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?

@daleylama - No. Read what about 5 other posters also said about European business class.

Apparently there is now a phrase for doing that - they call it "raw dogging"

This from the BBC:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5y83kj3wg2o

Long haul flight and I had the window seat second row from the back. Chap behind me put his seat back as no one behind him but decided to put his socked foot through to rest on my window side arm rest 🤢 He was politely asked to remove it but just ignored me. Unfortunately I spilt my drink on his foot. They can fit a lot of ice in those little cups. He moved it after that.

In the 92 we were booked on an American Airlines flight to Los Angeles via New York. Having travelled to Heathrow overnight we were tired, at the gate they were asking for people to stand down, offering $500 each with a hotel stay too. I persuaded OH to go and volunteer us, it was a 6 week trip, when he came back it had gone up to $800 each and a direct flight to LA. As the flight to NY was already late we would have had a long layover and eventually worked out that all we had lost about 8 hours and arrived more refreshed.

The next year we booked UK-NY-San Antonio-San Francisco-UK, for 4 of us it cost £350 in total!

We booked and paid for three extra legroom seats between two of us. We both went to the toilet at the same time and came back to find someone in the middle seat! When we challenged him he said that he thought the seat was empty. We explained that we’d paid for the three seats and he reluctantly moved.

I read about that the other day! This fella was clearly terrified so I can understand his actions (or lack of them) 12 years on. I can’t understand the social media trend of doing it for likes! Odd.

Boarded a transatlantic flight back to UK and a woman got on with a huge carry on, she was trying to force it into the overhead, glaring at people who weren't helping her. A member of cabin crew said she would need to let them put it in the hold as it was too big and she screamed at his saying she intended to tour Europe with just cabin luggage, using budget airlines. We weren't the only ones to find this very funny, she'd obviously not heard of Ryanair etc.

Except she has paid for it. That's the point of all the replies made subsequently.

Please, in the nicest possible way, I urge you to (to use an MN acronym), RTFT

Yes, it depends on the plane. The larger planes have “proper” BC seats, but shorter haul don’t—they have a moveable curtain that they move backward or forward, depending on how many BC seats have been sold, and they put plastic blockers on the middle seat so nobody can sit there. If I had paid extra for BC on one of those flights, it literally is to keep the middle seat free, so I would be irritated too. Especially to have the FA remove the middle seat blocker.

If it had a “proper” BC section with larger seats, then yes, the lady is unreasonable to expect the large luxury BC seats to remain free.

I recall seeing a similar pictures except the hair was much longer and covered the screen. I think I might have spread chewing gum in it.

Just a few months ago, I travelled with my friends. We were four, so three together and I took the aisle seat. We paid to ensure that we were sitting together.

Board plane, a man and a toddler sit next to me. Within seconds, he’s telling me he’ll pay me 20 euros if I agree to change seats as his wife and baby are sitting a few seats away.

Immediately, I feel for the mother and baby because I have been on my flights with babies. So my friend and I agree we will move. But the mother only has one seat, so I’d be sitting alone. I’ve paid of my seat and the whole point of it is to be next to my friends.

I decline, but wife’s not happy. He ignores her for most of the flight, but she stands over me with the baby and makes throwaway comments like ‘no, I didn’t get a coffees, because you’re not there, so what’s the point?’ She blocks my friends, so I have to contort myself to talk to them. He gets drunks and a bit flirty. I ignore him. She keeps hovering acting passive aggressive with me.

If she was so bothered about sitting with her prince, she should have paid for it. When we had babies we paid for our seats because we wanted to be together. Don’t get on a plane and hope to bully others into moving seats because you’re a cheap ass. I was on a girls holiday, no kids and it truly wasn’t fair that a stranger was ‘making me pay’ for not agreeing to do what was best for HER.

I don’t get the obsession with sitting together on short haul flights. In our family we often choose to sit separately because we all like window seats 😂 If you’re spending a few weeks on holiday with your family surely you can survive 3 or 4 hours without them?

"This fella was clearly terrified so I can understand his actions (or lack of them) 12 years on. I can’t understand the social media trend of doing it for likes! Odd."

It's not new. He will have been doing the same thing.

Yes, but it's easy to do by mistake or when you're relatively new to the site.

I recently had a flight from London to Los Angeles where I paid fully for BA business class for my family of 5 including MIL and 2x very young children. The people in front of us were so drunk and rude. One of them had a friend in economy they basically brought up for the whole 13 hour flight, there wasn't room for them, so they spent the flight in the aisle of business having a great old party, talking excessively loudly about all the amazing sex they had just had with all the different men and women of Cannes (they had clearly had a whale of a time). They then got drunker, took shots of tequila with the BA staff who they were flirting away with (clearly wanted to continue their Cannes experience). A woman they befriended on the flight (also extremely drunk) decided to make friends with my 4 year old and wouldn't leave her alone. It was 13 hours of unpleasantness to say the least. BA offered me a whole voucher of 300 for the inconvenience of my 70 year old MIL having to listen to gang bang conversations. Never took BA for a party airline but there you go.

i would have been up every 15mins - shaking that seat!!

To be fair! At 70 surely your mil had heard worse

I understand not wanting children to hear that but not a70 year old women

This, a thousand times.

When I lived in London, I flew to Germany regularly to visit family and friends, always booked the car at the same time, so I already had luggage included. Unless a longer trip, I would have a hand luggage case checked in and another as carry-on, plus my Longchamp Le Pliage as my "Personal item". My hand luggage was bought on the lower end of the size scale, so always within limits.

Especially after Covid I was often asked to check my carry on item as well, only to find that the "hand luggage only" passengers would often have three or four pieces and it not being called out. Or people who had expandable cases, which were at their full size, so much bigger than allowed.

But it is not always the passengers, it can be the airlines, too.

On an early morning flight to Frankfurt earlier in the year on BA, one of the two T5 security check points was closed. On the other, BA had staff outside telling people that everyone in groups 4-9 had to check their hand luggage as "every flight this morning is extremely full". I found this quite odd and pleaded my case, it was a Sunday morning, I had a job interview the following morning and my outfit was in my hand luggage, so I pleaded my case (no pun intended). First agent said, get a tag, if there's space you can take it on board, if not it'll be taken off you. So went to the agent who printed the tags, repeated what her colleague said and was ready to show her the appointment email. That agent just rolled her eyes at the whole situation and told me to "Just take it through".

Got on the plane, it wasn't even half full and the bins were empty, but quite a few passengers were, understandbly, quite angry at not being able to take their hand luggage on. To add "insult to injury" the bags didn't resurface in Frankfurt for almost an hour after landing.

@mothsandgoths what a strange thing to say. I wouldn't want to hear it either - I don't think most people would

We had fun this year flying back from Crete. Dh is sight impaired, can't do airport buses or airline steps due to balance issues so we get assistance. When you ring Jet2 to arrange this they always pre book seats free for you as he needs a companion on the plane. This year sat happily in our 2 seats , pre borders as usual and family come on with 3 young kids. Mum was sat opposite row to us with 3rd beside us and dh somewhere behind. She marched up to us and stated he had to move as he could sit next to her dd and her dh needed his seat . The look on her face after we had declined to move and the lovely stewardess advised her that no they wouldn't be moving disabled passengers for her was priceless. Listening to her moan about how it normally works makes.me think she normally tries this trick and makes men move by suggesting they may harm her perfectly lovely dd (she was a very sweet kid) . I offered to swap with dh and show her my current ehnaced dbs if she was worried!

I don't understand why the air stewards entertain anyone who hasn't booked a seat.

Why not just say who it was?

I remember that 😁

@sleepdeprivationismyname
Sorry, I have a few problems with your post. I have only flown Business Class on one long haul holiday (4 flights in total) but we were more or less in walled cubicles so not really affected by other people in the plane. In fact I had a slide down partition to see my husband. I can’t see the FA allowing someone from Economy staying in Business Class.

Longhaul ...the one of the longest flights in the world, actually, 16 hours, I booked an aisle seat of four, with one young man on the other end of the row. So we had two seats each...great. Made ourselves comfortable on our two seats and went to sleep for an hour or two. Got up for the loo, came back and he had spread himself across all three seats and was apparently asleep, with his head encroaching on my one seat. I sat down, faffing about retrieving my scarf which he was using as a pillow on "my" spare seat.. jostling him because it was late and I was tired. He remained "asleep". I reclined my one seat and tried to sleep. I dozed off and found his face virtually in my crotch. I shoved him and told him to move, we had words, his friend behind me then started to slam the tray table open and shut on the back of my seat, and kick me, really nastily. FA said that he was just as entitled to the seat as I. I think she was scared of him because of his nationality, one known for incursions into others' territory. Never again.