Passengers observations at airports

[Mokel]

At the airport. Passengers wearing thick coats. I’m sweating with a thin hoodie on.

Then young woman (mid 20s) in front of me in security wore boots up to the shin and we had to take our shoes off.

Thank goodness for Skechers slip ins

Anything else that baffles you about passengers at airports

It’s the queuing at the gate that gets me. Quite often the inbound flight hasn’t even landed and the queue starts, usually by those in the higher numbered groups. It’s fascinating to watch the chaos.

Its usually the same people that must stand as close to the baggage belt as possible.

Always amazed at the sunglasses on in the queue for bag drop. Is it sunny inside the airport?

and the heavy make up flat 6am. Who can be bothered?

Love a Bloody Mary or three or a few GnTs with a fry up at the airport.

Then settle down for some people watching, bliss 😀

I’m baffled that a woman was able to take a huge 45 litre rucksack which is double the size of my hand luggage.

Sat next to a mother and daughter (guessing 80 and 55) who never wore their seat belts at all during takeoff. It’s easy to see that they didn’t as belts were red and they wore grey and navy respectively

Not baffled about this, exactly, but resigned to the weirdness of it:
Small girl around the 3 year old mark carrying a little rucksack, and tagging after her parent, already made rather restless and resentful of the wait for scanning hand baggage and so on:

"Where's my waaaa-ter?"
Parent: "We had to give in the water."
Child: "Where's my salaaaa-mi?"
Parent: "Your salami's in your bag."

Don’t need passport until the gate if you’re not checking bags!

Where one person holds all the boarding cards, despite majority of group being adults, and fails to have them ready / organised for the gates

You aren't interested in your fellow humans?

I don’t know, perhaps disembark directly into the terminal as usual?

i have a family member who works in an airport and some of the stories are shocking.

one that immediately comes to mind was the couple who left their 2 dogs in the boot of their car in the airport car park while they flew out on a long weekend. The boot was left ajar in November, and they left lots of food and water in the crate,

Thankfully the dogs were spotted by a car park patrol the first night and he says police broken into the vehicle, animal control seized the dogs and police were waiting for the passengers when they returned.

God, that's shocking @ScaramoucheCanYouDoTheFandango

I fly often and love the bustle of airports and love people watching. It's like a live fashion show. People are endlessly fascinating.

Depends on the airport… like anything. All US airports have a TSA check pre security.

You can blame the airlines for people taking big carry-on luggage, as they charge extortionate amounts to check in bags! I travel regularly to Europe and every short-haul flight is full of people with large hand luggage, as no one wants to pay to check in a bag. You can’t blame people for wanting to save money where they can!
They always end up having to put about half of these big bags in the hold anyway for free, so the whole thing is pointless.

I'm baffled by people who feel the need to pre-tan before going to a sunny place.

So you don't look like a milk bottle in a bikini?

Hope you're not sitting next to me on a plane after three large Bloody Marys and a fry up at the airport.

Same!

Worked at a major airport for many years. Used to love sitting at a cafe they had overlooking arrivals and watching all the Love Actually reunions of people.
Always a bit baffled by the ones who seemed to have an entire coach load of people to meet them. Like 20 people with balloons and a banner to greet Auntie arriving from Pakistan. So heartwarming but they must have hired a bus or paid £200 parking charges between them!

Why?

Sounds like @PigeonsAmongstTheCats is describing remote/off pier gates.

It's really not that uncommon at many airports at some gates for the passengers to disembark down steps, get on a bus and then get driven to the terminal.

Alright Miss Jean Brodie

My rucksack is 40l and is hand luggage dimensions.

I take it as hand luggage for all the usual reasons (can't get lost, won't get damaged in the hold, don't have to wait for baggage pickup, and I want a rucksack rather than a case for travelling round the destination). A list of complaints about my local airport recently included excessive baggage pickup times - one woman got in at midnight and had to wait 3 hrs for her luggage!

We always do this on UK hols to which we travel by train. DH works in Japan for a month at least once a year at the moment. He usually travels in his walking boots. He walks to city centre (30 min walk) on a regular basis wearing them.

Many years ago we were traveling from Melbourne to Seattle from one conference to the next. We changed in LA, there was a specific didgeridoo queue.

Not something I’ve ever done. The most I’ve done is disembark to tarmac and walk straight to car. Never been on a bus.

It depends on the airport. Kos airport, for example, puts passengers on a bus as they have no jet bridges. Leeds Bradford sometimes does depending on where the plane is.