The Most Annoying And Selfish Passenger Behaviours That Ruin Flying For Everyone

Editor’s Note: This editorial draws on more than 25 years of independent travel, first-hand experience and publicly documented evidence and regulatory changes. Many of these editorials were written years before the issues became mainstream, and have been updated to reflect current developments while remaining true to their original arguments.

I love flying. I should probably make that clear from the outset because I don’t want to give the wrong impression. Few things make me happier than the excitement of an impending trip, the surge of acceleration at take-off or even the occasionally mind-numbing hours spent waiting in airports or enduring a long layover. They’re all part of the journey, because I know another adventure is about to begin.

The problem isn’t flying, although airlines themselves do have a lot to answer for.

The problem is the people.

After more than twenty-five years of travelling the world, I have witnessed just about every type of human behaviour imaginable inside an aircraft cabin. No matter how low my expectations become, there are still people capable of displaying such astonishing levels of selfishness, poor hygiene and complete disregard for everyone around them that I genuinely wonder how they function in normal society.

It isn’t just me, either. Passenger frustration has been building for years. Calls for quiet zones continue to grow, campaigns to ban reclining seats keep happening, and survey after survey shows travellers becoming increasingly fed up with inconsiderate passenger behaviour. It only takes one person to turn an otherwise pleasant flight into an endurance test for everyone else in the cabin.

So, partly as a form of belated therapy after twenty-five years of sharing aircraft with humanity at its absolute worst, and partly in the faint hope that someone, somewhere, might recognise themselves and decide to do better, here are the passenger behaviours guaranteed to make an entire cabin want to throw people out of the door at 30,000 feet.

The Sick Passenger

I know you can’t help getting sick, and ordinarily I would have every sympathy for you. After all it is not really your fault that you have come down with a bad cold, a case of the flu or chronic projectile vomiting just a few hours before you are due to take that long 12 hour flight! But that doesn’t mean I want your bodily fluids all over me either!

Let me make it clear though it isn’t as much the fact that you are sick, that in and of itself doesn’t bother me (I have sat next to many sick passengers who were very nice and have helped them where I could, I have even attended to my share of medical emergencies on board).

It is the fact that the majority of people are filthy animals and completely inconsiderate, and will cover every surface in their bodily fluids as they cough and sneeze indiscriminately and rarely wash their germ ridden hands.

I understand getting sick in general from a flight is an extremely low risk if you take your own sensible precautions to protect yourself, and I do. That’s why I keep my hands washed and disinfect the surfaces immediately around me like the screen and tray. But the general filthiness of some people is absolutely disgusting. Just wash your hands and keep your fluids to yourself people!

People With Bad Personal Hygiene

In a small, confined space, filled to capacity with enough bodies to make a battery hen think they don’t actually have it all that bad, is there anything worse than getting someone sitting next to you that absolutely reeks? Well yes there is, but this is pretty bad.

Most of us who travel frequently have had the unfortunate circumstance of being stuck on a long haul flight next to someone who smells like they haven’t had a shower in three days, reek of stale cigarette smoke, halitosis that could curdle even the industrial strength airline food, or has somehow managed to smuggle a foul smelling homemade pilchard sandwich onto the plane!

Have a wash, buy some breath mints, stop smoking and leave the sandwich at home! Strong smells are not acceptable in such close quarters people!

And by the same extent that goes for those people who take a shower in aftershave or perfume at the duty free before embarking! Pack it in!

People Who Think Bare Feet Are Acceptable

I genuinely cannot believe this even needs saying, but apparently there is a small yet deeply revolting subsection of humanity who board an aircraft and immediately decide that the first thing everyone else wants to experience is their feet. Somewhere between take-off and the seatbelt sign being switched off, these absolute goblins peel off their shoes, remove their socks and proudly unveil a pair of manky, cheese-encrusted hoofs that really should have remained hidden from public view for the good of civilisation.

There is a special kind of person who thinks this is acceptable, and I can only assume they were raised by wolves. Actually no, I like wolves and that is entirely unfair on them. Wolves are cleaner and more socially aware than these people can ever dream of being. They have somehow reached adulthood without ever learning one of the most basic principles of existing in polite society: nobody wants to see your feet. Nobody wants to smell your feet. Nobody wants to spend the next eleven hours wondering whether that yellowing toenail has developed its own ecosystem. If your feet resemble something David Attenborough might discover living around a hydrothermal vent, keep them covered. Even if they aren’t, keep them bloody covered!

Now, no one minds you slipping off your soft trainers under the seat for a few hours, if you have socks on, keep them hidden and put your shoes back on if you want to move anywhere, this isn’t that.

Unfortunately, simply displaying their feet isn’t enough for these people. Oh no. They have to share them. They’ll prop them on the bulkhead, wedge them between the seats, rest them on the armrest in front or casually poke them through the gap beside your shoulder as though waking up to find a crusty big toe six inches from your face is just one of the little luxuries of modern air travel. Imagine finally managing to fall asleep after hours of turbulence, only to open your eyes and be greeted by a fungal toenail hovering over you like the opening scene of a low-budget horror film. If that’s your contribution to society, your parents owe the rest of us an apology.

Then there are the truly repulsive specimens who wander into the aircraft toilet barefoot. Let that sink in for a moment. They willingly walk across one of the most biologically questionable floors known to mankind with nothing protecting their feet whatsoever, before happily wandering back through the cabin and curling those same damp, contaminated feet underneath themselves. Whatever liquid is sloshing around on that floor is almost certainly not Evian, yet these people paddle through it with the carefree enthusiasm of toddlers splashing in the sea before bringing their newly seasoned feet back to share with the rest of us. It takes a very special kind of disgusting individual to think any part of that sequence of events is remotely normal.

And don’t think I haven’t noticed the in-flight groomers either. If you are clipping your toenails, picking at your feet or carrying out what appears to be a full chiropody appointment while everyone else is trying to eat dinner, you aren’t quirky, relaxed or ‘making the most of the flight.’ You’re a repellent human being with the social awareness of an abandoned shopping trolley. Nobody should ever have to worry about a rogue toenail clipping ricocheting into their chicken pasta at thirty thousand feet.

It really isn’t difficult. Keep your shoes on. Keep your feet to yourself. Most importantly, remember that if the strongest first impression you leave on several hundred complete strangers is, ‘for the love of God, put those things away,’ then somewhere along the line you have become a failure of a human being.

People Who Block The Aisle

We all know the drill. The plane lands, takes forever to taxi to wherever it needs to be, the deified beings in first class are practically carried off the plane on cushioned pillows made from kittens, silk and fairy dust, and then the mad free for all scramble to disembark in peasant class begins.

Except it doesn’t, because half the genius’ on the plane have decided to stand up before it has even stopped taxiing and are stood in the aisle for no reason whatsoever, blocking everyone else from moving and preventing anyone from disembarking in a timely manner. What do they expect to happen? That suddenly they will be magically transported off the plane because they are stood up? What is even worse are those who stand up for the entire time it takes for the line to finally start shuffling forward, and only then do they decide to collect their carry on from the overhead compartments and hold people up even more!

It isn’t rocket science, we all knew when the plane was landing, so get your shoes back on, sit yourself back down, wait until the rows in front of you have emptied, and then get your bags and walk out in a calm, orderly manner. And don’t forget to say thank you to the crew. The whole process would be so much smoother!

And How The Hell Is That Considered Carry On?

We all know these people. The people pretending oversized suitcases are cabin baggage, the ones who somehow lucked out with ground crew who couldn’t be bothered doing their jobs again so manage to sneak on board the largest luggage, a massive backpack as their personal item, enough outer layers to survive an arctic expedition and 37 bags of duty free Toblerone’s.

If this is you, just know that the rest of us – who have an actual cabin size carry on backpack, and then have no room in the overhead bins because of you – absolutely hate you and would happily see you and your selfish ilk thrown into the cargo hold with the rest of your crap.

In one respect you can blame the airlines for this, and I frequently do, for cramming increasing amounts of people into the cabin without increasing storage space, charging for checked baggage and a dozen other ridiculous rules, but at the end of the day this is what we have to live with, and some of us manage to do so without putting our own needs above everyone else’s.

Space is at an extreme premium on flights now, and anything that impinges on that, can have us fuming and seething into our ridiculously minuscule plastic cups of orange juice. Airlines have carry on restrictions and rules for a reason. People need to start following them and the airlines themselves need to start enforcing them.

The Luggage Crammers

Closely related to the fliers that bring far too much carry on luggage on board are the peculiar breed of fool who insists that no matter how full the overheads are, or how many other passengers bags are inside them, their own excessively sized, hard suitcase can still fit inside perfectly well if only they shove, hit, ram and force their case as hard as they possibly can into them, regardless of other peoples possessions inside.

There are few things on a flight that are as likely to induce in me a propensity toward air rage fuelled anger than this.

I normally travel fairly light. Carry on only in fact. Which means my and my carry on consists of a small backpack that can easily fit inside that stupid little frame airlines insist on using. It also means my worldly possessions for the duration of my trip are inside that carry on, often including camera gear and other equipment.

What that doesn’t need is some moron who couldn’t quite grasp the square peg in a round hole toy as a child, trying to beat the living hell out of it with their own hard shell wheely case because they can’t understand that it won’t fit.

Parents Who Don’t Even Try

Children are an absolute constant source of blood vessel bursting frustration on flights, from the screaming baby who just will not shut up for an entire long haul flight, to the uncontrollable brats treating the plane as a private playground or throwing a huge tantrum and repeatedly kicking the back of your seat. To be fair some kids are great and well behaved, I once sat on an eight hour flight next to a child who spent her time colouring in on her lap and watching cartoons in silence, she even said sorry when she dropped a crayon into the space between me and her (the apology wasn’t necessary, but the manners were nice to see). Unfortunately not all are like this. One single child can be enough to raise the entire collective blood pressure of the whole plane.

And it’s not their fault. It’s the parents.

People are already tetchy on long haul flights, they are tired, uncomfortable and frustrated, and their stress levels are already at breaking point, so their tolerance for something as divisively annoying as other people’s kids is so far below normal standards it may as well be considered non existent.

Despite this, people are still very understanding. We know a baby can’t help crying, we know a toddler will sometimes morph into something out of the exorcist, we get it. And honestly, if parents are visibly trying to calm a crying baby or are doing their best to entertain an unruly child, you will get a fair bit of slack and you aren’t part of this list.

What I can blame though is the selfish parents who don’t even attempt to do anything. They have become so immune to their spawns excessive crying or so indulgent of little johnny ‘just expressing himself’ that they will happily sit their and bury their head in a book while the rest of the cabin turns into a flying Thunderdome taken over by shrieking demons.

These sociopathic curators of feral hellspawn are the absolute worst. They don’t parent, they just passively observe the chaos they unleashed, completely disassociated from the misery they are inflicting on everyone around them.

If you are a parent, then the responsibility falls on you to ensure that your children don’t adversely affect me or anyone else on the flight. I don’t care if you have gotten so used to it you can sit there and ignore it, I haven’t, so sort it out.

Whether that involves taking a series of short haul flights with layovers to make the journey more comfortable and manageable, preparation in the form of snacks and entertainment to keep older children occupied or simply that old fashioned notion of actually disciplining the damn stroppy brat who insists on disturbing everyone else around him with his little antics (and no, he isn’t just being a kid, he’s being a little shit, so control him). Either way it is your responsibility as a parent to deal with it and minimise the disruption to everyone else.

People Who Think The Whole Cabin Wants To Hear Their Entertainment

There was a time when this wasn’t even a problem. If you wanted to listen to music or watch a film on a plane, you plugged in those cheap, flimsy headphones the airline supplied like every other functioning member of society and quietly got on with it. Then, somewhere along the way, everyone got a smartphone and the ability to play endless downloaded video, music and social feeds through tiny loudspeakers that sound as if they belong on a concert stage in the confines of a tiny cabin.

These people have genuinely gone through life so utterly devoid of self-awareness that it has never once occurred to them that complete strangers might not be fascinated by the soundtrack to their social media feed, their latest podcast or the fifteenth identical TikTok clip they’ve watched in the last five minutes. Imagine possessing that level of delusional self-importance.

I mean this is what happens when you have entire generations who have grown up never experiencing what it is like to be punched in the face when you do something out of line, and because of that these people have reached adulthood without ever developing the astonishingly basic ability to ask themselves one simple question.

“Am I being an absolute tit?”

The answer, incidentally, is yes.

Nobody wants to hear your downloaded videos. Nobody wants to hear your game. Nobody wants to hear your latest podcast. Nobody wants to hear your motivational life coach enthusiastically telling you to “crush your goals” while the rest of us are just trying to survive eleven hours in economy. If you are the only person who chose to watch it, there is a fairly compelling argument that you should also be the only person who has to listen to it.

The worst part isn’t even the volume. Aircraft are already noisy places. Engines roar, people chat, babies cry and trolleys rattle endlessly up and down the aisle. Your brain can tune most of that out because it is constant. What it can’t ignore is the same fifteen-second clip playing on repeat, the endless notification pings, the shrill sound effects from somebody’s game or the opening bars of the same song for the twenty-seventh time. It stops being entertainment remarkably quickly and starts feeling like a low-budget psychological experiment designed to see how long it takes otherwise reasonable adults to snap.

Then there are the parents who hand their toddler a tablet with the volume turned up to maximum before retreating into blissful ignorance. I have absolutely no objection to children watching cartoons on a flight. In fact, I’d much rather they were happily distracted than treating the cabin like an inflatable adventure playground. What I object to is the assumption that the rest of us have somehow volunteered to join in.

If your toddler has spent the last twelve hours playing Baby Shark on repeat at a volume normally reserved for emergency evacuation announcements, you haven’t discovered a clever parenting hack. You’ve transformed an irritating children’s song into the auditory equivalent of Chinese water torture. By hour three everybody knows the words. By hour six you’re beginning to understand why certain interrogation techniques are prohibited under international law. By the time you land, you’ve developed a facial tick, have PTSD and are ready to gleefully murder someone.

The truly baffling thing is that this is perhaps the easiest problem on this entire list to solve. Headphones exist. They have existed for decades. They are sold in airports, supermarkets, corner shops and virtually anywhere else that also sells chewing gum and bottled water. You don’t even need expensive ones. You just need enough common decency to recognise that your entertainment stopped being a private choice the moment you forced everyone else to become part of the audience.

If you insist on playing your phone out loud on a plane, don’t pretend you’ve simply forgotten your headphones.

You’ve consciously decided that your entertainment is more important than everyone else’s peace and quiet.

And that’s exactly why everyone around you thinks you’re an absolute tit.

Getting Drunk

There is absolutely nothing wrong with having a drink before a flight. You’re going on a big trip after all, you’ve escaped work, you’re in an airport where the normal rules of society no longer seem to apply and, somehow, drinking a pint at six o’clock in the morning has become not only acceptable. It’s fine. Have a beer, enjoy a glass of wine with your meal or celebrate the start of your trip with something a little stronger if that’s your thing. Nobody cares.

The problem is the passenger who doesn’t know where the line is.

We’ve all seen them. They boarded perfectly normal but somewhere between Duty Free and the third double vodka and Coke, they now think the cabin is a Wetherspoons on a Saturday night and have become convinced they are now the most entertaining person on the aircraft. Every conversation is conducted at maximum volume, every joke is comedy gold despite nobody else laughing, and every poor bastard trapped within three rows is unwillingly recruited into hearing the life story of someone they would normally cross the road to avoid. Pretty soon the language deteriorates, personal space becomes a vague suggestion rather than a social norm, and before long they are picking a fight with the entertainment screen and dragging everyone in a ten foot radius into it.

And yes, this absolutely applies to the large groups on a package tour to Shagaluf too.

Airlines and airports are not entirely blameless here either. They happily encourage passengers to begin drinking before they even board, continue serving alcohol at thirty thousand feet and then seem genuinely surprised when somebody who has spent the last six hours steadily consuming beer and whisky chasers decides that threatening a flight attendant is a perfectly reasonable life choice. Perhaps relentlessly selling alcohol to a captive audience before locking them inside a metal tube wasn’t the greatest business model ever conceived.

But ultimately people are still responsible for their own behaviour. Have a drink, have two, enjoy the start of your holiday, but have enough self-awareness to realise that the rest of the cabin didn’t book a front row seat to your gradual transformation into Britain’s least entertaining pub bore.

People Who Treat Cabin Crew Like Servants

Let’s get something straight before we begin. I have criticised cabin crew plenty of times over the years, and I will continue to do so whenever they deserve it. Some are unnecessarily rude, some hide behind policy when common sense would solve the problem in seconds, and some seem to mistake a position of authority for a licence to speak to passengers however they please. They are not beyond criticism simply because they wear a uniform.

But that doesn’t give you permission to behave like an entitled arsehole.

The overwhelming majority of cabin crew are simply trying to do their jobs. They are looking after several hundred passengers in an environment where people are tired, uncomfortable, dehydrated, stressed and increasingly convinced that every minor inconvenience is a personal attack on their civil liberties. They don’t need some entitled moron pressing the call button every five minutes and clicking their fingers because the ice cube in their off brand Baileys has melted.

Grow up, regulate your needs and look after yourself. If you genuinely need something, go and ask, but be polite and make it as easy as possible for the crew to give you what you need. A little bit of consideration goes a long way.

People Who Invade Your Space

There is a moment in long haul travel that is an equal measure of rapture and dread. It is the moment where you find your seat on the plane, put your pack in the overhead locker, sit down and discover that the seat next to you is empty. For a split second it feels like you have won the lottery and gained a tiny little bit of extra space off the airline that normally crams you in like a sardine! Then you start eyeing all the other passengers getting on suspiciously and mentally willing them all away from your seat, desperate to cling on to the hope that for once you may get a little bit of extra space on this flight. Until that is your hopes are dashed and someone stops at your aisle and moves to sit down next to you.

It is then your worst nightmare is confirmed. Is the person who you will be sitting next to for the better part of the next day or night that tiny little old dear who will probably doze off five minutes into the flight? Maybe the nice, slim gentleman who will say a polite hello then return to his book?

Of course not, it’s the wide load you saw stocking up on snacks and burgers at the airport lounge to keep him going in between in flight meals!

Now before the professionally offended start furiously typing, this isn’t about someone’s appearance. It isn’t about mocking people for being overweight. It is about people who knowingly buy a single economy seat despite knowing full well that they physically cannot remain within it. If your body fat – an entirely preventable thing, unlike height – is spilling over the armrest and into the seat I’ve paid exactly the same money for, then your problem has just become my problem. I’m already wedged into an economy seat that airlines have spent the last twenty years shrinking to maximise profit. I shouldn’t then have to surrender another quarter of it because someone else decided that buying the extra seat they clearly needed would be inconvenient or expensive.

But this isn’t just about larger passengers. They are merely one example of a much broader condition that seems to affect an alarming proportion of airline passengers: the complete inability to recognise where your own personal space ends and somebody else’s begins. There are the elbow enthusiasts who somehow manage to occupy both armrests before the safety demonstration has even finished, despite one of the most sacred commandments of flying being that the middle seat gets both armrests. That poor unfortunate soul has drawn the shortest straw on the aircraft. They have no view, no easy access to the aisle and spend the next ten hours wedged between two complete strangers. The armrests are literally all they have. Stop nicking them.

Then there are the people in front whose hair apparently develops a life of its own the moment the seatbelt signs are switched off. You settle down to watch a film, glance at your screen and discover that Rapunzel has decided your in-flight entertainment system is the ideal place to hang her greasy top knot. Every time she moves, it swings backwards and forwards across your screen, occasionally brushes your tray table and, if you’re particularly lucky, dips gracefully into your meal like it’s searching for leftovers.

I’m convinced this is the real reason they don’t let you take scissors through airport security.

Everyone keeps talking about terrorism, but every seasoned traveller knows the real danger is that after six hours of somebody else’s hair dangling in front of your face, that bitch would be getting slapped with her own freshly removed top knot before the captain had even started the descent.

None of this is difficult. Your seat is your space. Mine is mine. Keep your body, your elbows, your hair, your knees and every other protruding part of your anatomy on your own side of the invisible border. The moment any part of you starts occupying the space I paid for, you’ve stopped being an innocent fellow traveller and become exactly the sort of selfish, inconsiderate arsehole this entire article is about.

People Who Use Your Seat As A Climbing Frame

There seems to be a peculiar condition that only manifests itself at thirty thousand feet. Perfectly healthy adults who somehow managed to walk through the airport, queue at security, spend forty-five minutes wandering Duty Free, carry their own bags to the gate and board the aircraft entirely under their own steam suddenly lose all independent use of their legs the moment the seatbelt sign is switched off. Standing up apparently becomes physically impossible unless they first grab the headrest of the seat in front and haul on it with all the grace and subtlety of somebody attempting to escape a crevasse on Everest.

Here’s a little secret these people never seem to grasp. That isn’t just a seat. It’s attached to another human being. Every violent yank doesn’t just move the seat, it sends the poor unfortunate soul sitting in it lurching backwards, jolts their neck, spills whatever they’re drinking and instantly reminds them that, despite paying several hundred pounds for the privilege, they have somehow become an unwilling piece of mobility equipment for the passenger behind them. Unless you have a genuine mobility issue (and even then you still have armrests you can push up on), there is absolutely no excuse for it. Your legs managed to get you onto the aircraft. With a little determination they will probably cope with getting you to the toilet as well.

As if that wasn’t irritating enough, many of these same people then spend the rest of the flight repeatedly punching the entertainment screen mounted on the back of your seat as though they’re trying to go several rounds with Mike Tyson. Every menu selection is accompanied by another jab directly into the back of your head. Every attempt to pause a film becomes a full-force right hook. It is called a touchscreen for a reason. It responds to a gentle tap. If you have to strike it with enough force to register on the aircraft’s flight data recorder, the problem isn’t the screen, it’s the thick idiot using it.

There is, however, one important exception to this rule.

If the person sitting in front of you has decided to recline their seat into your kneecaps despite every civilised convention of air travel, then normal etiquette is temporarily suspended. At that point they have already made the conscious decision that their comfort matters more than yours, so if they happen to experience the occasional mysterious nudge from behind every time you change a film, adjust your screen or stand up to stretch your legs, every few minutes, well, let’s just say it is karma delivered directly from the gods of travel.

The Dreaded Recliners!

Armed with a staggering lack of empathy and two degrees of extra tilt on their seats, these sociopathic parasites are petty little sky tyrants who view your discomfort, your personal space and your now crushed and mangled knees as collateral damage for their own minor perceived comfort.

Worse even than the space invaders, there is a special place in hell reserved for these reclinopaths, in between tax collectors and certain British light entertainers from the 1970s. They act as if the fact they purchased a seat on a plane also gives them the right to take up your personal space and spend the entire flight laying painfully in your lap, usually while treating the cabin like their own living room and operating on the delusional assumption that they are somehow the main character.

This is my all time, ultimate frustration on any flight, and one that continues to polarise all passengers today. Recliners. Not just the seats themselves and the function they provide, but the selfish fools who think it is their right to lean back into my space as much as they can the second they sit down in it.

Space on any flight is getting increasingly small as airlines continue to make smaller seats, shrink the seat pitch and add extra rows to maximise the amounts of passengers they can squeeze in to maximise profits. The pitch (or the space between seats) has shrunk on most airlines by a good few inches over the last decade alone, and what was once considered ‘normal’ (read still reduced) spacing between seats just a few years ago is now being sold as ‘premium’ extra leg room seating. This has happened to the extent that modern seating in economy class does not reflect the average build of most people today.

I am 6”2 tall and I can only just squeeze into the space allocated to me by most airlines, but my knees are usually pressing into the back of the seat in front of me as it is, and this is when sitting fully upright. This is not my fault – unlike obesity – no one can help or have any control over how tall they are, this is the fault of the airlines who have vastly shrunk the space between seats. When someone reclines they don’t just reduce my personal space, they actually press down on or in some places really push into my knees.

So those selfish, inconsiderate fools who recline as soon as they can really wind me up.

This physical pain and injury are often a result of the selfish passengers who recline. I have lost count of the amount of times someone has just slammed their seat back suddenly, causing me intense pain as the seat literally crushes my knees that were until that point pressed up against the back of it. How would they like it if I walked up to them in the street and broke a wooden chair over their knees? It is the exact same feeling! I of course would be arrested for assault, so what does that say about what recliners are doing to me? Then there is the constant pressure of having my knees and legs crushed into a tiny space that is not only uncomfortable and painful, but also a health risk.

Since airlines refuse to have any common sense policy on the matter (such as having a non reclining section at the front and a reclining section at the back, allowing reclining only between certain hours at night for sleep on long hauls or even banning reclining seats entirely), and they will never make more space available in economy class because that would involve taking out a couple of rows of seats which they can make revenue from, then the onus is on passengers to have a bit of consideration for their fellow travellers and not recline.

Until then, being thrown out of the cabin at 30,000 feet is far to easy a fate for these people.

Why Flying Brings Out The Worst In People

Reading through that list, you would be forgiven for wondering whether commercial aviation simply attracts the most inconsiderate people society has to offer. It doesn’t. There are some people who are just sociopathic narcissists with the personal hygiene of a house full of crackheads, but most passengers are perfectly decent, polite human beings who quietly get on with the journey, respect the people around them and arrive at the other end without becoming the subject of an article like this.

The problem is that aircraft are almost perfectly designed to amplify even the smallest amount of selfishness. Hundreds of complete strangers are packed into a confined space with virtually no privacy, very little personal space and almost no means of escaping each other. Add delays, queues, uncomfortable seats, poor sleep, alcohol, screaming children, jet lag and the general stress that often accompanies travel, and you’ve created an environment where even the smallest acts of inconsiderate behaviour feel magnified. The elbow that would barely register in a café becomes infuriating after eight hours. The loud phone that would irritate you on a train suddenly becomes unbearable when there is nowhere else to move. Every tiny annoyance slowly chips away at your patience until even the sound of somebody breathing too enthusiastically starts to feel like a personal attack.

Airlines are largely to blame here too. Economy seats continue to shrink beyond what is humanly possible, cabins become more densely packed every year and every available inch of space has been monetised. They have literally turned taking a flight into a more extreme version of the Hunger Games. Passengers are expected to compete for overhead locker space, fight for the privilege of sitting together as a family and somehow remain cheerful despite being treated more like freight than paying customers. It is hardly surprising that tensions sometimes boil over when the entire experience seems designed to test the limits of human tolerance.

None of that, however, excuses behaving like an inconsiderate arsehole.

Every single person on that aircraft is dealing with exactly the same conditions. They’re all tired. They’re all uncomfortable. They’re all desperate to arrive. Most of them somehow manage to cope with all of that without deciding that the answer is to remove their shoes, get drunk, spread themselves across two seats, clip their toenails, scream at cabin crew or inflict Baby Shark on repeat for 8 hours on three hundred unwilling victims. The difference isn’t the environment. The difference is that most people possess something that seems to be in increasingly short supply: basic courtesy.

That is all it takes, just a little thought and a little bit of basic courtesy.

At its heart, every behaviour in this article comes down to exactly the same character flaw. It isn’t bad manners. It isn’t poor etiquette. It isn’t even selfishness on its own. It’s the inability, or perhaps the unwillingness, to recognise that the people around you are every bit as real as you are. They have their own journey, their own worries, their own discomforts and exactly the same right to a peaceful flight as you do. The moment you start acting as though your comfort automatically outweighs everybody else’s, you’ve become part of the problem.

The irony is that flying really doesn’t have to be this miserable. I’ve spent more than twenty-five years travelling the world and I still genuinely love it. I love the anticipation before a flight, the buzz of take-off and even the strange little world that exists inside airports and aircraft cabins. Flying isn’t the problem. It never has been.

It’s just a shame that every now and then you are reminded that the greatest threat to a pleasant flight has never been turbulence, delays or cramped seats. It’s the staggering number of people who simply never learned how to behave around other human beings.