45 Shocking Moments When Rude Passengers Met Their Match Mid-Flight—and Didn’t See It Coming
The guy next to me laughs and fistbumps me, the mother shuts up and the kicking stops and I watch my movie.
TL;DR: Kid sitting behind me on the plane doesn’t stop kicking my seat. When he orders a cup of water and puts it on his tray, I violently recline my seat, covering him with water. The kicking stops.
So I was just on a plane ride with United, so the leg room was extremely tight. It’s early morning and I’m not in the mood to mess around. Then, at the start of the flight the guy in front of me started trying to push his seat back. I have very long legs, so he gets it pushed back about half way and it pushed up against my legs, making me very uncomfortable. The guy starts pushing repeatedly against his seat, which won’t go all the way back because he keeps hitting my knees. He subsides for a few minutes, and I think he has given up, but no, he starts pushing again. He pushes against his seat and then turns around and looks back, making eye contact with me, and then tried pushing again.
Now from this extremely awkward eye contact I know this guy knows he is pushing my knees, and I decide I’ve had enough. I wait for the next time he tries to push his seat back and I slowly inch my knees up a little bit, so that his final seat position is slightly higher than it was before but not enough that he would realize. He tries pushing back again and I move his seat upward again. Ten minutes of this, and he has a fully upright seat on our early morning flight, and he is probably terribly inconvenienced.
Edit: Wow this is a hotly contested issue! To all the people saying I should have confronted the guy or asked a flight attendant to move me, dang I mean this is like an extremely petty issue, I really prefer to keep my aggression passive if possible.
Yesterday I was flying to America from the UK, and a mother and apparent 18 y/o daughter were sitting next to me. She looked younger but the mother gave her alcohol during the flight that she had ordered, so who knows.
The whole flight the daughter had her shoes off and kept elbowing and kicking me with her stinky sock feet while talking loudly. At one point i was asleep and the daughter kicked me awake and slapped me with her jacket. Right before landing the two of them were physically fighting, play or not, i got hit a few times and told them to be civilized.
Now for my pettiness. As soon as the fasten seat belt sign came off, they got up and obviously were trying to force their way off the plane early (we were in 37G-J, very back of plane). I threw down my table and kept watching my programme, trapping them, and told them “patience is a virtue, we’ll be last off anyway.” They were not pleased. When the rows in front were clearing out, I waited til the last second to close up and as I got my bag out of the overhead I put it on my seat blocking them again and “accdentally” hit the daughter with my jacket on the way out of the overhead keeping her back. There was a very large family behind us that made their way behind me in the aisle blocking them in again. I didn’t see them at baggage til five minutes after I made it.
Didn’t affect them a lot but sure made me feel good, it’s the little things.
This is actually my dad’s story, and it happened in the 80’s.
Dad used to travel frequently for work. On one trip, he boarded his flight, placed his briefcase in the overhead compartment, and took his seat while the rest of the passengers boarded and got settled.
While he was sitting there, a guy (aka “EA”) came back to dad’s row, pulled dad’s briefcase out of the overhead bin, and asked dad if it was his. Dad said yes and accepted it when the guy handed it to him, thinking that EA was going to make some room for his own carry-on and then put dad’s briefcase back. Instead, the EA put his carry-on in the overhead (leaving no room for anything else) and then walked back to his seat near the front of the plane and sat down.
Rather than causing a scene, dad removed the guy’s carry-on from the overhead, put his own briefcase back, and hit the flight attendant call button. When the attendant came by to check on him, he asked to gate check “his” carry-on. (Gate checked items are put down in the cargo hold with the rest of the checked baggage and need to be retrieved at baggage claim) He put the gate check ticket in the seat pocket in front of him and enjoyed his flight.
Dad had already deplaned by the time EA came back to get his carry-on and realized it was missing. I’m sure he found it eventually.
I doubt TSA would look kindly on this kind of petty revenge these days, but it was a different time.
Edit: To people saying that he should have put his briefcase under the seat in front of him – this was 40 years ago. People were more likely to check bags back then, and it wasn’t typical for people to have a large carry-on and a personal item that allowed them to avoid checking bags. People weren’t expected to put their belongings on the floor. The etiquette was different.
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