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Worst ever plane passengers: From clipping their toenails to a couple having sex in their seats

Pray you never get stuck on a flight with one of these etiquette offenders

Helen Coffey
Friday 21 July 2017 17:56 BST
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Airports may face a crackdown on selling booze to avoid passengers getting as drunk as Kristen Wiig in Bridesmaids
Airports may face a crackdown on selling booze to avoid passengers getting as drunk as Kristen Wiig in Bridesmaids (Universal Pictures)

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We’ve all been on a flight with a nightmare passenger – the child who kicks the back of your seat the entire journey, the drunken man who tries to chat you up while spilling whisky down your thigh – but not all idiots are created equal. These are the very worst people to get stuck on a flight with.

The passenger who took off his jeans

In December 2016, a man took off his trousers on a flight and sat in his boxers the whole way. The entire incident was recounted on Twitter by actor, writer and stand-up comic Kumail Nanjiani a few days afterwards. “I was on a plane a couple of days ago,” he wrote. “A guy took off his jeans and lounged around in his boxers with his feet up on the wall.”

Nanjiani posted a picture of the man’s bare legs.

“After four hours, a flight attendant finally said ‘Could you please put your feet down? People are walking through here.’ 40 second stare down.

“Five mins go by and he thrusts one foot back up like a fist raised against an unjust sky.

“This guy was rude to the staff the entire time. If he didn't get the flight attendant's attention, he would slam his fist on the armrest.

“Right before landing, he stands in the aisle, in defiance of decency and lighted seatbelt signs. He puts on his jeans.

“He walks off the plane. No police is waiting for him. No justice. He adjusts his belt, and the monster blends into a crowd.

“Best part: The movie he chose to watch through his hairy thigh ‘V’? Florence Foster Jenkins. About a woman who can't READ THE ROOM. The End.”

The passenger who put their bare feet on the armrests

Feet aren’t the most attractive part of a human’s anatomy, but Jessie Char had to put up with a stranger’s in her personal space on a flight. She’d been excited to see the seating arrangements at first – Char had lucked out and been given a row to herself.

“My two favourite people to sit with on a plane,” she tweeted to her 12,000 followers. However, the jubilation she felt was short-lived.

“You guys will never guess what happened next,” she said. “Today, I flew on the set of a nightmare.” The tweet was accompanied by a photo of a passenger’s bare feet resting on the armrests of the spare seats.

“You guys will never guess what happened after that,” added Char.

“The left foot reached over and opened a window.”

The passengers who had sex

A Ryanair flight to Ibiza is never going to be a particularly pleasurable experience – however, one journey was made significantly worse by a couple who used it as an opportunity to, ahem, canoodle.

Passengers were horrified to see two people appearing to have sex in their seat on the flight from Manchester on 8 June.

The mile high club just got two new members
The mile high club just got two new members (SWNS)

Video captured a woman straddling a man in the window seat as other passengers looked on in disbelief. At one point the man asked people around him for a condom.

It later emerged that the pair were not a couple, and that the man in question was off on his stag do – leaving a pregnant fiancée at home.

A friend of the male passenger told The Sun: “That’s just a random woman he’s with, they didn’t know each other before the day.

“He doesn’t seem to be too bothered he has left his six-months pregnant wife-to-be at home while he cavorts with random strangers.”

The passenger who clipped their toenails

The picture says it all, really.

The passenger who did a lot of drunken shouting

There are plenty of these, but the most recent incident to come to light took place on a Virgin Atlantic flight. Video of a disruptive passenger on a flight to Jamaica was uploaded online, including his forced removal from the plane after an emergency landing in Bermuda.

The passenger allegedly started yelling when he was refused more to drink
The passenger allegedly started yelling when he was refused more to drink (YouTube/Ola Lily)

The incident occurred on 16 May – the passenger allegedly lost it and started shouting at cabin crew after they refused to serve him any more alcohol. A female passenger got involved too, shouting at the man repeatedly, “Are you mad?”

What larks!

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