Non Stop Talking on the flight
 

On a CO flight last week there were 2 people in First right behind me that did not stop talking the entire flight. From the time they sat down until they got off the plane. They were not yelling but just running their mouth the entire flight. I was tempted to say something but did not. Really annoying. Should I have said something and if so what?

Since when did it become rude to simply talk? As you said, they were not yelling. There is no rule, formal or otherwise, against speaking to one's companion. If it bothers you, you have the option of bringing earplugs. I am a person who likes peace and quiet, and knowing that I am unlikely to find that on any form of public transportation, I bring earplugs for every flight and sometimes on train trips, too. (By the way, I hope you never take trains, because there almost everyone talks nonstop!)

You really can't tell people to stop talking (after all it is a free country). If they were being loud that is another story. For that reason, get an Ipod, or noise canceling headphones, or a good book. A small thin metal tube with anywhere from 50 to 400 paxs is not a place to seek silence.

am i the only one that considers this rude?

How long was the flight? I'm assuming this was a regular domestic flight, not a red-eye, doesn't sound unreasonable to me.

No, you are not alone
 

To: mike_asia
1. You are not alone. This has happened to me several times before. I would rather sit in a quiet plane than being bombarded with redundant conversations. If you could hear it in your row, then it is loud. Often, I have noticed that the most annoying conversations are between a man and a woman who had not met each other before.
2. Yet another annoyance is the head phone that blasts loud music. Again, while it is supposed to be personalized music delivery system, the loudness goes beyond the intended head and blasts others.
3. Worst is a flirting FA who sits on the aisle next to the object of admiration and goes into a babling conversation oblivious to the surroundings.
4. In the middle of a quite plane ride or in the middle of an exciting movie, the captain coming on the air to announce what a great flight it is!
5. Silence could be killing. An aisle seat passenger silently reading a book and gets visibly annoyed when a middle/window seat passenger wants to avail the facilities also could be a nuisance.
What do I do? Carry a lightand small luggage, go to restroom before I board, place the luggage only on top of my seat, get to my window seat, buckele up, smile at my neighbor once and say Hi, keep my hands and legs tucked well within my seat limits, make sure the seat is upright, then close my eyes, and reminess about the days when you got free stop over hotel stays, airline gifts and soveniers, airline bags, food and drink, pillows and blankets, candies, welcome and thanks greetings, etc.

1. they were not screaming
2. they were not kicking your seat
3. they were not standing over you, talking to a middle seat
4. they were not talking on a cell phone.(on a train for 4 hrs).

had all the above, which i consider rude.

get an ipod or equivalent, and a pair of shure Sound Isolating Ear-bud Headphones(under 100 bucks). and to quote that great american philosopher, CAPTAIN KIRK "get a life".

the shures are great. you cannot even hear the cabin announcements. screaming babies disappear.

the people still stand over you(usually united employees) and talk, and the damned kids still kick the seats.

When you're talking over VOIP.

I am not in favor of VOIP bans, but if we're going to have them, I'd like them to be extended to anyone who shouts, not just VOIP users.

People (not yelling) who are sitting next to each other talking? Rude? Not in my book. I prefer to sit quietly, but I would not in any way classify it as rude.

This recent thread will give you different POVs:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trave...me-flight.html

4 hour flight. I was taught that there are certain places you should be quiet.. Church, Doctors office, Elevators, Library, etc. Maybe I lived in Japan too long where people are polite on public transportation but I still think any crowded place like an airplane is not the place for 4 hours of smalltalk

I had a couple like this on my PHX-BUR flight last month. It was a young woman who was either drunk or just very loopy and an older man next to her. At one point while on the ground at PHX I sighed and she said "oh, am I annoying you?" to me?

During the flight I used my noise canceling headsets (best $300 I ever spent) but upon approach she was yapping again to the point where she poked me in the shoulder to offer me a business card. I dropped it in the seatback.

I don't mind people who talk, I just wish they'd leave me alone. Usually I wear my headsets and if I don't have them with me for whatever reason I can always ask them to keep it down.

Agree that there ARE places where silence is appropriate...

..but to equate an aircraft to a Church or Doctors office or Library?? :eek::rolleyes:

Sorry... I don't see the match there... I usually travel alone (too?) but I would never demand that folks on a daytime flight travelling together should NOT talk to each other.... I actually think THAT is somehat rude....

Read the OP, non stop for 4 hours, not just casual conversation, It was a night flight that landed at midnight

Same thing happened to me yesterday on USAirways from PHX to STL. A couple a few rows back was chatting loudly the entire time, about all manner of ignorant stuff.

I was trying to sleep, and YES I HAD EARPLUGS but I could still hear them through the ear plugs.

Some grown ups need to use their inside voice.

The OP's first post said nothing about four hours, casual vs. non-casual conversation (who cares what kind of conversation it was anyway, as long as they were not yelling?), or a "night flight" (which, by the way, is not the same thing as an evening flight--which this one apparently was). :rolleyes:

Get earplugs.

it's pretty annoying, but that's what noise cancelling headphones are for =D

I hate it as much as the next guy, I love my peace and quiet, but really?

It's public transportation, not church or a library, you can't demand that every passenger conform to what you think are the ideal cabin conditions. They werent yelling, and were well within their rights. You would have been WAY out of line by telling them to be quiet.

I love my peace and quite, I don't like to listen to others converstations, but that's what my noise cancelling headphones or Sures earbuds are for. Of course, I feel this way because I almost always travel alone, if I were traveling with a companion, I may want to talk to them. I feel this would be well within my rights and not inconsiderate at all.

If you really want peace and quiet, charter your own flight.

I'm the guy that wears the shures and reads a book.

i am pretty inconsiderate, but i know i cannot shut up the bubble heads, and the screaming kids. the ride on the train was enough.

headphones do not work. good isolation ear buds do. hope you can afford them, and tolerate them in your ears.

to quote the sage of the 20th c. michael nesbit while selling a neighbor nuclear deterent, "it is a well known fact, neighbors are no damned good"

Gotta roll with it. Situations's out of your control so don't let it bother you. +1 on the suggestions for noise cancelling headphones.

I commute daily on NJ Transit trains to midtown Manhattan. I've noticed that the early morning trains are very quiet. Everyone's reading a paper, book, listening to iPod, or whatever. If someone gets on and starts gabbing, it will generate a lot of dirty looks. Some people may even get up and change their seat. On the way home, it's a different story and people are generally more verbal.

Either way, life's too short.

You are right. Politeness is all about the being aware of the feelings and preferences of others. People have the RIGHT to chat away for hours on end in the confined cabin space of an airplane. Unfortunately, people not a party to the conversion have no natural ability to close their ears. The chatterboxes should show some self-restraint. However, it is also rude to demand that others refrain from exercising their rights. So in this age of ill manners, the best solution is probably the headphones :(

It might be slightly rude, but you really don't have any right to ask them to be quiet. It's an airplane, not a kindergarten class.

Moderator caution
 

Members: to keep the thread open, we need to discuss this without undue personalization of our members. As the FlyerTalk Rules tell us: "If you disagree with another member, challenge the opinion or idea - not the person." Post(s) which strayed from this rule have been edited or deleted. Ocn Vw 1K, Moderator.

I don't think it is rude for them to have a conversation. I have been in Japan a lot too and people talk on the train, shinkansen and local trains. People talk in the elevator in Japan too.

I always travel alone and one time an older lady told a girl one row in front of her to be quiet. This was on a 12 hour all day(no night) flight from YYZ to NRT. I thought the older lady was kind of rude. Who did she think she was? She doesn't own the plane, and the volume at which the people in front of us was not by any stretch of the imagination loud or annoying.

When a baby cries.. that is annoying. But no one ask the baby to stop crying. :D

Rude!
 

I don't like other people talking when I can hear it, and it is constant. I consider it rude, because unless you are in a A380 cabin (which has virtually no engine noise in my opinion), you generally shouldn't be able to hear the conversation of two people seated adjacent to one another who are talking only to one another.

What you relate happens to me a couple of times a year, and I think it's mostly that some people don't have any idea that their voice is too loud for a sit-down environment. However, sometimes it's people with an overinflated ego who want everyone to hear what they have to say.

Anyway, FWIW, I think if you are in a public setting (like a train, club, airplane cabin, etc), and there are people around you who you do not know, you should probably learn to speak in a lower voice when talking to someone seated right next to you.

Agreed. You are in a confined space with many other people, best to live and let live rather than working yourself up over it.

Or even just comparatively inexpensive in the ear phones (not earbuds). After one flight where I spent 3 hours in front of guy trying to convert another into his brand of religion, I never leave home without them and my Ipod.

i came to this thread thinking about my second trans-atlantic flight, where i was sitting next to an army guy who was just shipping out to germany. he talked nearly non-stop - to me!

drove me crazy. he didn't get the hint, even when i visibly put my earphones on and played my walkman.

Poor guy, bet he was apprehensive about his posting. But insensitivity to others can be hazardous. Hope he develops better "radar" in combat, if that's where he was going.

I get irritated when people with carrying voices hold dense conversations within earshot in the plane. But the only time I ever said anything was to the guy with a radio announcer voice who drank too much coffee on a TATL red-eye. The seating was such that I really could have slept, except for my seat being jiggled and the voice that NC Shures couldn't block out. He was very nice but he wouldn't stop talking. So what can ya do?

If you can't deal with people talking on a flight, perhaps you should look into NetJets or other, similar, service.

Noise cancelling headphones all the way, baby!

I was on a Korean Air flight two years ago when a couple next to me in F sat in the aisle and started shelling peas. The FAs asked them to return to their seats and they began arguing in Korean. Eventually they went back to their seats.

Count your blessings.

If you don't like other people talking, you can start talking to yourself loudly, and maybe they'll quiet down because they're weirded out by you... :D

Just don't be surprised if the crew has police meet you as you deplane at the gate... ;)

A. Don't sweat the little things.

B. For conversation in rows ahead or behind, accept that, like a restaurant with no empty tables elesewhere, and with no way to disembark, you are sentenced to become an unwilling and unwitting listener. If you knew the conversationalists were "Non-revs", I suppose you might, ineffectively in all likelihood, complain.

C. Return your "noise canceling" headphones for a refund.

D. If seated by someone who demands your attention and conversation, accept that often he/she may be utililizing you for therapeutic resons - a need to share or to reduce stress. You have only two options, producing a card which claims that you can neither hear, read lips or comprehend sign language, or producing a card which claims you are a licensed therapist and need his/her name and address for sending the bill.

E. Remember, the Chaplain's Office is closed, so there's no way your TS card may be punched.

Not the sharpest tool in the shed huh.. Do you think people spending time on this forum fly NetJets

Now that's rude.

Are you short? That just went right over your head and I didn't even throw very high.

PS: I know several that do - not everyone is a small-timer.

Telling me to effectively hire my own jet because I don't want to listen to someone talking for 4 hours non stop on a flight? Ok not rude but not the smartest comment.

Do you think my comment it is ruder than someone running their mouth non stop for 4 hours on a flight? Ok....lets get back on topic

ROFL :D:D:D:D

Add to that card a request for donations... that'll shut them up real fast!!!!!!

I thought the comment about NetJets was quite hilarious... :D:D:D

No, I don't think it's rude. Commercial air travel is another form of public transportation. When I travel, I recognize that I have to protect my own interests, so I fly with ear plugs or headphones. If a situation really gets out of hand, I'm not averse to politely asking the talkers to lower their voices, but in 30 years of flying, I might have done that twice.