Hogging the armrest and other bad behaviours we should fine travellers for

Telegraph

3 days ago

It happens at the end of every flight. You're all sitting there, having just landed, desperate for the plane to reach the gate. Blankets and pillows litter the floor. You need a pee. Let's not even discuss the smell after several hours of 400 or so people trapped in an airtight space. You're drawing tantalisingly close to the jet-way, but the plane is still moving and the seatbelt sign is on. And yet there will be someone, maybe a few, who decide this is the moment to leap up early and start pulling their belongings from the overheard locker.
Is there a fire? Is another 20 seconds in your seat going to kill you? Are we not all going to disembark at roughly the same time anyway, when one of the crew opens the doors? The rest of us remain in our seats, eyes boring into these tiresome rule-breakers. The arrogance irritates me in the same way that BMW drivers who cut in front of a line of traffic irritate me. Just wait like everyone else.
Terrifically, the Turkish civil aviation authority has decided it's had enough with these hooligans and implemented a £52 fine for anyone who stands up before the seatbelt sign is turned off. Cor, that would be satisfying, wouldn't it? A self-important man a few seats in front of you gets up to retrieve his bag and claim a space in the aisle before everyone else, and is subsequently handed a piece of paper with his fine on the way out. Thank you so much for flying with us, sir, have a lovely trip.
But if we're in the business of handing out fines for poor travel-related behaviour – and as it's approaching June and we're into summer holiday territory – I might suggest a few others while we're at it.
A fine, for instance, for anyone who arrives at the X-ray machine and seems surprised at the idea that he (or she!) might have to empty his pockets. A few years ago at Heathrow, I stood for so long behind a man wearing a safari jacket that my holiday was practically over by the time I could reach for a tray myself. He patted one pocket and removed some coins, and then another pocket and removed a few more. In another zipped pocket there was an old packet of gum; keys in yet another; sunglasses somewhere else.
People who take too long to remove their belts can also be quite trying, especially if you're on an early morning flight and desperate for a coffee. Few of us are at our absolute best at 5.32am, I appreciate, but if you have a particularly fiddly item of clothing that is going to take several minutes to liberate before you can put it in a tray, might you consider packing it instead? Further fines at this stage for tray aggression and those who try to shunt theirs into the line waiting to enter the scanner before yours.
As travel has become a more expensive and yet dispiriting process in recent years, has our general airport behaviour deteriorated too? You are genteel and civilised Telegraph readers, and you may be in business class or above. Bravo. This may mean the boarding process isn't total agony. For the rest of us at the gate, it increasingly has an air of the Hunger Games. Speedy boarding, or the group system, has created yet another situation in which humans can feel superior to others and behave accordingly. 'Groups one and two only,' announces a weary member of airport staff, and yet someone in Group 16 will still try to smuggle themselves on.
American Airlines has now decided this is such poor behaviour that it is trialling a new form of technology, where passengers who try to board before their group has been called will be embarrassed by an alarm sound when their boarding pass is scanned. I hadn't come across the term 'gate lice' before, but this is what staff apparently call passengers who cluster around a gate waiting for their turn, as if the plane may leave without them. (Sometimes, do you think it might be easier to simply stay at home? Forgo a holiday entirely?)
Once on board, fines for anyone who's sitting in your aisle seat in the optimistic and woefully mistaken belief that you won't mind taking their window seat instead. Fines for anyone who hogs the armrest, and a hefty penalty, possibly prison, for those people in the row behind you who insist on getting up and down by gripping the back of your chair, catching your hair and causing near whiplash every time they do so. Fines for anyone who's late on the plane, holding everyone else up. Double it if they're drunk.
If you have small children, do keep an eye on them and ensure they're not merrily swinging their little legs at the seat in front, because the adults should really earn a fine in such cases. On a flight back from Majorca as a child, I did this throughout, thoughtlessly.
'Was that you kicking my chair during the flight?' enquired an elderly lady at the end as we all stood in the aisle, waiting to disembark.
'No,' I squeaked back quickly, in panic, before pointing at my brother. 'It was him!'
She immediately clipped my brother's ear, and I can't quite remember what my parents' response was to this act of brutality, but I've felt guilty about it almost every day since. It was the 1990s, I suppose.
Finally, a word of caution about the luggage carousel at the other end, because this also causes people to forget themselves. There you stand patiently with a trolley, until someone else comes along and parks themselves right in front of you. Have you heard of personal space, my good friend? Alternatively, someone may barge into you because they're chasing their bag around the carousel in the same manner that my terrier chases a squirrel, instinctively, without any thought as to what might be in their way. I suspect these people are probably BMW drivers, too.