According to a new survey from Expedia, germ spreading airline passengers are now more annoying than drunks. The hotel booking site found that 40% of American’s found passengers who cough and splutter throughout a flight are the most annoying type of passenger. On a global scale, however, drunken passengers have still rated the #1 annoyance – infuriating 43% of the survey’s global respondents.
In fact, American’s are so averse to catching the flu or common cold from their seatmate that around half would ask a flight attendant for an alternative seat. Around 40% would even offer their seatmate a tissue or cold medication, while 31% wouldn’t shy away from passively aggressively making their annoyance known by applying hand sanitizer throughout the flight.
This obsession with hygiene also manifests itself in other ways and nearly 80% of American’s refuse to use the airplane lavatory while barefoot – now we just have to convince the other 20% of just how gross that practice is!
The other most annoying types of passengers in the Top Five for American travellers were:
- The seat kicker
- The drunk passenger
- The aromatic passenger
- The inattentive passenger
Luckily, American passengers are doing their best to respect fellow travellers and show some basic travel etiquette – at least, it the results of this survey are to be believed. Nearly half of American’s say they have helped someone else lift luggage into the overhead bins – that compares to just 41% of passengers on a global scale.
Clearly, they don’t believe in the ‘You pack it, you stack it” mantra.
Around 21% of American’s have even helped entertain other passenger’s children during a flight!
Flying is a stressful enough experience at the best of times – it’s good to see more and more passenger practising some common decency and etiquette. Remember, good manners don’t cost a dime.
