Originally Posted by
bergamini
This is, of course, a shame. I've only had a deceased service member one time (ANC>MSP) and we all stayed seated and several of us cried.
I find it hard to believe the whole plane would do it intentionally. I have to wonder how well the overhead speakers work and if everyone heard. I don't hear a lot of what they say on planes and I'm trying to listen. I really hope and think most people wouldn't be intentionally disrespectful.
I agree it's a shame that this happened, but my instinct is that this wasn't intentional either. It was probably a critical mass of people who didn't hear the announcements that enough of them got up right away.
According to the article, it was PHX-DTW. This route is usually served with an A320, which has streaming entertainment, but not in-seat. I would be willing to guess that there were quite a few passengers who had headphones in their ears the entire time and never heard the announcements. The streaming entertainment doesn't pause for announcements like the in-seat entertainment does, nor does it play the announcements in your speakers.
There were also probably at least a few of those people who were listening to music on their smart phones during/after landing and still had the headphones in their ears when the announcements were made during taxi.