I guess I must go to a lot of resort or "fun"-type destinations ... Hawaii, Cancun, Las Vegas ... and the screaming, seat-kicking kids are bad (since unlike when it happens in a restaurant and if it is bad enough, kids or adults, on the ground, I can just ask to be moved or walk out) - but the groups of loud, drunken, apparently first-time adult flyers are the WORST.

How many flights have I been on where there were large groups of party animals heading to Las Vegas for Super Bowl weekend to "party hearty", or spring-breakers heading to Cancun and already starting to get wild the minute they get on the plane, and on landing treating the locals really badly and so on - talk about the Ugly American - it flourishes at Spring Break. I travel then too because I am also on spring break otherwise would love to avoid it. Nothing to do but get out the walkman again and try to be extra nice to any locals I meet ... on another note, my first trip to Hawaii I was staying in a fancy hotel and at breakfast was unhappy to be seated right next to a woman with really unruly, screaming, fighting, running around, coming up to my table, etc. kids, (what am I, a kid magnet? seems to always happen!) and SEEMINGLY doing nothing to prevent it. Many of us did give her dirty looks, I have to admit, and her response - "If you look at them, you have to keep them." Pretty funny I guess but ...

Finally, the sound is bad enough but what about assaults on the olfactory senses? Admittedly maybe I don't understand the process but I was on a late-night SWA flight - a one-hour hop CHI-DTW - and someone was changing her baby right in the seat. It didn't make any noise but the smell ... I was feeling queasy anyway and that just made it worse. I can empathize with the need to change the baby but in a small, crowded plane, breathing the recirculated air, and probably more than one person feeling queasy, I don't know, don't most people do this in the restroom?