Yes, I’m aware this makes me sound like a royal douche, but I don’t care…I’ve travelled quite a lot this year, for various reasons, and there are a number of things that really ‘gets my goat up’ as we would say back home.

On one flight a few months ago, I was talking to an air hostess and a business woman who were seated next to me.  We went through an entire list of things that really piss us off while travelling and I decided to take a moment to blog mine.

At first I thought coming up with ten would be impossible, however, I have since found that it’s stopping at ten that’s the issue!

I think, essentially it comes down to one, single point,

You are not the exception to the rule.

1.  The overweight bag.

You’ve come to the airport two hours early for your flight, like the airline suggests.  You’re standing in the queue to check in, and the gobshite in front of you is having an all-out argument with the lady at the counter.

YOUR BAG IS OVERWEIGHT!

One or two pounds, ok, I could maybe understand that, the slight difference, or ‘give’ between weighing your bag at home and weighing it on different scales at the airport.

TEN POUNDS? Are you friggin’ kidding me?

Let me break this down for you, cause it seems even the most basic maths are beyond your comprehension.

Your bag is overweight, you have two choices,

1. Pay for the extra baggage (yes, you forfeit the right to complain about insane overweight baggage fees when you tried to stow a small child in your luggage and claim ignorance)

2. Take crap out of your luggage, chuck it, wear it, stick it in your hand luggage, I couldn’t care less, but standing there arguing about it isn’t doing anyone any good, especially you.  Cause the longer you argue, the more I and everyone behind you in the queue wants to happy slap you upside the face!

Also? You might want to invest in bathroom scales to check your baggage BEFORE you leave the house, or, y’know, don’t pack every fucking thing you own into the worlds smallest case!

2.  Under 100ml.

You’re in the queue at security, you’ve past no less than ten signs, since entering the airport, to tell you what you can and cannot take through security on your person, or in your hand luggage.

Inevitably, you get stuck behind some knob who’s decided his full-size Clarins moisturiser, or his Gucci aftershave may be over the 100ml limit, but that the rule doesn’t apply to him.

It does.

Yes, that includes your bottle of water.

As a follow on to this point, the signs posted all over the airport, are pretty self explanatory.  Aside from the dozen things you should have put in your checked luggage, how about taking off your shoes, belt, coat, emptying your pockets and taking your laptop out of it’s case while you’re at it, eh? Instead of waiting to be told (and keeping the line back at the same time!)

Just sayin’!

3.  The Human Stampede.

You’re sitting in the departure lounge, the poor helpless gate-worker picks up the phone to announce that we will shortly be commencing the boarding procedure.  At this moment, 75% of the people who had, until now, been calmly seated and reading, listening to music, or chatting, spring in to action and decide that hovering around the gate with their passports and tickets primed and ready to go, will definitely make the guy let you on the plane faster.

Sit the hell down!

You have paid for a designated seat, the plane won’t leave without you and there is ZERO need to stand from the moment he picks up the phone and says ”we will be boarding from the back of the plane”, until he boards you, on row 6.

4. It doesn’t fit!

Yes, because you over-packed your checked luggage to the tune of a small child and were too cheap to check an extra bag or pay the overweight fees, you have now been left in the unfortunate position of having the aforementioned small car, in tow, as hand luggage.

Newsflash – that bag, will NOT fit, in that overhead bin.

You’ve tried each way the case could possibly fit, the guy beside you, kindly offered to help, he can’t make it fit and the lovely air hostess (who has already put you on her ‘watch list’ by the way) has even tried to put it away overhead too.

It doesn’t fit under the seat, it doesn’t fit overhead and the crew cupboard has no room.

Take what you need and let her check it knob-end.  Give up, sit the fuck down and let everyone else take their seat! K?

5.  Go, before you go.

Did your mother never tell you this? Instead of hovering at the boarding gate, 10 minutes before your row is going to be called, how about you go for a tinkle eh? Instead of waiting until that golden moment where we reach cruising altitude, the air hostesses have pulled out the drinks trolley and start their service.

Worse still, is when they expect the air hostesses to stop serving people, back up from the middle of the plane to the closes ‘alcove’, which, of course is way back at the front of the plane, just cause you are now in urgent need to return to your seat and standing tapping your foot.

Know what’d solve that? If you peed before you left the airport, or after the ladies have finished going up and down the plane with their drinks/meal service.

Or go one better, just for being an impatient ass, stand there and wait for them to finish doing their job before returning to your seat.  Douchebag.

6.  In the upright position.

For the 200th time, put your friggin’ seat up for take off and landing already!

Yes, though you might not know it, the extra five degrees of lean does make a difference in an emergency.  The FAA has proven that it takes 15 to 45 seconds longer to evacuate an airplane when the seats are reclined. Each of those seconds could be a life lost!

Pray-tell, why do you need the extra five degrees of lean? eh?

You don’t.  Sit up and shut up.

And even if there wasn’t an *actual* reason for your seat to be in the upright position, she told you to do it, so once again I’ll say, sit up and shut up!

7. Bundle of joy.

Now, I love kids as much as the next kid-loving person.  What I do not love, however, is when your little ‘bundle of joy’, who just so happens to have the exact length of legs necessary, is sitting behind me kicking the utter crap out of my seat.

What I love, even less, is that no amount of pushing back against the kid’s kicking, no amount of looking behind me glaring, no amount of tutting, loudly complaining to the person next to me, or asking you (politely, mind you!) to stop your kickboxing child from making me vibrate from head to toe on and off for a seven hour flight – will actually STOP it from happening.

How’s about I wait for you to put your kid to sleep, trade places with the people sitting behind you and kick the back of your chairs for seven hours? hey? How would you like that?

You’re right, you wouldn’t.  Stop your kid – stop them NOW!

8.  The Window Seat.

This concept, is the same as when I sit on the aisle seat in the Toyota Centre (or any aisle seat really), I don’t mind getting up on occasion to let you out.  During a game, if you really can’t hold it to a break in play, then sure thing, I’ll get up.

But, if you get up every 5 minutes, or you wait until the person who JUST sits back down from their jolly adventure, before you decide to get up – so I’m up and down like a yoyo for the whole game (or, in this case, flight) then I’m gonna be pissed! Plus, you’ve not even been drinking that much, how the HELL do you need to pee so much!!

9. The recline

Don’t you just hate when people wait til the plane levels off, your captain has turned off the fasten seat belt signs and bam! The person in front of you hits the recline button, so that even if you wanted to get up and walk around, you couldn’t.  It’s not like those seats have much room to begin with, so when your sardine can, becomes even smaller – and not just for an hour or so, for the whole friggin’ flight, it’s not in any way cool.

I get it, you want to be as comfy as possible for a long-haul flight, you wanna kick back, chill out and get some sleep.  However, when I’m trying to eat my dinner behind you and you’re tossing and turning so much my drink is sloshing and I barely have room to hold a knife and fork? I want to throw my dinner at you.

10. Bags a-swingin’

Another thing that drives me absolutely bat-shit crazy, is when that throng of people on the plane stand up as soon as you’ve touched the ground and bulldoze their way through you, to disembark, as though the plane has caught fire behind them or something.

They run to the baggage carousel only to wait there a half hour, at the mouth of the baggage carousel, refusing to budge out the way so that OTHER people can get their bags off the belt, just in case they miss their own precious bag and have to walk 15 feet around the belt to catch up with it!

T’was hard to stop at 10…other pet peeves…

The light button does not make a ding noise.

The fact that I’m wearing my headphones should be a clear indication that I don’t want to talk to you for the entire flight.

The fasten seat belt sign isn’t on because the captain has a sick sense of humour.  He has machines that tell him you need to fasten your seat belt – so sit the hell down and buckle up!

Phew! Now, don’t you feel better after that?!