Did you think not turning the plane into a fireball and crashing into a mountain was a special treat? Do you think we are Lindburg, making the dangerous crossing to Newark for the first time? And it’s not like the pilots can hear you through their terrorist-proof door.
:dubious:
Silly boy, don’t you realize that passengers clap because there is not enough space to dance? Try thinking things through next time.
Were you flying from Germany? Might there have been a lot of Germans on board? I have heard this is a German thing.
Makes no more or less sense to me than most other traditions, like saying “bless you” for example.
ETA: Did you mean to put this in the BBQ Pit?
It used to be quite common for Spaniards, too, not so much nowadays but if someone starts the whole plane will join in.
It’s just a way to show appreciation to the pilot. When you’re coming off a bus, you can thank the driver and wish him well, but in a plane you don’t have that option.
Why not? Usually they open up the cockpit and half the time they are thanking the passengers as they get off.
The only time I remember hearing passengers clap is while flying with Canadians.
The pilot probably does not want to die either, so that probably encourages him to avoid crashing into mountains.
I do not understand the clapping either.
Puerto Ricans piss me off as well. At least they appreciate the small things though.
Maybe where you live, but not in the last flights I’ve been in. And even with the cabin open, you’re not walking out through the cabin, whereas in a bus you are walking out close enough to the driver that you can touch him. The only times I’ve disembarked from a plane where the people at the door were pilots and not cabin crew, they were planes small enough to not have cabin crew.
I get this all the time on flights into and out of Russia.
I once took a Cubana Airlines flight from Cancun to Havana in a Russian built plane.
I almost started clapping myself when that POS landed.
This used to be customary on El Al flights as well.
Thankfully, Israelis seem to be gradually losing this habit…
I have no idea why people do this either. One time I accidentally started a round of plane landing applause when I clapped sarcastically to point out the stupidity of doing the same.
Probably could have shoe-horned this in to mini-rants.
I clap. It doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t cost anything, and it doesn’t keep me on the plane longer.
Furthermore, I appreciate the skills of a talented pilot more than a 12 year old girl appreciates the singing ability of Justin Beiber.
SSG § Schwartz
It’s very common on UK flights - generally the cheaper holiday flights (charters, Ryanair etc).
It’s usually accompanied by the rattling of cheap jewellery and the swish swish of brightly-coloured nylon leisure-wear.
Isn’t it a coincidence that Lindburg flew across thew Hudson for the first time, and some guy named Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic solo for the first time? What are the odds two guys with such similar – but differently-spelled – names would achieve historical firsts in flight?
See, that’s the kind of thing that would inspire me to clap.
In Sweden it’s called the Mediterranean charter flight applause, not occurring on charter flights to other destinations or on regular flights. However, I have taken part in a very spontaneous applause when landing with a charter flight in England (or on the return trip, I don’t remember which) when the flight attendant saying thank you to the passengers happened to call the captain Blomkål (cauliflower) instead of Blomkvist.
Lindburg is very probably just an anglicised spelling of Lindbergh (or rather Lindberg).
I agree it’s pretty stupid, but I can’t get upset about it. It’s charming, harmless idiocy - they are saying, “Thank you for working your pilot wizardry and not allowing this scientific witchcraft to kill us all!” Or something equally mixed-up.
If you lined up all the idiotic acts from most to least well-intentioned, this would end up somewhere near feeding bread to pigeons, only it doesn’t help those mangy shit-machines flourish.
Now I think about it, throughout my life, most times I have clapped it is out of social obligation, not out of any rational desire to convey appreciation.