Fury as Passenger Exits Plane Before Those in Front: ‘Breach of Etiquette’
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A post about an airline passenger seated in the “very back” who got up to try to exit the plane before the people seated in the front has sparked debate on Reddit.
“I only had a backpack, so I took the opportunity and walked to the front of the plane to line up behind the people in the very front.” user amiadick736283 said in a post shared on the AITA (Am I The A******?) subReddit.
A fellow passenger told the Redditor that they should have waited until it was their turn “like everyone else.” But the poster said: “I don’t think I did anything wrong because everyone who I ‘skipped’ could have gotten up and waited in the aisle.”
While the Redditor’s actions may have ruffled a few feathers, some incidents on planes have escalated to higher levels. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) said in a December 2022 report that there has been “a long-term trend of increasing frequency and severity of unruly passenger incidents.”
Unruly passenger incidents can also include harassment and verbal abuse, the IATA said.
Unruly and disruptive passenger incidents are “still rare,” the IATA said, but “there is always a danger of incidents escalating, they divert crew attention, and they do impact good order and discipline onboard.”
The passenger in the Reddit post said they were on a Southwest Airlines flight, which has no seat assignments, and that they were seated “towards the very back of the plane” in an aisle seat upon landing. When they got up, passengers at the front of the plane were ready to exit, but “no one in the middle section got up,” they said.
They proceeded to get up and head toward the exit without waiting for the middle section to begin deboarding the plane. While waiting to exit, the Redditor said a man seated near them asked “Have the rules changed?”
They said that they “pretended not to hear him,” but the man got up and said: “Why don’t you go back to the back and wait like everyone else.”
A woman who was behind them said she needed to catch her connecting flight, which was already boarding. The man from earlier then told the Redditor: “Well, the rules haven’t changed but if you want to be a jerk go ahead.”
“The lady who had the connecting flight definitely had a valid reason to ‘cut’ in line, but when was this ever a rule lol?” they wrote.
‘The Golden Rule’
Etiquette expert Lisa Mirza Grotts told Newsweek that it’s common courtesy to exit in order of row, front to back,” with the exception of when you may miss your connecting flight. In this case, you should “ask the flight attendant to make an announcement so everyone stays seated until you exit.”
“This is common practice, courteous, and reinforces the golden rule: treat others the way you want to be treated,” Grotts, the author of A Traveler’s Passport to Etiquette, said, adding that “first-class passengers pay more, therefore they board first and exit first” and “etiquette dictates passengers in front, middle, then back exit; aisle goes first, then middle and window seat.”
Etiquette and protocol consultant and founder of the Laura Windsor Etiquette Academy in London, Laura Windsor, told Newsweek that “protocol dictates that when disembarking you should let others in the rows ahead of you get off first. This is probably the reason why people in the middle rows were still seated.”
Windsor, who received her etiquette training from a former member of The Royal Household of Queen Elizabeth II, said the Redditor “may have been impatient to get off and violated the rules” in this case.
However, “what is certainly a breach of etiquette is calling people names or commenting on other people’s rudeness, which can just lead to unpleasantness,” she said.
This Is About the ‘Honor System and Decency’
“This passenger violated the honor system and should have had the decency to let the female passenger with the connecting flight go in front of him,” Jules Hirst, an etiquette expert and co-author of The Power of Civility, told Newsweek. “Even though there is not an official rule regarding exiting an airplane, it comes down to the honor system and decency. Passengers with connecting flights should be allowed to exit first.”
Both the honor system can “become impossible to enforce,” and “that brings us to decency,” she said.
“For a lot of passengers, decency was lost after being crammed into a metal can like a sardine for hours with little to no legroom, which is why people stand up,” Hirst explained. “Not everyone standing is trying to exit the plane. Some need circulation to restart their bodies.”
The plane incident ignited a heated discussion among other users on Reddit.
In a comment that got 17,400 upvotes, user MaggieMae68 said: “YTA [you’re the a******]…what is it with people who stand up the minute the plane comes to a stop. You’re not going anywhere anyway. So sit your f****** a** down and wait for the people who need to get off to do so…this rush for the plane door ahead of everyone else is just selfish.”
In a comment that got 3,500 upvotes, user not_ya_wify said: “They literally didn’t get up. Who cares? ..no one is getting hurt if someone in the back is getting out first. Is this some dumb class b*******?…I’m way more pissed at the people sitting in front who hold up everyone in the back. You’re not more important because you sit in the front.”
In a comment with 6,100 upvotes, De-railled posted: “OP [original poster], is the reason why everyone gets up. Cause they get the mentality that they don’t want others to ‘cut’ in front of them. By manners it should be row by row, but if you’re sitting in the back rows you should expect to be off the plane last…”
Redditor SlartieB wrote: “It’s not class b*******, it’s disembarking in a controlled coordinated fashion, and it goes faster than a free for all because the aisles don’t get congested.”
User AllCrankNoSpark commented:” It’s not a free for all. Everyone ready to go should go as soon as possible. That minimizes waiting for all. If everyone were ready to go like they should be, there would be no extra waiting, but they aren’t.”
Newsweek has reached out to the original poster for comment via the Reddit messaging system.
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