Best CF airplane stories

[BreadInCaptivity]

Inspired by another thread.

About 5 years ago we were flying back from the USA. We'd booked Premium Economy seats on Virgin. Configuration is 2-3-2.

Our two late teens were in front of us and we had the 2 seats directly behind. All settled in when a family of 4 embarked with 2 young children (around 5 and 7 at a guess).

They proceed to the 2 seats behind DH and I and start putting their bags down when the mother asked (politely to be fair) if we would mid swapping seats so they could sit together as a family.

Given our two were older (and once headphones were on were not going to be engaging with us) we decided to be nice and said ok.

Can you guess where this is going?

Asked where the other seats were, looking around the PE cabin a bit baffled as it appeared to be full....

Yep - they'd only booked 2 seats in PE and wanted us to take their 2 seats in economy 😂.

Clearly we said, no (with rather incredulous expressions on our face's) and sat back down. Parent then both start calling us selfish (oh the irony) and demanding we move. DH made the point that if sitting together was so important, then booking in the same cabin might be a good idea for the future, but as stands he was sure if they went down to economy the people in the seats next to those they'd booked would be very happy with a free upgrade 😀.

The response from the Father "I'm not giving up a better seat I've paid for"....to which DH deadpanned "I couldn't agree with you more"...at which point DH and I couldn't stop laughing enough to respond further.

Cabin crew eventually had to get involved as the parents had an argument over who was going to sit where. Mother won and spent the first 20 mins of the flight making loud passive aggressive comments to her child about "mean/selfish" people until crew got involved again and told her to pack it in or they'd be moved to economy if they didn't stop harassing us.

Thankfully the rest of the flight was uneventful but DH and I still chuckle about it now and again 😃.

Anyone got any others?

@Nevth
I totally agree with you about lone female usually young passengers being targeted for seat swaps.

We were flying BA Club class from LGW to Tunis and the middle seat between us on that plane was definitely not a proper seat, it was only slightly narrower but had no table, seat belt or seat number. It didn't stop a rather large man persistently trying to shoehorn himself into it between DH and I, despite us saying it wasn't an actual seat.
It was incredibly uncomfortable for us and must have been for him too.
It took a very stern and no-nonsense Flight Attendant to get him to move, telling him the plane could not and would not take off while he was sitting in that seat. (Which was obvious due to the lack of seat belt.) But he was really put out and complained loudly.
And he must have known it wasn't his seat just by looking at his boarding card! CF chancing his arm.

Because I watched a couple smirking and saying ‘look at them?just let them go like sheep’ they weren’t so cocky when they got on and they had seats at the front but their hand luggage had to go in a locker near the back so were last to get off.

Nobody uses it. It's space to make them more comfortable in their booked seats.

The one thing about carry on luggage where I might look like the entitled CF is that I get absolutely furious if I've carefully limited my luggage so I can travel with hand luggage only, in line with the airline's policy, and then, because I'm just a bog standard economy class seat, inevitably the cheapest seat I can buy, I get told there's no space for my "hand luggage only" bag and I have to check it in. It makes me so cross. I bought a small bag specially so that it would meet all the criteria etc and I have twice been forced to put it in the hold. On one occasion, even more infuriatingly, we then had to wait over an hour, late at night, before our luggage came out on the other side. I was especially annoyed as well as in London I'd been told to just leave my suitcase in a pile in a random corridor on the way to the plane - basically all the hand luggage pieces they'd decided couldn't go in hand luggage.

I point blank refused to leave my bag and board the plane until a baggage handler arrived - I'm not leaving my suitcase somewhere random in a bloody airport.

We’ve had loads over the years. Some of the highlights:

The man who got out of his seat 30 seconds prior to landing(!!!) to go and get his bag from the overhead locker a few rows down.

The woman sitting in front of DH who put her hand luggage underneath her OWN seat. When DH asked her to move it she was incredulous that she should put it under the seat in front of her. Cabin crew had to intervene for that one.

DH is tall and I have a long-term leg injury so we often get extra legroom seats, quite often on the first row of the plane, where hand luggage MUST be stowed overhead as there’s no seat in front. It’s shocking how many people board the plane, dump their hand luggage in the overhead lockers at row 1, then piss off down to their seats in row 29 because “they’ll be able to just grab it when the get off”, completely oblivious to the fact that the people in the first rows actually need to use those overhead lockers 🙄 selfishness reaches whole new levels on planes. We always have speedy boarding if we book these seats - there have been times where we’ve been some of the first people on the plane and the overhead lockers at the front are already full of other peoples’ bags who are sitting further down the plane where there’s plenty of overhead space, because their bags are all at row one!

I mean, if he could do that at the gate at Minneapolis St Paul airport in 1998 imagine what he’d be like in 2024 negotiating a house purchase?!

I’m so invested in this MN fan fiction now 😂

I did - I went off and saw the world. If KLM or Northwest flew there - I went!! I’ve got enough KLM delft houses to start a small town 🫠

It was genuinely awful when they ran out and I had to start turning right again on a plane. The golden age of air travel was over. Economy seats were smaller, people scattered litter about like confetti. I’ve been upgraded a few times since and I never take it for granted.

I should appeal to the internet to find him! 😂

Very minor but indicative of entitled behaviour. I had booked extra leg room seats for the three boys in my family- all three over 6 foot 3 inc teenager with leg pain issues so essential for a 5 hour flight. All three super polite. So just as well I happened to be there when entitled woman says very loudly ' I'm sure this nice young man won't mind swapping so we can all be together' and spotted the indecision and panic on teenager's face. 'Absolutely not' says I- I paid for the extra leg room on purpose ' EW looks daggers. I look machetes. I win.

On a flight to Orlando a family of grandparents, parents and two early teenage girls got on. One of the girls had a bottle of coke and guzzled it as soon as she sat down. We began taxiing to the runway and she decided she needed the loo. Cabin crew told her to sit back down. Mum kicked up a commotion about her darling child needing a wee. Once we were up in the air and the seatbelt sign came off it became apparent that the girl had wet herself and the seat underneath her. Crew gave her blanket to tie around her waist as a skirt and mum decided to drape her pissy pants over the back of the seat to dry off....right onto my tray table and about 6 inches from my face. She was not happy when I told her how disgusting it was and kept trying to put them back each time I flicked them over. Crew eventually had to tell her it was inappropriate and unhygienic and to stop it right now. I felt sorry for the person who was going to get the soggy seat on the way back.

The nail-painting lady reminds me of when I flew from a Nordic country and some passengers apparently bought fresh fish on the markets there and brought that into the cabin (within Europe, so no restrictions on normal food import).

Same thing, I was on an aisle seat in the front row of economy and the guy next to me asked me to swap with his wife who was sat in row 8 in a middle seat. Took it quite badly when I said no but he didn’t think to offer a swap for himself and the people either side of her!

Fully agree that these CF tend to target lone women. It has NEVER happened to my six foot tall husband.

I once paid for priority boarding/hand luggage on an overnight trip but the incoming flight was delayed so it just became a free for all to get everyone boarded quickly. By the time I got to the front of the queue there was no room in the lockers so everyone had to check their bags into the hold. Apart from a change of clothes, the entire contents of my bag were items I either needed/wanted on the flight (medication, a file I needed to read through, jumper, wallet, phone, passport etc) or items not permitted in the hold (laptop, iPad etc). I was told I would be refused boarding if I didn’t check in my bag so I had to juggle carrying pretty much the entire contents of my luggage onto the plane (via a bus and across the runway) with everything piled up loose in my arms, dropping things every few steps while my empty bag went into the hold. Of course, the laptop screen ended up getting broken… 😡

I did try to point out to the FA that the volume of the contents of my bag was the pretty much the same as the volume of the bag and it would be a lot more practical to take items out on the plane if the bag didn’t fit under the seat with everything in it and a lot safer than stashing a bunch of loose items on the floor 🙄

Mine is a more lighthearted version of CFery…..and one in which I was totally complicit 😳. Was flying alone for first time at 18, thirty years ago, fella beside me was in his 20s, got me drinking a beer and then playing cards with him. Then he invited me to bet my dinner on a hand of cards. I of course did, and lost, and the effer took my dinner when it arrived, handed me back the bread roll and ate the rest along with his own! It was a 9 hour flight and I was starrrrving. He was a good laugh all the same…

About eight years ago. Not so much CF but amusing.

SQ Singapore to London, business class. It’s a late night on a Friday so many of those in business had rolled out of a bar or restaurant. An Asian guy near me is particularly the worse for wear but takes to his pod.

Plane takes off, but before it’s reached cruising altitude, this guy decides he needs the bathroom - he hadn’t figured on the angle of the floor so he falls backwards and is lying on his back in the aisle doing an impression of a beetle.

Theres a hub-bub and one of the SQ girls gets out the jump seat to help him along with me and another Asian guy. This guy turns to me and says in heavily accented English ‘f…g nouveau riche!’

Similar to what we encountered then.

I honestly can't fathom why people think anyone would swap for a lesser seat.

Like yourself I used to fly a lot with work and did feel I got disproportionately asked for swaps as a solo woman.

I'm not an arse so I don't mind moving to an equivalent seat if it helps someone else out but I'm not going down a class or squashed in a middle seat

I suppose what I meant was can passengers either side use the space to put stuff on! But I think you confirm NO, it is merely a buffer space between occupied seats.

Would it always be left clear of "stuff" though? I'd be very tempted to use it....

Relative is a doctor. Middle-aged lady, travelled solo a lot back in the day for conferences. She was given an ‘unaccompanied minor’ to look after a disproportionate number of times. Eventually reverted to ‘Ms’ when booking flights , which helped (so
much less respectable-seeming!!)

Men with their big elbows and inability to stay with their own seat space.

The upside of this is your survival chances are marginally higher if you’re within 5 rows of the emergency exit!

There is a clapback to this which involves a little cheeky fuckery on the part of the people in the front row who have had to put their overhead bags in row 10 or wherever. You leap up as soon as that seat belt sign goes off and dash to row 10, blocking the bag dumpers from getting to the front. Then you take your sweet time dislodging your bag from the overhead bin. Bonus points for opening the wrong bin first. I may have done this myself twice

@iloveshetlandponies you sound like just if not more a nasty horrible woman. People are allowed to be excited to go on holiday.

But not to the detriment of everyone around them.