Layman’s Guide to Airplane Etiquette
Being crammed into a small space with heavy objects over your head in a seat seemingly designed for humans without legs is bad, but things can get much worse when fate decides that you deserve the middle seat between two clueless individuals who have no knowledge of what airplane etiquette is.
We must realize what separates us from our feline brethren; etiquette. After all, we do live in a society, and as such comes with a set of etiquettes that we must follow to ensure civic harmony. Let us start with the most important points;
Do NOT put your bare feet up.
It is astonishing as to how many people do this regularly when they’re on flights. There are germs on your feet that may cause people to stare at your behavior. You don’t that this in restaurants, so why would you do it in a cramped space hundreds of kilometers above the ground? This may be a cause of hygienic concern among others in the plane (do you know that bare feet smells?). if you’re not comfortable with the shoe you’re wearing, put on a sandal, or better yet, wear breathable shoes. I’m sure there’s a shoe for your specific preferences if only you look hard enough. It is the age of the internet after all, and you can find most of what you want on the internet.
Do NOT walk around the plane in your bare feet.
The hippie movement ended in the sixties. Let us leave it where it belongs. The plane is not your house, other people paid for their plane tickets just like you, if they all start to walk around in their bare feet, chaos is sure to occur. Think about it, if you were to walk into the lavatory in your bare feet, there’s no telling of the gruesome germs and bacteria you might pick up, not to mention the ramification of your actions among the other patrons aboard the plane.
The issue of armrests
The most hotly debated issue among air-travelers around the globe. Who should get the armrest? The answer to this is rather simple, the aisle gets extra legroom and an armrest, the middle seat gets two armrests, and the window seat gets an armrest and a window. Try not to be greedy, think of the pitiful person condemned to occupy the middle seat. It is not a pleasant experience, they can’t stretch their legs, they can’t look out of a window to distract themselves from the fact that they’re being transported hundreds of kilometers away in a tin can flying through the air at high speeds. There’s nothing more irritating than fighting with another patron for the right to occupy an armrest in a flight that lasts for hours on end.
Putting your foot up against the seat in front of you
You may think that the thick foam padding that airplane seats have within them would allow you to put your feet up against them without the person sitting in front of you to realize it, but you could not be more wrong. When you put your feet up against the seat in front of your, the person occupying the seat could clearly feel the bulge that your feet create pushing on their back, and as someone who’s done their fair share of flying, this can not be more annoying.
Look, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to be comfortable when you’re flying, we all want to be comfortable regardless of what we’re doing, and where we’re doing it. But some common decency goes a long way, people on planes have to deal with a lot of things, the paranoia of the plane suddenly falling out of the sky, endless crying of babies, being separated from social media, we’ve all been there, and it is anything but comfortable. There is however nothing we could do. The only thing we COULD do is to show each other some decency and act like the human beings we are. So please do your part to make sure that you follow basic airplane etiquette and help all the other patrons feel more comfortable being in a flying contraption, miles away from home.