Flying from Frankfurt back to the US - can’t remember the exact destination. I was seated on the aisle seat in the middle row. Next to me was an elderly gentleman (I use theterm loosely). Before the flight even took off he had had about three whiskeys. Then he started bitching when the announcer finished her spiel in english and then started in german - said something to the effect of “I’m so sick of hearing funny languages” and “just get me back to America”. My eyes practically had hernias from rolling so hard. Then after take-off, when they announce that you can now adjust your seats and stuff, the woman in the seat in front of him tried to move her seat back. He pushed against the seat so that she couldn’t move it. She tried a couple more times, and after a while he was PUNCHING the seat, causing her head to be flung forward. I couldn’t stand it any more. “Stop that! That’s RUDE!” I yelled at him. He looked at me, bewildered, “What?” “I said, that’s really rude!” He said “Oh,” and kind of sat back. His wife didn’t move a muscle. I bet she was overjoyed that someone finally told the bastard off. The woman adjusted her seat back and the man and I didn’t say another word for the next 6 hours or so.
“Which car company do you work for?” -“A major one.”
I’m a pretty talkative flyer if people seem OK with it.
Last time I flew, the girl in the seat next to me was pretty scared of flying, and I was talking to her about airplanes and how ridiculously overbuilt they get, so she had nothing to worry about (I wanted to be a pilot as a kid, so flying is great fun for me). After an hour or so of this, I finally got her comfortable with the whole idea, and we started final descent. She asked what I was listening to on my MP3 player, so I passed her the headphones.
I should have skipped forward a track, it turns out - I was playing Assemblage 23’s Storm, and 30,000 feet had just kicked in.
With all due respect (which is quite a lot, because I admire and enjoy most of your posts), I think that’s a hilarious thing to say and a pretty nice way of bringing some levity to a tense situation. I don’t know any Catholic priests who actually believe God will automatically tell them when they’re about to die. <shrug>
A lot of my flying recently has involved red eye flights or really early mornings, so my fellow passengers don’t seem to be inclined to say more than “hi,” if that much. That’s okay for me, because I usually have some trashy novel along to pass the time.
One time though, coming home from vacation, I was seated next to a very chatty woman who turned out to be an EMT here in the city. I was okay with the conversation until she began to describe, in excrutiating detail, some of the cases she had dealt with, especially some instances of babies having been molested. :eek: 
My hat’s off to anyone who has the personal strength to face those situations and help people on a daily basis, but after a while I just couldn’t handle it any more, so I made of point of cracking open my book and only briefly answering her whenever she tried to start in with yet another story. She eventually did stop talking, but was clearly miffed with me for the rest of the flight.
I say hi to or acknowledge a fellow passenger with a nod, then go back to my listening to music on my MP3 player. Typically if I’m flying I’m none too happy about it to start with (business travel) or I’m with my husband (vacation), and I’m not a real big “talk to strangers at random” kind of person due to my shyness.
Wow. I can’t believe you all talk to people on airplanes. I don’t even make eye contact with my seatmates if I can help it.
A man sitting in front of me on a cross-country flight opened up his laptop and proceeded to watch hardcore lesbian porn. He tried to share it with his seatmate (who appeared to be Muslime and extremely uncomfortable) and had the computer turned so the teen girl on the other side of him could also see the screen. I leaned forward and told him to turn off his computer immediately and he did.
Weird, weird, weird! Made for a tense flight for all concerned.
If it makes you feel any better, I’ve been behind mammoth SUVs in traffic where the built-in DVD player monitors were showing some particularly kinky porn. Japanese, I think, really experimental stuff. Very distracting.
I rarely converse with my seatmates. It’s too hard to hear, and it’s so dry, my throat starts to hurt. I take a book or a puzzle magazine and keep to myself.
Once we were flying in the two window seats on the window side of the aisle, and a couple with their profoundly retarded 16-year-old boy flew in the three seats in the middle. We knew the poor boy couldn’t help it, but we felt badly for the person seated just in front of him. The boy was fascinated with the drink table, and kept unlatching it so that it fell down, and then slamming it back up hard – over and over again, for two solid hours. Then, shortly before meal service began, the couple stretched the boy across the three seats and changed his diaper. The boy’s genitalia and feces were fully visible to many people. I knew there was no other way for them to travel, so I am not slamming them for it. But I did not want my meal that flight.
Another time, I was utterly exhausted by a long flight from Europe back to the west coast of the U.S. Meals had been served and everyone was finished (I thought). I pushed my seat back so that I could finally rest and the guy behind me punched my seat forward aggressively. It turned out he was still lingering over his crappy airline meal long after everyone else was done and he wanted me to wait for him to be done. He actually punched the seat hard enough to hurt my head! I didn’t tell my husband what was going on because he would have started a confrontation, which was all I needed at that point.
My take on that was, because he was a bishop he assumed the airline would advise him of any problems. Since he is of course a VIP and all that. I may be reading wrong but that’s what I got out of it.
I think I may have the distinction of possibly being the first to listen to that song on an airplane - I had a promo of the album about three weeks in advance and listened to it all the way through the day after I got it - talk about creepy!
I was sat next to a Gurkha for 18 hours. He spoke little English, I speak no Gurkhali. We conversed but little - I was reading Max Hastings’ account of the Falklands War and the Gurkhas got a mention but that didn’t sustain us long. The way back, I had two business class seats all to myself. 
Which brings my own, if not strange, at least unnerving and decidedly awkward airplane situation. In 1998 I took part on the South American Aermodeling championships, the Uruguayan air force provided transport on a Fokker Friendship, the twin ship and flying the same route of the one that crashed in the Andes and gave birth to the whole air disaster/cannibalism thing… :eek:
One month after that the plane caught fire while refueling and was incinerated.
People talk to me in supermarkets and on buses too, really just about anywhere, and I end up with people I’ve known for fifteen minutes telling me their life stories. So the most awkward situation I’ve had on a plane flight was when neither of my neighbours wanted to even say hello! I’m always well-equipped with books and music, so I survived, but it was still really strange.
I don’t talk to people, but the last flight I was on, there was this *really *cute European gentleman sitting next to me. I almost decided to start up a conversation but then thought better of it.
Mostly I stay quiet and do my own thing. My biggest awkward moment was, flying back on Air France to NY. Turbulence was terrible, and people were getting sick. For the first time ever I got sick in the airplane, and had to use the sick bag. On my right was a handsome, young, blonde couple that apparently didn’t speak a word of English. I never felt so bad as I did that day, throwing up inches from this extremely nice woman. But instead of being disgusted or uncomfortable, the woman put her hand on my back, and gently rubbed it and soothed me, all the while speaking gently in her own language.
I will never forget her kindness.
I had a very tense flight from Japan to England (about 13 or 14 hours) when my son was nine months old, and the man in the seat next to me as soon as we sat down, and said “Keep its hands off me.”
And last year on our way to Hong Kong (and then to England) my son with the fatal nut allergies was seated next to a Chinese man who got out his own packet of nuts and chomped his way through them, in that horrible slack jawed spit-flicking way that some people have. I moved my son away from him by making him sit in the furthest away seat, and I told the airline staff. They asked the man to put his nuts away, so he turned and stared at us, shook his head and got another pack out. I spent the next four hours hating him. (Kid was OK, but last year had an anaphylactic reaction when nuts were cracked in his classroom for a craft project, so I know that flying nut oil will do it for him…)
And we caused a certain amount of tension/hatred on another Japan/UK flight when my kids were one and four. There was a German woman in the row in front of us with the exact same age combination, so at one point I took her baby and entertained them while she did Lego on the floor in her row with the two boys. The kids got unruly and began to walk around the plane (I wouldn’t have let them both do it but I was trapped between two babies!). There was a man asleep with his head hanging into the aisle, so of course they kept brushing him as they went by. On about the fourth circuit, he suddenly leaped up, grabbed my son by his upper arms and roared into his face, “GO AND SIT DOWN” Like I say, I agree that the kid shouldn’t have been doing that but the reaction was a bit much. Kid was scared witless. The German woman rescued the boys as the man bellowed that the kids needed to be strapped into their seats. She looked at him and very politely said, “You want the four children strapped in, then do you?” “YES, Dammit, I’ve paid over 1000 pounds for this seat, rant rant rant…” She and I looked at each other, strapped all four kids into their places, and sat back as all four of them commenced crying at the tops of their voices. At which Mr Aggressive started muttering and rolling his head around and the passengers behind us snickered. (Kids fell asleep about half an hour later but it was a looong half hour.)
flying to the us in about an hour. have my noise cancellation headphones and a slew of batteries ready. flights are for working, sleeping or reading. might chat with a neighbor for a few minures as we decend.
I don’t normally talk to people other than to say hi when they first sit down, and then only if they say it first.
Last time I flew I was reading a large book called AIR DISASTERS with a big colourful picture of a plane crash on the cover. I felt a bit self conscious about it and generally tried to read it so the cover wouldn’t be obvious.
Some time before that I was flying from Broome to Darwin with a stop in Kununnura. I checked in at Broome and recieved my ticket. After an hour and a half we were in Kununnura for a 20 minute stop and then got back on the plane. I was sitting there for a while and the door was still open, the hostee was walking up and down the isle counting heads. She did this a couple of times and it soon became apparant that there was a problem with the number of people on board. I rolled my eyes a bit and thought “christ, some idiot hasn’t turned up or somethin :rolleyes:.”
Eventually a ground crew guy climbed up the steps with some paperwork, he and the hostee walked back down the isle and eventually stopped next to me.
“Excuse me sir, do you have your boarding pass?” she said.
I said, “why, yes, yes I do,” and smuggly produced my boarding pass.
“I’m afraid that is only for Broome to Kununnura”
“er… um…”
“Did you book through to Darwin?”
“er… I don’t know, my company did it”
“What company is that?”
“er… [name of airline]”
She went away again leaving me feeling somewhat like an idiot, and contemplating an overnight in Kununnura, which is not a very nice place really. When she came back, I was told that I was meant to be on a later flight to Darwin but that they were happy for me to stay on that one.
I never did find out why I wasn’t originally checked all the way through, or why my company decided to give me a three hour stopover instead of a 20 minute one. The incident revealed the security measures to be a joke. The boarding pass that I presented, both to the woman at the gate and the hostee when I boarded, was clearly not valid. Luckily my bags travelled with me as well.