"People Who Work For Airlines, What Are Secrets Passengers Don't Know?" (30 Answers)

There is no philange.

There are a number of tools out there to help you have a good flight experience:

[Seat Guru](http://www.seatguru.com/) will give you information on seat selection so you know if your seat has a misaligned window or extra legroom, etc.

[Route Happy](https://www.routehappy.com/) aggregates some key factors aggregating data on aircraft type, seat pitch, on-board entertainment, connections, etc to help you select a good flight.

[Flight Stats](http://www.flightstats.com/go/FlightRating/flightRatingByRoute.do) has data including information on the historical on-time performance of your flight.

Some fun airline websites include:

[Flight Radar 24](http://www.flightradar24.com/) which shows you all flights in the air around the world. You can click on a plane to see its origin and destination. You can filter by airport to see all flights headed to/from your city. It's a lot of fun to play around with.

[Airline Empires](http://www.airline-empires.com/) is a web game that lets you run your own airline deciding where to open routes, how to price them, what aircraft to purchase, etc. and compete against other real people running their fictional airlines.

There is a small latch hidden inside the lavatory sign on the bathroom door, which will open the door when pulled, even when it's locked. Airplane Peekaboo!

EDIT: I don't work for the airlines. Credit for this goes to [The Oatmeal](http://theoatmeal.com/comics/airplane_peekaboo).

Former ramper here. The amount of graffiti on the inside of airplane cargo bins is absurd

I worked for a US regional for a few years in various departments. Here's some s**t:

* If your flight is delayed or cancelled for things that cause the airline to be at fault, the airline is responsible for accommodating you. For example, they cancel the last flight out to your destination because the pilot called in sick, they now have to get you a hotel for the night and rebook you on the first flight out the next day. However, things that they aren't at fault for, like weather, ATC system delays, etc, they don't accommodate you. We ran very old aircraft that would constantly break down and cancel tons of flights, but we would routinely blame cancellations on "ATC" or "en route weather" because the passengers don't know the difference and not only do we not have to accommodate them, now we can charge rebooking fees.

* Don't spend a lot of money on your luggage. Buy something that is cheap but durable. Those plastic-ish ones are the best in my opinion. Any kind of soft material will be destroyed by the rampies (guys who load the planes). Especially if they have *FRAGILE* written on them, they will toss them and drop them on purpose.

* If you ever hear a gate agent or flight attendant say "delta-bravo", that's phonetic for the letters DB. You might hear the gate say to the crew, "We have a delta bravo in one-one-charlie." Look over and see who's sitting in seat 11C, yeah that's the douchebag they're referring to.

* The stuff other people said about traveling is absolutely true. It is hands down the best perk of any job around. I went from the US to Italy for $54 round trip. Almost went to Dubai but that fell through, but it would have been $36 round trip. Tokyo was also $36. Anywhere in the U.S. was free. I've been around the world and back, i wouldn't change a thing if I could do it all over again.

Edit: spelling

ALL airline employees fly standby for free. Gate agents, rampers, mechanics... if they're an employee for the airline they get unlimited free standby. So does their spouse/parents/children.

Any time you're at the gate and you see a list of standby passengers, chances are they're an airline employee.

Also, you'd be surprised by how much stuff actually breaks on an airplane. (Hint: A lot)

Most of the broken stuff is insignificant, but every once in a while something big (Like an APU, or a flight computer, or the autopilot) will break and the mechanics defer it to get the aircraft airborne. It's not *unsafe*, it's just more work for the pilots usually.

Locks on zippered bags are useless. You can pop a zipper with a pen and drag the locked zipper pulls around the bag to close them back up. I've done this many times to identify bags that are tagless and locked.

Edit: [Exactly like this.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbpKhHwwtiY&t=0m46s) Thanks /u/adma1987.

Stewardess stopped giving a s**t a long time ago.

If people knew how planes are held together they wouldn't feel safe even though they totally are. Planes are actually pretty strong m***********s that can fly in a middle of a hurricane (of course most don't take the chance because it is still a f****n hurricane you know).

Worked on military aircraft but it's something I've noticed pretty universal about jet engines in general: you have your auxiliary engine that runs while the aircraft is parked, providing power, hydraulics, ac, etc while you're at the terminal. When getting ready to depart, you turn on your main engines. It takes a lot of power to get them started. As such, most of the auxiliary power goes to starting the engines. This is the point where usually you may see the lights flicker, and you will hear the whine of the main engines start up. The environmental control unit (or whatever they want to call it), stops cycling air during this start sequence.

Without fail, if you watch for it, numerous hands will stick up and check or adjust the air conditioning vents as this happens. The air will kick back on when the engines are up and running.

Edit: okay, TIL (and had forgotten), jet engines use pneumatic power to start engines. I worked on jet turbines for turboprop. I have my manuals in storage, so I can't completely erase all doubt, but I do believe we used a hydraulically actuated starter.

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