That’s where I experienced the clapping thing, on a flight from Puerto Rico to New York. There was a lot of turbulence so people were making roller coaster noises too and the clapping seemed to be relief that we’d landed.
What really pissed me off was watching the sunset off Key West. Sun goes down, everyone claps - WTF?
In Soviet Russia, planes clap YOU!
I’m a pilot. I’ve heard it once- after a very rough flight with a bad line of thunderstorms we could neither fly around (not enough fuel), climb over, or safely fly through. We had already decided to divert to an alternate destination, and the passengers had been notified. A hole opened up in the line of weather, and we decided to go for it. After landing at the original intended destination, the passengers broke out into applause. It may be a strange, seemingly pointless tradition, but I know the whole crew had been working very hard that flight, and we all appreciated it.
Wow, life must be awfully irritating if you are constantly annoyed by people’s minor expressions of joy. The clapping lasts how long? Maybe 10 seconds? You really can’t suck it up and say “Hey, I don’t feel like clapping, but these people over here seem to feel like clapping and in fact look pretty happy about it, good for them.”
You get this in a lot of places, particularly among people who are used to flying on less-than-reliable airlines. It’ s just a little social ritual saying “Yay! I’m in one piece, this flight is over, and now it’s time to start my journey/return home.”
One of the sweetest things I’ve ever seen was at the Douala airport in Cameroon. People were gathered on the roof to see the one or two flight of the night take off. When they did, everyone on the roof clapped in delight and probably hope for what the outside world had to bring their loved ones on the plane.
Flights to Ireland, if full of Irish people, will nearly always have a round of applause and some cheering when the plane lands. “We’re Irish and and we’re glad to be home” is the way I always understood it; nothing to do with the pilot.
I like it, for a few seconds everyone is in good spirits (except the moany fuckers posting here), and it’s a nice bit of relief after what has usually been a horrible journey.
Seriously, if THIS is the thing that you hate about air travel (instead of delays, unnavigable airports, long queues, lost luggage, lost friends, more delays, Ryanair’s hidden charges, cramped seats, fat people, crying infants, trying to sleep on airport seats between transfers, plane food, missing transfers, and the smell of airplane toilets after someone pisses all over the floor twenty minutes into an eight hour flight), then fuck off back to the boat. You depressing moaning festering-in-own-misery cuntfucks.
Completely normal, I even clap and hi-five myself when I pull into a parking spot. ( and the wave if I have passengers )
I can only imagine the rooftop jubilation at seeing your plane leave.
The only time I can recall clapping at the end of a flight was on a plane that made a landing in bad weather, banging in hard enough to spring open the overhead luggage rack doors. No oversized bags fell and knocked anyone unconscious, and we were relieved enough to be on the ground that applause broke out.
Unexpected spontaneous applause can be fun. Once before a Cincinnati Reds game I attended, owner Marge Schott’s dog (Schottzie II?) was wandering around the infield as the managers were passing lineup cards to the umps. The beast took a giant St. Bernard-sized dump behind home plate. I and numerous other fans applauded this achievement (Mrs. J. was a bit embarassed).
Well done sun!
My father - a German - used to travel into the Middle East a lot on business many years ago, mostly to Saudi Arabia. He always liked telling the story about the announcement before one flight: “Attention passengers, we will be departing soon, our scheduled arrival time is blahblah, and some more blahblah about safety. We hope you have a safe and pleasant flight, but if we crash, may Allah be with you.” click
He, as a European, found this strangely non-comforting for some reason! Made for a good story, though, as they did land safely, and most likely applauded the accomplishment.
It kinda is. I’m sure if this happened (and you somehow survived it) you’d be bitching all over the place. Learn some gratitude, asshole.
Aw, I liked it. I even liked how they would play “Hallelujah” (Eurovision, not Cohen) when they landed at Ben-Gurion.
I think it’s kinda nice when people do it but Ryan Air have this obnoxious recording of clapping and cheering when their flights land early or on time.
FWIW I’ve noticed it mostly on a flight to Italy have experienced it on other European flights, never in the US.
I don’t think i’ve ever been on plane where the passengers applauded the landing. It does strike me as a rather silly thing to do.
Hell, if you want to acknowledge getting through a risky part of the flight, the landing’s the wrong thing to applaud anyway. Landing is, except in extremely windy or stormy conditions, generally a relatively easy and incredibly safe procedure.
The most dangerous part of any flight is generally the latter part of the takeoff, and the first half-minute or so after the plane leaves the ground. That’s the time where, if something big goes wrong like a loss of thrust, the pilots have almost no time or opportunity to catch it and make a correction before either barreling off the end of the runway, or dropping into the surrounding neighborhoods.
If Sully’s plane had sucked in those geese at 800 feet instead of 3,200, there’s a decent chance that all 155 passengers and crew, and possibly a good-sized handful of New Yorkers, would be dead.
Except that once you’ve landed pretty much all other risks (real and imagined) are gone, they’re acknowledging (to their minds) the end of any risk. What is the likelihood of the plane crashing once it has landed and is taxiing to a gate? I’m sure accidents do happen on the ground but they’re presumably much less likely to end in fiery death. 
I’d never seen this until the last few months, catching a few flights around Central Asia and Turkey. I’d initially thought it must have been a Russian/Ex-Soviet thing, but then seeing it on a flight in Turkey and seeing it mentioned here I guess it’s more common than I thought.
I agree with this rant. Stupid clapping outbreaks are sort of a pet peeve of mine, which I luckily encounter very infrequently. At the moment, I can only think of clapping at the end of a movie and the State of the Union Address as examples. I’ve never encountered plane clapping, but the very thought makes me shiver.
The first and only* time I recall experiencing a round of applause at landing was back when I was a teenager. (Therefore, it would have been some time in the 1970s.) The flight took place a short time after a notable crash of the same model of aircraft (it could even have been the same airline.) The recent crash was still weighing on everyone’s mind, I think, so there was a even more relief at landing than usual. It was also one of the smoothest landings I’ve ever experienced, with barely a bump at touch down. This was a US domestic flight.
*I may have been on a flight in subsequent years where there was applause, but I don’t remember it, because it isn’t the sort of thing that would phase me one way or another.
I have experienced the whole plane clap on landing. It was Balkan Air, 1996, and it was an extremely rough landing which felt… a bit amateur? There was lots of sudden drops and pop-ups, side slipping, tipping the wings and other uneven flight on the way down. When that ground is rushing up at you and you can clearly see you aren’t level… you’re damn glad its not the last thing you see.
I wouldn’t call the clapping a compliment to the pilot. It was more like “we’re not dead! You didn’t kill us! Thank god its over!” sort of clapping.
That said, I’d find it unusual at the very least, simply because it’s not customary.