The 15 Most Annoying Things That Happen On Airplanes

Of course, babies are largely not in control of their emotions or behavior, but that doesn't make those piercing wails from the row behind you any more bearable. 

Maybe babies are so upset on airplanes because they know they'll have to be dealing with this nonsense for the rest of their lives? 

The jerk in front of you who reclines his seat will probably claim that he has a natural, God-given right to do so. And even if that is the case, I'm still in support of the demonization and vilification of seat recliners. 

I think this plane faux pas is especially audacious on super short flights. Reclining to sleep during an ten-hour flight makes sense, but treating your plane seat like a La-Z-Boy on a 90-minute flight is unforgivable. 

There's nothing more terrifying than being in the throes of flying sickness while your seatmate pulls out a huge bag of pungent beef jerky. Pungent food in close quarters is just no fun for the noses involved. 

The airline food might be terrible, but at least you won't have everyone in a 12-foot radius reaching for their barf bags. 

If being crammed on a tiny plane with a hundred strangers wasn't bad enough, just wait til the nausea and chills set in! 

Motion sickness is one of those airplane realities that's miserable for the person experiencing it and for those nearby who have a front-row seat for the sick show. 

Airplane etiquette is not legally enforceable, but generally, the person in the aisle gets the aisle armrest, the person near the window gets the window armrest, and the person in the middle gets the two middle ones as a consolation prize for their terrible seat. 

Anyone who's actually been on a plane knows that is hardly ever the case, though. Even the nicest among us are willing to shed some blood in order to secure a little more elbow room on a flight. 

To my dismay, this is a problem that seems to be growing everywhere you look, but not using headphones on an airplane is especially egregious since no one has anywhere to run from your lack of self-awareness. 

I promise, no one is as interested in what you're listening to as you are. 

If you thought your neighbor's smelly food was bad, just wait til his B.O. starts wafting your way as well. 

I'm not saying you need to smell like a rose garden before stepping on a plane, but maybe give those pits another pass with the deodorant before you leave the house. 

There was a time when people put on their Sunday best to fly. And that was dumb. But now we have people strolling through security in their Wednesday worst, and that's equally dumb. 

Surely there's got to be a happy fashion medium between "I'm headed to church" and "I'm headed to the strip club." 

First things first--clipping anything on a flight is so far beyond the pale of what is just and good. But there's more to it than that. 

Obviously there's a hierachy to clipping. If someone was clipping their fingernails next to me, I probably wouldn't say anything to their face, but I would definitely tell all the sordid details to anyone who listened to me after landing. But if you pop off a shoe and pull out some clippers, we're about to have a fist fight thousands of feet in the air. 

If I ran the airlines, everyone would take a legally binding vow of silence upon entering the plane. But until that day comes, I'll just have to settle for complaining about loud talkers. 

If reason doesn't work with them (and of course it won't), then I would suggest going the patronizing route--looking at them like a child and telling them to use their "library voice." 

It happens on every plane--some chump in the back row pops up and starts grabbing his things from the moment the plane's wheels touch the ground. 

But the funny thing is that these kinds of people are inconveniencing themselves just as much as they are the people around them. When was the last time you saw a back rower make it successfully to the front of the plane without encountering another roadblock? 

Yes, flight delays are the absolute worst. There's no trying to deny it. 

But I am not about to commiserate with my fellow travelers about this fact. The situation is already bad enough without having to have a fun bonding moment with a stranger. 

This one would almost be cute...if you didn't have a drooling, snoring stranger on your shoulder. 

Most people don't intend to fall asleep on strangers and would be mortified if they did. So now, you're stuck in this situation that nobody really caused but where everyone is uncomfortable and embarrassed. 

You can feasibly escape an obnoxious drunk at a bar, but on a plane you have nowhere to run--which only seems to encourage their bad behavior even more. 

What's worse is that alcohol hits you harder in the air than on land, so some people might not have any intention of getting totally sloshed but end up that way anyways. 

I try my very best to avoid airplane bathrooms at all costs, but there's nothing worse than needing one desperately only to find that another passenger has been holed up in there for the past 30 minutes. 

There's no telling what they're doing in there, and I quite frankly would rather not know.