pocket.
Finally, there were a few passenger behaviors deemed unacceptable by over 80% of respondents. These included watching a movie without headphones (81% disapproved), leaving their seat during turbulence (82%), getting drunk (82%), and — in the top spot on the survey — letting their kids play in the aisle (86%). The moral of the story? Make sure to keep those preflight drinks to a minimum, keep a close eye on little ones, always obey the seat-belt sign, and make sure to pack a pair of noise-canceling headphones.
Honorable Mentions
Other airplane passenger behaviors proved a bit more divisive. One of the biggest debates in airplane cabins revolves around seat recline — are you rude if you do it, or are you rude if you ask the passenger in front of you not to do it? In the survey, 55% of respondents said it was acceptable to recline, while 26% found it unacceptable, and 20% weren’t sure. To help settle the debate, we asked flight attendants and travel experts for their advice, which you can read here.
Another hotly debated topic? Switching seats. It’s one of the things flight attendants hate the most, too, as asking a fellow passenger to move their seat — especially when they might have paid extra to assign themselves that seat — can lead to delays during boarding and unnecessary confrontations. In the survey, 51% said that it was acceptable to ask to switch seats, while 26% deemed it unacceptable, and 23% weren’t sure. One thing’s for sure, however — if, in the rare case, there happens to be an empty seat on the airplane, you should definitely ask a flight attendant before switching.
Featured image credit: Credit: rudi_suardi/ E+ via Getty Images
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