Flight Attendants Share The 24 Things They Wish Passengers Would Stop Doing

Ordering Diet Coke might not be as terrible as they say but this one is controversial. After we learned that ordering a Diet Coke on your flight is one of the worst things you can do to your flight attendant, we wondered if it really bothers flight attendants quite that much or if this is a bit of hyperbole.

As Heather Poole, a flight attendant wrote on her blog and was quoted in an article saying, “Of all the drinks we serve, Diet Coke takes the most time to pour — the fizz takes forever to settle at 35,000 feet. In the time it takes me to pour a single cup of Diet Coke, I can serve three passengers a different beverage.”

But as the headline of Poole’s article suggests — “Do flight attendants REALLY hate serving Diet Coke? (How the misconception began)” — while it may be annoying to wait a little longer to pour someone’s drink, flight attendants don’t expect you to stop ordering Diet Coke. They certainly won’t.

“For the record, I drink Diet Coke both as a flight attendant and as a passenger,” Poole writes.

To get to the bottom of this one, we asked a couple of flight attendants specifically if ordering Diet Coke mid-flight is all that bothersome, and we also got mixed opinions.

One flight attendant we talked to said he’s never even heard of this before — the only time he found a passenger ordering a Diet Coke annoying was when he dropped the can and it shot across the galley, spraying soda all over him. So really, nothing to do with the passenger.

And another flight attendant echoed much of Poole’s sentiments:

“It takes a while to pour because of the fizz. It’s just a few extra seconds, but when you’re in the aisle trying to do a bunch of things it feels a lot longer. It happens with any of the diet sodas, I think. But Diet Coke is all I drink, so I can’t get too annoyed.”

Considering all of the far worse things you could do on a plane that we highlighted, we think you can let yourself off the hook on this one.

Making demands as soon as you board

“Boarding is one of the most stressful parts of the job with all of the required safety checks and federal rules we have to follow. So when people come on board and immediately demand water to take a pill or snacks for a diabetic, it always makes me wonder why that couldn’t have been taken care of in the airport.”

BYOB-ing it

“Some people will go to the local liquor store and bring their mini bottles of booze on the plane. We always know who you are; we always find it. You can’t serve yourself. We need to know how much you’ve had to drink so we’re not overserving you, because the higher you fly and the longer you go, the more the alcohol affects your brain.”

Trying to get freebies

“People sometimes come on the plane and hint for a free drink: ‘The plane was delayed ten minutes, is there a free drink for me for that?’ ‘Drinks are on the captain right?’ I just grin and smile. ‘Smile and wave boys,’ that’s what I say.”

“I’ve seen people watching porn on the plane. One guy had the whole row to himself and you had to be standing up and walking behind him to see that he was watching porn. I was like, ‘Really?’ What do I say to that? There weren’t any little children around, so there wasn’t anything to say. But there was one guy I could see was watching porn on his phone, and because it was nighttime, you could see the reflection on the window. I did point that out to him because I didn’t think everybody needed to see that.”

Clipping your toenails

“I’ve seen people clipping toenails. It’s very gross, and you can’t make them stop. And it’s not an infrequent thing, believe it or not.”

Expecting flight attendants to have all the information from the captain

“We know maybe 5% of what they do. We don’t know how bad the weather is, why we are taking a new route, or why we can’t land early. But believe it’s for your safety!”

Getting upset with flight attendants for things that clearly aren’t their fault

“I agree, it sucks that the flight got canceled and you’ll miss something important. I was supposed to go home and see a concert. Now I’m stuck in this small metal tube with you yelling at me.”

“Getting up and wanting to stretch in our galleys like its a yoga studio or wanting to stand in our galleys is annoying. The galley is our only work area, and we have nowhere else to go because our seats are in the galley by the doors.”