To Not understand why people get so selfish at the airport?

[virilityisbad]

I just don’t get why brits on their family
holidays get so stressy. I walk through the airport seeing them flapping about and highly strung. People are hugely territorial of their personal space. The sheer hostility towards fellow human beings in the queue for boarding.

Then on the plane, people up and down, up and down checking/fetching stuff from their baggage in the overhead lockers.

Then when landed, people in the middle
of the plane deciding they deserve to disembark first and so blocking the aisle for everyone else to get their bags.

What is it about airports that make people so selfish/stressed out

I've lived on many continents for many years. Worst flight ever...a packed longhaul from New York to Dubai. Huge mixture of nationalities with no manners and very aggressive attitudes; I've never experienced anything like it. Big, extended families trying to rearrange seating, fights breaking out, intimidating behaviour from children to men to old ladies. The poor staff were really struggling to contain it.

The most irritating airport behaviour for me is people crowding the luggage carousel. You can't see your bags, then you have to floor the idiots as you swing your cases off the belt. Stand back people!

And all of the above are why I don't fly any more. Just reading it all has given me the rage.

Train or car + ferry for me and I don't care if I never do any inter-continental travel ever again.

It's generally a series of one long queue after another at airports which is bound to put people on edge. Throw in early morning starts and whining children and tempers get really frayed. On our last flight, we arrived two hours before but after long queues at check-in, security and passport control, we barely had time to go to the loo and get some water before final boarding was called. I'm usually pretty chilled at airports but that made me really flustered.

We've also noticed a lot more passengers ignoring the one piece of carry on luggage rule (or pretending they were unaware of it!). Just in front of us at boarding at two recent flights were a man with a hold-all and large rucksack and a woman with a wheely case and absolutely ginormous straw beach bag. Cue lots of stress as they try to argue about it and people behind get really restless because the queue has stopped moving. The woman had a half-hearted attempt to put the bag in the case then smirked at the cabin crew and said "It won't fit, oh well!" She made more of an effort when they replied that she'd have to pay £60 to check it in!

We check one case into the hold and have smallish hand luggage that fits under the seat in front. So we tend to be one of the last to board.

It absolutely isn’t just Brits.

I blame being able to take those stupid wheelie cases on board. The never ending angst of whether they will be the right size. Unpacking stuff from them at security. Hauling them 4 feet behind you in Departures so that everyone else falls over them. The boarding process of needing to get on first to get bin space, hauling them over your head to get them in the bin. Reversing that process on landing.

Bring back mandatory checked in hold luggage.

Wheelie cases are, indeed, the work of the devil.

And don’t get me started on Dad With Rucksack. People have gone up Everest with a smaller bag. Add on the blissful unawareness of having doubled your body width so they brain everyone behind them when the turn around.

People are very easily stressed out in general these days. I mean, you yourself OP seem irked that "on the plane, people up and down, up and down checking/fetching stuff from their baggage in the overhead lockers"... as if that has any effect on you? Relax!

Those awful trunkies too

My tip for avoiding airport stress is to travel with an elderly person and book assistance. I went on holiday a few times with my mum when she was in her 80s. The first time, the gate was so far away it felt like we'd walked halfway to the other country by the time we got there.

We set off as soon as our flight showed on the screens but there wasn't enough time to get to the gate for a slowish walker and they were calling us just before we arrived. She was very fit for her age, but couldn't walk very fast and was getting 'keyed up' as she called being 'stressed' when she realised how far it was and was being overtaken by people sprinting past.

Next time, I booked assistance at Gatwick, but secretly, because she would have objected to being treated like an invalid. It's free and it's fantastic. You wait at their meeting point and when the time comes, a golf buggy takes you to the gate. She grudgingly admitted it was a good idea.

With BA, once you make the assistance booking, they automatically arrange it for the return flight. That was from Florence. At Gatwick, we had priority boarding but at Florence they asked us to wait until the very end. My mum was getting 'keyed up' again watching everyone walk through, fretting they would forget us.

Everyone else had to battle their way onto the shuttle bus to the plane. When the last person was on, the woman from BA ground crew escorted us down the stairs to a battered little Fiat waiting at the bottom. She helped my mum into the back with me and took the passenger seat. The driver slapped one of those magnetic flashing lights like they had in Starsky and Hutch on the roof and set out across the tarmac to the plane.

The ground crew woman escorted us up the steps where we were greeted and seated by the aircrew. My mum whispered that she felt like the Queen.

She felt even more regal when a fantastically jolly man came to pick us up when we landed at Gatwick. We went to a separate security desk next to the big queues and we showed our passports and rode through almost without stopping.

My frugal mum broke the habit of a lifetime and tipped the driver £1 .

We went to Barcelona the next year and she said: 'Don't forget to book that buggy.' At the London Olympics in 2012 she was so used to it she marched to the Assistance Point. There wasn't enough room for me on the buggy so I had to puff along behind.

I really don't understand why there's this mad rush to be the first to board. I mean the plane isn't going anywhere until everyone is on board and seated.
Also hate the way there's another stampede to get off the plane first. Then find it amusing when I catch up with the stampede at the carousel waiting for their luggage.
I chill at the airport, something to eat and drink and a little window shopping. Don't check in at the boarding gate until the huge queue has almost gone. Also at destination I remain seated until I can leave the aircraft without being pushed and shoved.

That's lovely limited.

Abelmaybel perhaps read the last umpteen pages as to why people prefer to be up and on and off earlier rather than later and you may learn why

Airports are stressful environments with multiple queues, highly intrusive security procedures, delays, not enough seats, overcrowding at peak periods, airline baggage policies set to maximise revenue rather than convenience etc etc. Add into that the hassles of travelling with small children and it can become a nightmare.

Those of us who fly frequently are used to all this stuff, we know where to go, what to do and how to get through security with the minimum of fuss.

What we tend to forget, however, is that many people only fly once a year and are not as familiar with airports as we are. Hence all the tutting, eye-rolling etc when we get stuck behind clueless numpties at security search...

@limitedperiodonly I do get where your mum is coming from.
However, I am 60, (approaching elderly?) and I do not want to have to ask for assistance; like your mother, I have no mobility problems.
I wonder, sometimes, though, how long it will be until I do ask for assistance - not because I have become incapable of getting myself from A to B in an airport, but because the whole experience - already made horrendous by rubbish airlines, is made intolerable by an attitude that everyone needs to look out for themselves and push and shove if they have to.
Recently, a friend in her early 70s, who is a good deal fitter and more active than me, made sure she was travelling with my daughter because she just couldn't face the journey on her own.
That can't be right.

I also don’t understand the easy (and free depending on the airline) access to alcohol both in the airports and on flights.

Also, the having to show your boarding pass to buy things at the airport really annoys me because it is NOT a legal requirement. It’s a VAT dodge for the shops:

Do I need to hand over my boarding pass?

No. HM Revenue and Customs has said there is no legal requirement to hand your pass over at a checkout.

So why do shops ask for it?

To help them claim back a 20 per cent VAT on goods sold to shoppers who are flying outside the EU. But to do this, shops need proof of the good’s destination.

HMRC said that airport tax or duty free shops “may treat the sale of goods to passengers intending to take them to non-EU destinations as zero-rated exports, provided they retain suitable evidence such as by scanning the boarding card.”

The only way that shops can get this “evidence” and avoid paying VAT is by checking boarding passes.

What will happen if air passengers refuse to show their boarding passes?

Not much if you shop at Harrods, which already sells all of its products at VAT-free prices in airports.

Shops such as Boots and WH Smiths, meanwhile, operate a single-pricing structure, meaning that VAT savings are not passed onto the customer at the airport. They claim that the savings instead help bring down prices at all shops.

“Any relief obtained is reflected in our single price and extensive promotional offers provided to all of our customers,” said WHSmith.

Boots agrees, saying that claiming back VAT at airports means its customers get “great value” wherever they shop.

Retailers are therefore warning that store prices could go up if they can no longer prove that sales have a zero-rate VAT.

This is despite David Gauke, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, making the point that VAT relief was put in place to "reduce prices for passengers" rather than as a "windfall gain for shops".

When airport retailers ask for my boarding pass, my reply is simple :

“No.”

It was thenightsky. Everyone was so kind.

The first time we travelled with the children, our eldest was 3, got to the security part and the personnel were just barking orders. Never mind my 3 yr old it left us adults feeling flustered as well!

I think it’s infrequent flyers. I know not to do any of this (partially be cause I have manners) mostly because I know it makes no difference.

Train or car + ferry for me and I don't care if I never do any inter-continental travel ever again

Yes - even more chaos today because of a French air traffic control failure.

As for the boarding pass issue - they can ask for it because they just make it part of their terms of sale. If you don't like it you don't enter into the contract. And of course WH Smith has the self-serve machines and no boarding pass=computer says no.

the hassles of travelling with small children and it can become a nightmare unless you are travelling to visit elderly relatives, there's an easy solution to that. Wait until they are older before you fly.

Whoever said upthread that us Brits are less polite than other nationalities has got to be having a laugh! I'm currently on holiday abroad and the other two main nationalities of guests at this hotel are incredibly rude with zero manners. Bar staff have said to my husband and I that the British guests are the only ones that are polite and friendly to them.

With regards to the OP, I do think that airports and flying bring out the worst in some people. On our flight here there was a woman with a child who loudly patented the whole flight and was up and down to the locker, let her child watch the iPad very loudly, and got up and started to walk down the plane literally when the wheels had just touched the ground and the crew were still in their jump seats!

I agree with @Ablemaybel

It’s as if some people go out of their way to get stressed.

Get a hotel the day before, get their early, get in a lounge and enjoy. Fly at least twice a month and still love it, despite the utter tools who think there’s some kind of fire drill to get off the plane first.

@Mythologies I am 54 and capable of making it to a faraway gate. But it annoys me, along with the more pointless aspects of airports.

I agree with you that the general airport experience is rubbish but I wanted to post a nice story about travels with my mum, rather than what I really felt on reading the OP, which was that the OP was a superior cunt who wanted to sneer about clueless infrequent fliers.

But you busted me

Oh, and that boring thing OP said about Brits abroad. I'm glad some other posters have told about their wider experiences of challenging experiences of travelling with people from other nationalities.

We are all capable of being cunts but some of us don't realise that.

@limitedperiodonly I am glad you and your mother have had good experiences - if only because it means that I will still be able to travel to see my daughters when I am older
And yes, I have not noticed any particular nationality dominating the total arsehole category, either.