Originally Posted by
haniboo
the first tiime i saw it was on flying ELAL. i think it was more standard on LY years ago and less so these days. I rarely hear it on American flagged a/c, unless it was a bumpy raining landing.
My mom told me that the not only clapped, but sang Shalom Alechem when she landed in Israel in the 1970s. (It's a celebratory Hebrew song; loosely-we bring peace to you, but that doesn't quite capture it.)
The best I've ever seen, though, was on Kiwi, around 1994 I think. ORD to MCO (Disneyworld). It was a bargain flight with lots of families. Obviously one can't judge too wisely on appearances, but the majority of the plane seemed to be folks of modest means who perhaps had never flown before. The combination of (perhaps) first-time flying and arrival at MCO triggered a huge ruckus. It was a lot of fun.
It was also cool having 3 former Eastern pilots (727), all of whom seemed as though they could probably have been full captains there before going Kiwi. They were fun.