45 Plane Seatmates That Made People’s Flights Memorable For All The Wrong Reasons

I was flying alone as a teenager and got groped by the man next to me 🙃 while I had my eyes closed because I was trying to sleep.

On my way to Cancun from DC in my 20’s, sat at the window early morning flight and an older couple (possibly already drunk) were next to me on the middle/aisle seat. I closed the window after take off and she reached almost hitting my face and opened it. I told her I’d like it closed bc I was sleeping. She said she wanted open and they were two vs one. I told her she should have bought a window seat then and the window seat controls the window and that I would open at landing but it would be closed during the flight. They called the flight attendant and she agreed with me. The wife kept bumping her elbow on me the whole flight and trash talking me loudly and I just ignored her. When we started landing I opened the window as I said I would but then placed my whole face and shoulders over it covering as if I was admiring the view but at that point I was being a passive aggressive jerk on purpose because they were hell.

I was middle seat once from paris to nyc, large man on the window seat who decided that he’d use my space for his legs to spread out. he put his foot directly on top of my foot. i shook my foot to basically politely be like “hello???” and he doubled down and PRESSED his foot onto the top of mine. i ripped my headphones off to tell him to remove his foot from the top of my foot. you should’ve seen his face. i love making men as uncomfortable as they make women.

Sat next to a woman who coughed the entire flight and wouldn’t wear a mask…three days later, I get Covid….

Dubai to Toronto, got separated from my husband and the dude next to me ate shelled pistachios the entire trip like it was his mission in life.

Second place was a Toronto to Vancouver (or something) flight and this teenage girl (17-20) promptly fell asleep on my shoulder. It looked like she had been tasked with herding all the smaller children that boarded with her along with her grandparents and parents so I let her take a nap.

Was just really odd to have someone use you as a pillow

Edit. I should add I’m a 30ish year old woman so I’m not a creepy man in that situation.

This happened many years ago... I sat next to a woman who would not stop talking to me, and it became apparent she was like desperately looking for male companionship. She kept saying things like, "I haven't been with someone in a long time, can you believe that?" and "I really just want someone to take care of me and my son." - "Do you think I am attractive?" - "What kind of job do you have?" - "I bet your girlfriend is pretty." - "Oh man, you're so smart. I really like smart guys."

I started playing sudoku in a book to try to ignore her, and that seemed to impressed her even more. For 3 hours, she basically kept hinting that she wanted me to take her home with me. I was single at the time, but man, she came across as someone in need of some serious therapy.

In retrospect, maybe I needed therapy... For thinking the only reason someone would be into me was mental illness.

A very flirty and very touchy young lady who was either on some kind of medication influence or mental issue would not leave me alone despite numerous polite requests. Instead of helping me on this completely full 2 hour flight, the flight attendants found this amusing and did not offer to intervene. I did not want to make a scene but in hindsight I probably should have.

A guy on a flight to New Delhi, who blew his nose in the blanket provided by the airline and smelled terrible 😅.

Flying LA to Singapore. I'm at a window seat, middle empty and a man in his 20's who, with his family, has boarded last. He lowers his tray table after take off and puts his head down on his arms and falls asleep.

I notice he's scratching his head quite a bit but it's not until I turn on my reading light to read that I notice that, every time he scratches his head, tiny insects are scurrying out from his scalp to run all over his head. They disappear back into his hair after the scratching stops.

I am obviously horrified and ask the flight attendant to be moved. She doesn't understand what the word "lice" means and says there are no empty seats left.

I luckilly had a scarf in my carry-on which I wrapped carefully around my hair for the rest of the 14 hour flight. Thankfully, I did not "catch" any of the lice.

Interestingly, upon leaving the plane, I noticed all members of the man's family were vigorously scratching their heads.

An 8 year old who's parent didn't parent at all. Not when he yanked my headphones off, not when he stuck his finger in my food, pulled my hair, screamed in my ear, etc. She just sat with her headphones on watching a movie like satans spawn wasn't tormenting me. .

I had a Jesus freak as a transatlantic seatmate who wanted to read the Bible with me and said if our wings came off midflight and we spiraled screaming into the sea, it’d be a time of rejoicing, because we’d get to meet our Lord and savior tonight.

Oh man this is such an opportunity for catharsis.

One time ages ago I was in premium economy on an Emirates flight from Dubai to Houston. I always get a window seat, but before takeoff, the flight attendant was trying to seat a family together and asked if I would move to a center, aisle, bulkhead seat with an empty seat next to it. Sure, why not...helps the family sit together, plus I get more legroom and nobody next to me for a 13 hour flight, great.

As soon as we're in the air, the older lady two seats over (on the other side of the empty seat) starts side-eyeing me and the empty seat. Oh boy. So I start putting some little things on "my" half of the empty seat--my book, a charger cable--to try to gently head off any shenanigans. But no. After she finishes the first meal (and I'm still eating mine), she starts getting comfy and confidently swings her legs around, across the empty seat, and rests her bare feet on my armrest.

At this point, it is important to describe the little old feet that were now inches from my food: ashy from dryness, puffy from age and altitude, and worst of all, those thick yellow toenails from fungus.

I was immediately like "Ma'am, absolutely not. Get your feet off my seat." She moved them on top of my book and charger in the empty seat. I was like "nope, all the way down". Then she starts in on the guilt: Oh, her leg hurts, oh she has a medical issue, oh she needs to stretch out during the flight, oh she had a surgery earlier in the year, blah blah blah. First of all, I point out, we're in a bulkhead row with tons of legroom and her stubby legs can't even reach the bulkhead. Second, we're fortunate to have an empty seat between us, so that we can *share* the extra space for our belongings and elbow room, and I'm happy to *share* it...but it's not all hers, and it's definitely not gonna be for anyone's feet.

She goes on about her leg, tries to squeeze out some fake tears. She tries to get her husband involved, but he's mortified and won't even look at her, much less at me. I tell her that if she needs more room, she should ask the flight attendant if there is an upgrade to business class.

That gives her an idea! She now says that she paid for this empty seat so that she could use it for her leg/feet. I say oh, that's interesting because the flight attendant specifically said it's an empty seat, but let's see if we can get her over here to have a look at your tickets for the two seats so we can confirm.

I reach for the call button. The leg is immediately removed from the shared seat, and she faces forward: "No, no...nevermind. You are a cruel man. A very cruel man."

That took care of the next 12 hours or so, but you could tell she really hated "losing" this little drama. So with about 45 mins left in the flight, she got her son to move from the other side of the husband somewhere to the empty seat to chat with her and/or vex me. As he sat, she looked over at me with a grin and I asked if they'd purchased the seat for him for the last 30 minutes of the flight. "Yes, yes sir, we did pay!" Sure lady, OK. At that point it was whatever.

Postscript: if anyone reading this was falling for her hurt leg/surgery routine, fear not. As soon as the plane got to the gate, she was up like a shot, up on tip toes to get her carryon bags, and zipping through the airport in no time.

Some people, man.

I was in the middle seat Miami to DC, and the guy in the window seat had some kind of skin disorder where his skin was flaking off like crazy. Think full body dandruff. And he had on shorts. Every time he moved, skin particles would go flying. His skin was all over my jeans on that side when we finally got off the plane. He was a super nice guy and I felt bad for whatever he was dealing with…but I was so grossed out being showered in someone’s skin flakes for 2 hours. .

He kept “accidentally” putting his hand on my thigh and then going “oh…. Sorry…” and I couldn’t get away because I was in the middle and him and the other man were both enormous and had their arms all the way over the armrests. It was a 6 hour flight.

I've been traveling by plane since I was 4. Mostly neutral or good experiences, but there was this one dude, I paid for the window seat, he was not that much taller than me but definitely a fair bit wider. There was also an empty seat in our row after takeoff, 12h flight. He asks for my window seat, since I'm not "using" it (I get the window seat coz Im hypermobile and need the extra support on one side to be able to sleep on long flights, so I was actually using it.

I say no, I paid extra for a window seat, but they can check and see if any others are free with the flight attendant.dude proceeds to sit in the empty seat next to me, and spreads his legs out literally pushing my legs off to the dode and taking over my leg space. I asked him to move, he just grinned.

I called the flight attendant, explained the situation, completely ignoring the dude trying to interject. He stops and she leaves, 5 min later, same thing. I call the flight attendant. She tells him to stop. Again. He stops for 5 minutes. Does it again. I call the flight attendant back and ask "could you have police waiting when we land? I'd like to file a harrassment report. And could I ask you to also give a statement to them?" now, police will be called to be waiting at landing for bigger infractions. I doubt they'd do it for something like this. But I was betting he didn't know that and that the flight attendant was smart enough to figure out that this way she wouldn't be called over every 5 minutes. She basically said something along the lines of "if you insist we will definitely do our best to make it happen, but perhaps Mr X would just prefer to switch seats and avoid the unpleasantness?"

He switched seats. I got all 3 to myself. But it was super weird and frustrating. Not even scary or anything, just legitimately strange behaviour.

Had a 9.5 hour flight from Tokyo to San Francisco a few years ago. The guy next to me was super trashed and wouldn’t stop talking. He was headed to Dallas to see the OU-UT football game and told me aaaaaallllll about it for hours. Mercifully he passed out about halfway through the flight!!! I even pretended to sleep a few times and he just would not stop talking!!!

It’s a tie between the two drunk rednecks drinking Wild Turkey and the lady behind me who decided that a turbulent descent was the perfect time to douse herself in heavy perfume 🤢 The flight attendant gave me looks of pity and mouthed “I’m so sorry” with the drunk guys, but it was a full flight and there was nowhere to move me. The perfume lady is lucky that I didn’t have to vomit despite already having motion sickness from the turbulence.

I had to sit in a middle seat next to 2 men who were manspreading. Nothing like having zero personal space because they can't close their legs even a little bit. Also as a tall person I can't stand sitting behind someone who reclines their seat all the way back.

Overweight middle aged couple, they had window and middle and I had about half of the aisle seat. Seat rests up because they both bled into the other seat and forced me to cram. Really annoying too? Asking where she could get headphones, playing music out loud, no flight etiquette in general I can’t remember all the details. WiFi wasn’t free on the flight but I paid for it, and she was having me walk through the WiFi connection and not understanding that the unlimited WiFi wasn’t free, asking me to go into her settings for her, all this stuff with the phone. Asking the flight attendants to get items out of her bag in the overhead. Like please dig in my purse for me thanks! Also the couple loudly complained for the last hour of the flight which was only 3 hours about how they need to land now and get off this plane. I mean, same.

Dubrovnik => Dublin. A middle aged woman either hadn't taken her meds or had taken too many and quaffed half a litre of vodka in the airport bar. About an hour into the flight she goes absolutely nuts. She was in the aisle seat immediately in front of me.

The cabin crew tried to talk her down. She was returning from a pilgrimage and others in her party of middle aged women tried to talk her down. The priest in the group tried to talk her down. Unfortunately his exorcism kit was in this checked luggage so that wasn't an option.

Eventually myself and 2 other lads were recruited to help restrain her. Those little baby seatbelts are not just for babies. They have a whole protocol for dealing with crazies.

So yeah, the one we had to restrain was probably the worst.