thomas199023

Travelers who applaud when the plane lands safely. I mean it's the pilots job!, you don't clap your hands when the bus driver parks safely now do you?

Tough this mostly happens at cheap Ryanair flights.

Silver Fox

Everything.

cbrendan

Happened to me twice on skyeurope, and once on singapore air

ferrismo

This is commonplace on any flights within, to or from the middle east. In fact I've even witnessed the whole plane clapping in unison. Sure it's weird, but not annoying, it doesn't last more than a minute or so. I think it originates from an old custom of giving thanks for arriving at your destination safe and sound after travelling.

I reckon we should all start clapping while waiting in line for the security check by TSA. Everyone in the line doing a really slow clap in unison, I bet that would scare the sh*t out of them.

celle

I have only once applauded when the plane landed. It was a KLM flight from AMS to JFK. On this flight, I believe that the pilot did an extraordinary job, in excess of his usual job description.

Half the economy section of the plane was devoted to cargo. On this flight, the cargo was racehorses.

Mid-Atlantic, the horses got restless and started banging about. They rocked the whole plane and people kept rushing back and forth, through the door in the partition, to try and calm the horses.

That didn't work and we had a very bumpy (due to horses, not turbulence) and worrying flight for several hours.

As we landed safely at JFK, the entire economy section clapped and cheered! I think it was as much in relief that we had actually landed safely as it was in appreciation of the pilot's skill.

oklAAhoma

That's incredible! I've never heard of horses being transported like that. Typically they are shipped in containers, 3 horses per container, but these are much too tall to fit in the passenger section of a plane. I'm struggling to picture how the horses were loaded, let alone stabled.

Another weird thing is that horses are typically tranquilized at the first signs of nervousness, which for race horses can often be pre-flight. I can't imagine why the situation was allowed to get out of hand like that. Of course, if people were rushing back and forth it means the grooms/handlers weren't with the horses as they should have been. Afaik there must always be at least one handler per container. What a strange flight.

celle

The flight was on a B747-400C. The "C" means it was a Combi version, permanantly configured to take both passengers and freight (so, presumably, the freight section had greater headroom, or the horses could not have travelled in there.) The B747-400C first entered into service in 1989, with KLM, who had 10 of them in operation. I believe that Alaska Airlines also had some.

This flight was in 1989, so some of the teething troubles associated with mixing passengers and freight may not have been sorted out. I can't imagine the air crew being in favour of repeating that particular class of freight!

The horses were quiet for the first few hours, so must have been sedated at that stage. I'm guessing that the sedation wore off and the handlers did not/ could not give the horses any more.

There were handlers with the horses, and the people rushing through the partition were all airline staff, who went to see if anything more could be done to quieten the horses. This usually happened after a particularly bad series of "bumps" from the horses. I heard one FA ask if he could do anything to help.

In general, the cabin staff did a good job of keeping us passengers calm, but it must have been a nightmare flight for the horses and grooms, and for the KLM crew. It wasn't much fun for the passengers either, and kind of put me off KLM for a while!

oklAAhoma

Ah yes, I'd forgotten about those. Now I can picture exactly what it must have been like.

We started shipping horses internationally in the late 80s but I don't recall ever seeing any of our horses loaded into one of the Combi versions. And I've never had the "pleasure" of flying on one myself.

Canarsie

Being Addressed By One’s First Name - Is This a Trend?

Being addressed by my first name without my consent can mildly annoy me, depending on the situation or circumstance...

KiwiSurfer

For a normal landing, yes I think it is rather pointless. However I've been on several interesting landings at Wellington (WLG) airport in New Zealand. WLG is known for being very windy and since it has only runway, planes sometimes have to land despite cross-wind.

One such instance happened around the middle last year. WLG airport was closed due to high wind speed. Later the wind subsided and it was reopened and my plane (an NZ 737-300) was one of the first to land and it was a very difficult landing which I'm sure only experienced pilots could have done successfully. There was a lot of heavy rain and cross-wind and the margin of error was very slim.

Once the plane landed (with half the plane looking keenly out the window and the other half with their eyes closed) pretty much the entire plane clapped. A good morale boost for the pilots and FAs I would say -- on top of what was probably a landing to remember!

Walking into the airport I looked at the arrivals and noticed heaps of flights were diverted back to the origin or nearby airports -- only a few flights made it through which shows that the pilot had lots of balls to land the plane in such weather!

- James

Silver Fox

Reminds me of the time that my wife persuaded me to get on a plane to go from Queenstown to Milford Sound on a little 2 engine jobby. As we were walking out to the plane the pilot said "who wants to sit next to me" so as all the other tourists were German they didn't understand him so I bagged the seat. As we were taxiing he said "I am not waiting for the BAE147 to go" radioed to the tower, and just took off along some little grass runway over Lake Wakatipu. Absolutely fantastic taking off, nice sunny day, nice and gentle - until we got over the mountains. Started getting a bit bumpy and as I had not had my medicine for the day at that time I was stone cold sober. Bumpier and bumpier with what seemed to me like crazy drops and aiming for mountains only to turn away at what seemed like the last minute to me. I am holding on to the seat and window frame, pilot says "that won't save you mate" - and I couldn't stop laughing. Less so the German lady behind me that started screaming constantly and only stopped when she started to throw up. After we had landed in extremely high winds and the plane all over the show and were disembarking, we walked past a group that were supposed to get on it to go back to Queenstown - obviously our faces told a tale of terror and I can still see their happy smiley faces dropping as I type. One asked what it was like, I just said "don't do it". In fact the plane was deemed too small to go up again so a bigger one came in for us later. By that time I had successfully taken all the medications on the hospital ship and was feeling rather relaxed on the way back. But never again will I do that. Never has an 8 hour road trip looked so appealing.

Xelint

People who hog up all the power outlets.

kitsura

Having to skim through inane threads in FT.

oklAAhoma

Is someone twisting your arm?

honeytoes

What I find annoying is that it seems that many hotels let kids stay/eat for free. What is up with that? I am a single female. WTH do I get?

Sheesh. If you have kids, keep 'em locked up till they're old enough to vote.*





*I keed, I keed.



(Um, not really...)