memes

When I travel solo, it's with one shoulder bag I usually just shove under my seat, don't even need the overhead. I'm instantly ready, but everyone is in my waaaay.

To all the people telling OP they're wrong, you don't fly enough. The issue isn't evenly distributed. It's not like cars in traffic or whatever.

Airlines put the expensive seats in the front. The people who can afford them are usually much older, either traveling retirees or very late career white collar workers who have significant status. They're the first ones holding up everyone because they take forever to find all the assorted shit (personal item, oversized roller bag, neck pillow, laptop, ipad, lost earbud, etc) they've stuck all over the place, which the gate agent/FAs wouldn't admonish them for because of their aforementioned status. But they're first class, so the peasants behind them can wait in the bread line.

After they get off (on watching you glare), depending on airline, it's the fraction of people who are old and not rich, or don't fly often and aren't used to all the ritual. They'll have placed their bag in an overhead that's 12 rows behind them and demand everyone stop and crowd surf it up or else they'll just sit there blocking the line.

After them come the young vacation families, you know, the ones who had the screaming baby for the last 6 hours. They couldn't be bothered to pay for seat selection to save money so one parent is with one kid three rows ahead but needs to coral the kids behind them because the other parent was playing on a Nintendo switch for the whole flight and didn't try to organize all the kids toys, now lost to entropy, and so the marital spat and bawling (louder now) children begin.

Then there's you. You fly a lot so you have nothing more than two pairs of underwear and a toothbrush, all safely hidden from the TSA in your prison wallet and ready to go without so much as a nanosecond of notice, along with your phone and airpods to combat the screaming child in front of you. You got 31B, way in the back, after trying to game united's seat assignment system by checking in only after all but the exit row seats were taken, but someone missed their flight and here you are.

Generally the legacy airlines will have the most old people, but the vast majority of people on them are very used to flying, because they know better than to book a budget airline. It'll be slow yet ordered.

The budget airlines like united and frontier will be the opposite, lots of young spry 20 somethings, but lots of vacation families that couldn't afford Delta... I won't sugar coat it, it's gonna be a shit storm. The FAs have been contractually required to keep everyone at the very edge of their sanity through the enforcement of a variety of draconian company policies (like turning on all the lights half way through a redeye to scream about some credit card offer), so things are primed for chaos. Lots of shoving and yelling. Everyone's reviewing the Wikipedia "list of crimes of passion" to see if this qualifies.

Then there's spirit. Half the people on the flight will be coming down off of something they got on the dark web by the time you arrive at the gate. You've already seen at least a liter of blood spilled from various fist fights. Everyone was already up and crushing each other in the aisle long before the captain even briefed the approach. The FAs have locked themselves in the lavs by now and the captain (an FFDO) has barricaded the flight deck with charts and duct tape and is aiming his questionably modded P320 at he door. Welcome to the new season of Hunger Games - Spam Can. You're on your own, good luck and good hunting.

Seeing the crowd of people squeeze off the Airplane like a tube of toothpaste only to all congregate around baggage claim is the same energy as passing aggressively on the street only for you to pull up next to them at the redlight.

I'm often the last to leave the plane. By the time I reach the passport control/baggage claim areas I'm barely having to wait. I've never really understood how other adults are always in such a damn rush.

Don’t do that. Don’t be the dickhead who stands and blocks everyone. You’re not going to move faster, but you will inconvenience everyone around you. This is stupid. Just be a normal human and wait your turn patiently so others can get their things. The door out is people-sized, and you’ll not extrude others by a few seconds, so sit the fuck down. It’s not about you. It looks like OP is one of these dickheads, standing in the aisle and blaming others for the congestion.

It’s not about moving off faster than everyone else, because that’s not how this works. Just fucking sit and wait like an adult. It’s not ‘get off the plane’, because you can’t. It’s ‘sit the fuck down’ and stop making it about you.

e: look at all those people seated in the forward rows, and OP standing in the aisle bunched against the first man in frame. All those seated people will have to wait to access their overheads until OP barges by, but it’s the others standing ahead of OP in the aisle who are the problem. 🙄

Literally the fundamental attribution fallacy

There's an effect I see in situations like this where the people in a big hurried rush end up being slow asses because apparently they don't care about this working efficiently, they just care about when they can stop waiting.

On a plane these are the people who leap out of their seat and block your row, only to start searching for their bag once it's their turn to get off the plane.

I see the same from drivers at red lights. If there are multiple lanes waiting to go, and one car has to inch forward every 5 seconds even though they are already way past the line, then in my very limited anecdotal experience there's like a 90% chance when the light turns green they just sit there for a few seconds after I start going.

At the risk of sounding boomer despite not being boomer, have others noted a decline in basic decency with deplaning? In the past maybe two years or so even I've never seen so many people from the back of the plane rush ahead into the aisle blocking people in front of them from getting out and disrupting the hell out of the standard row by row front to back organized way to get off a plane. Last. Flight I took when I got into the tunnel some lunatic behind me tried to trample me, stepped on the heel of my shoe and ripped my shoe off. Not even a "sorry" Modern air travel is the epitome of enshitification.

On this topic, we also board the plane incredibly wrong. Always in the name of corporate profits.

Just stay seated. You're going to wait for the luggage anyway.

I want the safety announcement at the start of the flight to say:

"You are in a flying metal coffin. Now imagine this coffin filling with smoke and fire. This plane only passes safety regulations because we simulated unboarding it with everyone behaving perfectly, leaving all of their crap behind. In an emergency, you MUST leave your stuff behind. Your life depends on it. The lives of everyone around you depend on it. If you see someone trying to take stuff with them, you MUST use whatever level of force is necessary to stop them. Even lethal force is justified. You must be prepared to tear someone to pieces if they don't leave their stuff behind. The lives of you and your family depend on the asshole in front of you letting their laptop burn."

That's the kind of boarding announcement I want to hear!

Take it from somebody who flies a lot:

Theorycrafting about the best way to load/unload a plane is pointless.

Bring a bottle of water on your plane. Bring some headphones and make sure they are charged. Make sure if halfway through the flight you even feel a little like you need to pee, do it in flight.

When the plane lands keep your headphones popped in, and chill out until you're off the plane.

I have kids now so some of this applies less but!

I totally agree with you. I don't usually have a checked bag when it's just me, so there's no waiting around the baggage claim to look forward to. I DO NOT stop to pull my overhead bag. I've either got it under my seat, already pulled it from the overhead, or I fuckin eyeball that thing like there's about to be a missile intercept (because there is) and I grab and pull while I walk. Once I leave my seat there is no pause. In the same way, if I'm inside on the window, I'm watching for space and when middle seat moves I follow. None of this "oh shit I forgot the light turned green".

Even now with kids we are only slightly slower than that. I have to let the gremlins (who you probably didn't know were on the plane because they've been hyper entertained out of their fuckin minds) be line leader to walk off the plane and I need enough time to stand up and get the bags off the seat behind me onto my body to urban pack mule that shit out of here.

What I'm NOT doing is texting my boyfriend oblivious to the cues being presented to me, smashing through the line because I'm an inconsiderate fuckwit, or standing up when it's my turn and gazing into the overheads like I'm lost in the Arby's menu. Stage your shit and get the fuck off the plane without stopping, then walk like you got some place to be or move to the side. No big deal.

More importantly than any of that though, I've got this really weird superpower where I can listen to what the fuck the FAs say. If someone needs to get off the plane first, I can stay seated and wait for them to haul ass off the plane. Or at least I would, except it's always like a herd of cattle with no awareness instantly reacting to the sound of the seatbelt light turning off no matter what.

I honestly think most people are twice as slow as me, and it adds up so fast. I am always so ready to get off the plane but it seems like most people aren't for some reason? They must enjoy the cramped farttube experience much more than I do. I've often just spent hours with some asshole rubbing up against my elbow and I'm ready to gtfo.

This is the same line of thinking as, "if everyone drove like me, there'd be no traffic," (a phrase used exclusively by terrible drivers).

Most off that time is standing still, while the L1 door is still closed, and the jetway has not even begun to move to connect to the aircraft.

People don't realise that once the plane is parked, engines are shut down and belt signs go off, there's still shit to do before deplaning can begin.

If they managed where luggage was stored in the overhead, they could reduce it 10 fold. The whole wait is because people need to go back x rows past people standing to get their luggage. Even if they made everyone sit and deboard in zones it could be way faster.

This is my hell.

Humans are the literal worst.

They really need to load back to front, then unload front to back, if it was organized it would go so much better. Like announce when each group can stand and get bags and when each can leave.

Everyone in the photo thinking the same thing.

Do not bring tiktok content here too. We had ENOUGH of tiktok.

It's worse than drinking hydrochloric acid.

It's the same everywhere with humans, rushing to be everywhere to save 5 seconds. Which usually ends up in congestion and then it taking longer anyway. Just be patient guys, wait for the people in front of you.

Why stress yourself like that? 😆

Just wait in your seat a few minutes longer, you even have an internet connection now. And the best part is, you then don't have to walk together with that crowd, and then your baggage is probably also already on the belt when you're there to pick it up.