Flight Attendants Share The Number One Habit They Are Pleading With Passengers To Stop Doing
Standret | Shutterstock While most passengers are usually focused on getting comfortable the second they board a plane, flight attendants are usually the ones juggling all of the responsibilities at once. It can be easy for people to forget that the crew isn't solely there to cater to their every whim.
During an episode of the "Jumpseat Chronicles Podcast," a 20-year flight attendant named Michelle Montez shared the one thing that she can't stand that passengers do on a flight, and it's apparently something many other flight attendants feel quite strongly about as well.
Flight attendants are pleading with passengers to stop touching them.
Montez, during a conversation with fellow flight attendants and hosts of the podcast, Joshua Boyd and Darion Foy, made it clear that most, if not all, flight attendants are sick and tired of being touched by passengers. More specifically, the pokes are the most annoying thing ever.
"You can talk to any flight attendant for any airline, and they will all agree that that’s something that we cannot stand and that we deal with so often, it’s insane," Foy said, even revealing that he's been pinched in the butt many times by passengers. Boyd, a flight attendant for 11 years, agreed, saying if it comes down to touching or using the button, "We would rather you hit the call light."
"I don't understand. I mean, they poke you in your arm, they poke you in your side, poke you in the butt. Like, it happens so often that if we got paid a dollar for it, we would be millionaires."
Montez, Boyd, and Foy all agreed that the call button exists for a reason. If passengers need something, they, along with other flight attendants who sent messages to the podcast, emphasized that it would be much better if that request didn't come with being touched.
The best way to get a flight attendant’s attention is to either wave or use your voice.
In an interview with The Washington Post, Sam Wilkins, a flight attendant for 28 years and first vice president of TWU Local 556, the union that represents Southwest flight attendants, explained that flight attendants would much prefer that passengers interact with them like they would with employees at any other place of business.
"You probably wouldn’t go into a restaurant and poke your waitress," Wilkins said. "You wouldn’t go into a coffee shop and grab the shirt of your barista."
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Either press the call button or just wave your hand to get their attention. Just because you're in the air doesn't mean the basic rules of etiquette suddenly don't apply.
However, Sara Nelson, international president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, said there may be several reasons as to why passengers feel emboldened to touch their flight attendant. Passengers and crew are in close quarters on a plane. Travelers may also feel like flight attendants are just "part of the furniture," and people tend to be out of their ordinary routines.
But there have been countless incidents of flight attendants being the victims of unwanted violent attacks from passengers, so to avoid any unfortunate incidents happening in the sky, passengers should probably just stick to keeping their hands to themselves.
Nia Tipton is a staff writer with a bachelor's degree in creative writing and journalism who covers news and lifestyle topics that focus on psychology, relationships, and the human experience.
