Strange Complaints from Fellow Pax
 

Have you ever gotten a strange or off-the-wall complaint from a fellow pax? Not that your music is too loud or they don't like your perfume or they want you to close the window, but something bizarre?

On one flight the woman in front of me kept pushing my bag out from under her seat. Hubby and I were flying standby so we'd been separated and I was in a middle seat. At first I thought I was hallucinating. I would push my bag under the seat in front of me and it would slide backwards. I'd push it again, it would slide back again. Then the pax turned around and snapped, "Stop it! Your bag is in my foot space!"

I knew that was well nigh impossible, as I was flying with that bag weekly and had never had a complaint before. Furthermore, there was a bar on the seat that prevented it from going that far forward.

Still, she insisted that it was in her space. Finally I said, "Okay, so what you're telling me is that if I get up right now and look, I will see that my bag is in your foot space. Tell you what, I'll come up there and look and I'll move it if it really is. I just want to be very sure because if I have to come up to your row, that means I have to climb over the person in the aisle seat. I don't want to inconvenience him for nothing. Are you saying that I should come look?"

She sputtered and gave me a death look, but it shut her up and my bag stayed put for the rest of the flight. That was a really weird one.

I flew next to that lady last week. Her feet are attached backwards, a terrible disability, and you should feel sorry for her.

I had a fellow complain very loudly on his cell phone that everybody around him in F was upgraded and he paid for his ticket. :rolleyes:

Not a complaint but one time landing in MUC I think from IAD, in C, the woman next to me asked to hold my hand as the landing made her very nervous.

I was flying from SFO to NRT on NW years ago. I was working on the flight, so I was from time to time bending down to get stuff out of my briefcase or put stuff back into it. The guy behind me complained that he couldn't watch the movie with me "constantly bobbing up and down." :rolleyes:

He then upgraded himself to business class in midflight. When the FA told him to go back to his seat, he repeated this complaint to her, and she asked me whether I could bend over less! I asked her whether I was violating some rule--of course she said no--so I told her that I would be happy to move to a comparable or better seat but that I was going to continue to do what was necessary to work.

Well, did you? :D

I love these people when I was AA EXP I was talking to an FA I knew on that route and I told her I was glad I was upgraded on this leg not like the previous week and the jerk next to me got loud rudely interjected in my conversation and said I paid for first how the hell did you get an aisle seat in first and not pay for it.
I calmly explained to him that I probably travel more in a month then he did all year I also said a few other things but I'll leave that out.....

Redbeard does this happened to be some short 5'8 balding old man with a lot of gold on him. This guy looked like a rejected Mr. T? I thought they would have to counter balance the plane for him and his gold.

Higher!
 

I awoke on a redeye PHX-DCA to find someone crawling under my legs. I was in an aisle seat, and her seat was behind me. When I asked (quite incredulously) what she was doing at my feet, she popped her head up BETWEEN MY LEGS and requested that I lift my legs up high as she had lost her shoe and thought it might me under our seats.

This after listening to her bad imitation of Brittany Spears, then try to pass herself off as a lawyer to men in her aisle all night.

Yup, she was nice and we chatted a bit during the flight...now get your mind out of the gutter! :p

Sort of a complaint. My then-gf (now wife) and I were travelling ORD-BOS. She had the window and I had the middle (nice guy that I am - or WAS, according to my wife). Once we reached cruise altitude, I reclined my seat about halfway. I heard some muttering behind me, so I turned around and asked the gentleman if I had reclined so far as to make him uncomfortable. He replied that he was fine. A few seconds later, I heard the muttering again. I realized it was his wife in the aisle seat. I once again turned around and asked them to please let me know if there was a problem, and again met with a polite negative response. Upon turning back around, the muttering escalated, this time with clearly audible profanities directed at me. I turned around for a third and final time and quite firmly told the lady that if she had a problem that I would be happy to accomodate her and her husband, but to please discontinue this passive-aggressive muttering under your breath bullsh*t. Didn't hear a peep out of either of them for the rest of the flight. My gf was at once impressed and terribly mortified.

No one has ever asked, but.... I have a portable viewer for my iPod, about 5" screen. Sometimes I'll be watching a movie/show/podcast, etc, and I'll catch the person in the seat next to mine watching. This viewer has 2 headset jacks, and I'll usually volunteer to let them use one. I've only had 1 person take me up on it, and it was a riot. I was watching one of those, "Scary Movie," things (dreadful films, but amusing to pass time), then a podcast called, "Cute with Chris." Again, it made a PHL-PHX flight seem like just a few minutes.

I'm always afraid that someone will be offended by what I'm watching (no pornos, but some stuff could be R), so I try to keep the screen angled so it is difficult for someone else to see. While watching, "Knocked up," I thought that someone may be offended by some scenes. Every time I've used it, I always catch someone peeking, never a complaint.

Back in the days of the MD11, I was in the middle section and had a lady in the row behind me, two seats over, knocking on my seat every time I reclined it. Note, she was the only person in the row behind me.

Apparently I was "trapping her."

At least she asked!

I was on a Aer Arann flight a couple of years ago, and we hit some nasty turbulence coming in approaching London Luton, which being on an ATR didn't help! The lady next to slapped her hand onto mine, and dug her (long) fingernails into my skin until we touched down - almost to the point of skin breakage. I was left with little fingernail shaped pock marks on the back of my right hand for a while! :eek:

A few funny situations like that:

1) PDX-IAH CO in F. Lady next to me said she might hold my hand because she was afraid of turbulence.. I didn't think it was that odd.
2) AMS-JFK KL in Y. We're in row 9 of KL 74M (tons of legroom, exit row, as elites) and this joker behind us keeps kicking the seat. Had to get F/A involved; pax kept complaining we had too much room and he was trapped. Don't remember how it was resolved.
3) This one involves a crew member but JFK-SVO on DL, christmas eve, oddest crew member ever. Kept shifting people's seats around and yelling like "WHy are you going here? What are you doing??" all in Russian. Just bizarre. (I have a trip report up about it)

Last week on AS from LAX to YVR some poor FA got a tut-tutting from a woman in F because he didn't know the final score in the hockey playoff that night. She turned to her husband and muttered something along the lines of 'What kind of first class service is this if they don't know the hockey scores!'