In this week’s edition of ‘The Trials and Tribulations of the Unlucky Travel Writer,’ I returned from my most recent flight with a concussion and a cervical sprain after the guy in the seat behind me dropped his overhead luggage directly onto my head and neck during boarding.
This dude didn’t even offer so much as a performative apology, despite my reflexively shouting an expletive and involuntarily bursting into hot, confused tears—just a halfhearted shrug in my partner’s general direction like whatever, my bad before cracking open one of the beers he’d brought on board with him.
When I shared this experience on my Instagram Story, I was floored to see how many people have experienced similar in-flight injustices. So against my doctor’s recommendations to take the next several days off from looking at screens, books, or basically anything at all, I’m here because it seems to me we could all use a refresher on basic travel etiquette.
While I’m hopeful that most people subscribed to Carry On aren’t the type of travelers who would be unaware of these unwritten rules, I’m sure there are people in your network (distant, uninformed relatives? Facebook ‘friends’ you haven’t spoken with since high school? actual children, maybe?) who are blissfully ignorant to the fact that unfortunately, they actually are ‘that person’ when flying.
So in the interest of ~being the change we’d like to see in the world~ or whatever, do me a favor and share this post so that we can all get on the same page about the dos and don’ts of air travel. Maybe it will help us build a world where we can avoid head injuries and other transgressions while traveling in the future.
Unspoken rules of air travel etiquette
DO:
Wait your turn in lines. Like, all of them. Check-in, security, boarding, customs—if a group of people are waiting for their turn in a queue, find the end of said queue and join them. Yes, even if you’re late. No one’s obligated to let you in front of them because you didn’t arrive on time for your flight.
Plan your travel outfit and your carry-on packing strategy with security lines in mind. You should be able to get your shoes on and off quickly. Your clear bag of liquids in TSA-friendly quantities should be in an easy-to-grab spot in your bag, along with any electronic devices. Airports demand pretty much the same order of operations every time. Prepare for it accordingly.
Clean up after yourself. Put your security bins away once you’re finished with them. Throw away any trash you end up creating in the terminal (or on your flight). Flush, wipe down toilet seats and sinks after you use them, and wash your hands after going to the bathroom to leave loos in a good state for the next person who visits them. Didn’t Barney have a song about cleaning up? If toddlers can do it, so can you.
Bring headphones or be prepared to deal with silence. You are not entitled to control the volume of the space you’re in any more so than anyone else in transit is. By listening to music, videos, FaceTimes, or phone calls out loud, you’re forcing everyone around you to listen to them, too. Either pack headphones to listen to what you want to listen to or buy some in one of the shops at the airport.
Fart in bathrooms and nowhere else. Similarly to the rule above, we’re all sharing limited airspace, and tainting it with your flatulence and forcing us to breathe in your butt’s broccoli breath is rude as hell. Even if we do end up smelling it after your trip to the bathroom, at least you did what you could to be considerate of those around you.
Board with your group. You don’t get to upgrade yourself to another group just because you feel like getting on the plane sooner. If you don’t require extra assistance during boarding and you haven’t either paid for or earned an upgrade some other way, refer back to rule #1 and wait your turn.
Leave the armrests for the middle seat. You’ve either got a second armrest and a window to lean against or a second armrest and an aisle full of space to yourself. Have a heart, dude—their armrests are all they have for the next however many hours until you land.
Stand up and move (briefly) to the aisle to let people in and out of your row. Don’t do that weird thing where you kind of stand up but you stay in your seat and they have to either crawl over you or squeeze past you. Get up, get out, let them get out, then sit back down and do the whole thing again when they get back. It won’t take that long.
Keep your stuff in your own space. Your seatmate’s tray table is not yours to use just because you don’t feel like opening yours, and the area under the seat in front of them isn’t free game just because yours is full. Similarly: stay out of the aisle! It’s a common space, not somewhere for you to hang out in.
Drink responsibly or not at all. Don’t be the belligerent drunk on the flight. Not only are you going to physically feel like shit afterward, but you’re probably going to make other passengers (and maybe even the flight crew) uncomfortable. Keep in mind that drinks hit your system about twice as hard when you’re in the air and order bevs accordingly.
If (and only if!!!) you are at risk of missing a connecting flight, ask politely if you can go ahead of the people in front of you. Do this before landing so they know your situation, not after you’ve landed when they’ll be skeptical about the legitimacy of your claim. If you are just eager to get off the plane and you don’t have a connecting flight to get to, refer back to rule #1.
If you mess up, apologize. No one expects you to be a perfect traveler or to know all the travel rules by heart. If you realize you’ve made a mistake—or if someone calls you out for making a mistake— don’t be weird about it. Things happen. Just apologize and do better next time. People will appreciate you owning up to it, and then you can all move on.
DON’T:
Dawdle. You know what’s expected of you at security, during boarding, when de-planing, etc., and you’re expecting the people around you to wait their turns patiently per rule #1 above, so be ready to go through the motions of air travel as efficiently as you’re able each step of the way. Of course, this isn’t referring to travelers whose mobility might be limited. But if you’re too busy chatting with your travel partners, messing around on your phone, or doing anything else that keeps you from realizing it’s your turn to do the thing, expect some dirty looks, because you kinda deserve them.
Be rude to any of the employees you interact with during your travels. Check-in agents, TSA employees, flight attendants, Hudson Booksellers cashiers—all of them are present to do the jobs they’re paid to do, and you’re a guest in their place of work. Be respectful.
Bring anything you can’t manage on your own. Carry-on items too unwieldy to get through the security screening, roller bags that can’t fit in bathroom stalls with you, luggage too heavy for you to lift into overhead bins, travel partners too rowdy to know when to quiet down… If you’re unable to manage them on your own, leave them at home.
Ask anyone to watch your stuff for you. This one’s like, a legal thing. Don’t make it weird.
Pack strongly-scented items to enjoy in flight. Yes, this refers to things like stinky egg salad sandwiches (looking at you, Oscar from ‘The Office’) but also perfume or cologne, nail polish, or anything else that will dramatically change the scent of the already relatively icky recycled air on the plane. Just because it doesn’t bother you doesn’t mean that it won’t bother others on your flight.
Smoking or vaping. Again, this one's a legal thing. Can we just not, please?
Touch anyone you’re not traveling with. Be aware of your arms, legs, and other extremities during your flight. Are they pressed against someone else? If so, move them! Keep them in your personal space and out of others’.
Move people’s things. No taking someone’s bag out of the overhead bin and moving it somewhere else so you can fit your own bag there. You don’t own that property, so you don’t get to handle it. Ask who owns it and let them move it, or leave it alone.
Grab people’s seats when walking in the aisle. Barring extenuating circumstances, like maybe intense turbulence that knocks you off balance unexpectedly, leave people’s headrests alone. They’re just minding their business, man. They don’t need you to jostle them around on your journey to the toilet and back because you knocked back too many drinks at the airport bar.
MAYBE CONTROVERSIAL, BUT I’M STICKING TO ‘EM:
If you have TSA Precheck or Global Entry and your travel partner doesn’t, it’s everyone for themselves. Meet them at your gate or wherever else you both agree to find each other after you’ve made it through security/customs/etc. because you get to go utilize the expedited services you paid for. They could sign up for them too, if they wanted to!
Book the seats you need. If you’re traveling with children or elderly folks and you know you’ll need to be in seats near one another, then sorry, but that might mean a) you have to pay a bit extra to book seats next to each other, or b) you need to call the airline and coordinate an alternate solution if that option isn’t accessible to you. But barring extenuating circumstances, it’s not up to other passengers to switch seats with you. Sorry.
Don’t recline unless you’re on an overnight or long-haul flight. Yes, you could just say ‘well, if airplanes had bigger seats with more room, we could all recline comfortably and it wouldn’t be a problem!’ But capitalism is gonna capitalism, and airlines are trying to squeeze as many seats as possible into overcrowded planes to make as much money as they can without regard to our comfort, so we kind of have to stick together here. If you reclining means the person behind you is going to be super uncomfortable for the duration of the flight, don’t.
Leave your shoes (and especially your socks) on. I can’t believe I’m even putting this in the controversial section, but my partner is adamant that anyone should be allowed to take off their shoes once boarding is complete if they’re more comfortable. I truly don’t understand this—how much more comfortable can you truly be with your shoes off vs. on? Does that difference in comfort seriously warrant the smell of your stinky feet wafting around the cabin, or your seatmates having to see your naked feet? Why don’t you just travel in more comfortable footwear???
If people don’t seem interested in talking to you, don’t try to force it. If their headphones are in, their eyes are closed, or they’re generally not responding to your attempts to speak to them, take the hint and leave them in peace. No one’s obligated to talk to you just because you’re in their vicinity.
Do not clap when the plane lands. Thankfully, this seems to have mostly stopped at this point (and I’m not trying to be like Justin Timberlake’s character in whatever that movie was that he was in with Mila Kunis that was basically the same as that other movie that was released around the same time with Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman), but seriously, come on. The pilot landed the plane. That’s what’s supposed to happen. It doesn’t warrant applause unless maybe we narrowly avoided a crash landing together.
Upon landing, once you hear the ‘ding’ of the seatbelt sign going off, that does not mean ‘please stand up and get your stuff and crowd the aisles until further notice.’ We’re all eager to get off of the plane and stretch our legs. None of us want to hold up the de-planing process when it gets to us. But per our rules above, unless you’ve already cleared it with the other passengers that you’re late for a connecting flight and need to rush out ASAP, wait your turn. File out row by row in an orderly fashion. Don’t cut in front of other people. You don’t get to go first just because you already have your bag in your hand since you scrambled up to get it the second you heard that ‘ding.’ Be respectful of the people ahead of you. Wait until it’s your row’s turn to disembark, then leave. Of everything on this list, I can’t believe how many adults I wish would read just this last rule and imprint it into their brains moving forward.
What did I miss?
Concussed as I am, I’m sure I’ve missed plenty of unspoken rules of air travel here—let me know which ones in the comments below so we can add them to the list. Here’s hoping we can create a culture of jerk-free flights moving forward!