People Who Work In The Airline Industry Share 30 Things Everyone Should Know About Flying

There are no parachutes on commercial flights, so please stop asking. If the plane is going down there is nothing you can do but pray and ask forgiveness for your sins.

The captain has almost limitless authority when the doors are closed. He is allowed to arrest people, write fines, and even take the will of a dying passenger.

Don't show up to the airport late, give airport staff and security your bulls**t attitude because you couldn't be bothered to get there on time, and then get all offended when they give you your attitude right back to you. Seriously. F**k off with the entitlement.

As pilots, we are just darn lazy. We focus our attention on finding ways to avoid anything becoming busy, rushed, or any time our capacity might be stretched.

We do everything for a simple life. Sometimes that means using the autopilot as much as we can. Sometimes it means manual flying and looking out the window.

Whilst some of us might secretly relish the opportunity to go off-piste and demonstrate our prowess as great aviators in adverse circumstances, no one wants a sweaty day. The imagery of seasoned sky gods wrestling with the controls are all well and good in the movies, but that’s exactly the sort of stuff we are determined to avoid. In fact, most of us are just plain boring.

Come say hi - either before after. Small kids and big ‘kids’ alike.

Electronics do absolutely nothing to a plane. Your phone or iPad or laptop isn't going to make the plane magically drop out of the sky. It's not going to suddenly make the navigation system go offline. Planes have triple redundancy in EVERY system. Also, all of the sensitive electronics are so heavily shielded against the radiation that the atmosphere produces (which is several factors stronger than your iPhone) so you don't have to worry.

Source: I'm an aerospace engineer and also the a**hole that texts from 35000 feet.

Your tastebuds are reduced by 30-60% on flights. So more salt and seasoning are added to the food so it doesn't seem bland. Might also be the reason so many crave tomato juice or bloody mary mix ONLY on planes.

The air in flight is drier than most of the deserts in the world, this impacts the taste of the food as well as your need to hydrate. Make sure you are drinking plenty of water on the long trans-oceanic or even transcontinental flights.

Flight attendant jumpseats are waaaaaay more uncomfortable than anything you are sitting on and are usually right by a stinky lav. So keep that in mind when you complain to a crew member about your seat. Jumpseats are about as comfy as those old plastic fold-up lawn chairs.

Alcohol has a greater effect on people at higher altitudes so know your limits and don’t push them. Even if you have had a drink in the airport it can still affect you during the flight. As flight crew, we do not care that it’s your holiday, birthday, stag party, hen party or that you are nervous, if you are drunk and behaving like a prick it will not be tolerated and you can be arrested get a ban from the airline. And because airlines share their ban passenger list you could find yourself banned from a few airlines.

Don’t make jokes about the pilot drinking. “Oh, didn’t I see you at the bar late last night hur hur hur”. We then (for safety and to make sure there is no doubt) will take a BAC test to show we are stone sober. It makes s**t unnecessarily difficult.

Almost every commercial flight you ride-on has a dead body on board. Possibly 2 if you're on a wide-body (large) aircraft.

My dad's been an airline pilot for almost 20 years, and apparently, planes get struck by lightning all the time. Also if a passenger is causing a scene in the jetway he can refuse to let them on and take off without them.