The one thing you should never do on a plane according to a flight attendant

If you usually do this on a flight, you might want to re-think it

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(Image credit: Getty Images)

Traveling can bring out different behaviors from person to person - but now flight attendants reveal the things you do on flights that get on their nerves.

While there are certainly a lot of extreme cases of airplane passengers doing some disturbing things (sometimes extreme enough to get themselves kicked off the plane), there are smaller actions that passengers take on a more regular basis that some flight attendants have recently revealed are quite annoying to them. Whether you're flying to one of the best places to travel in 2023, or even just visiting a neighboring state, you could be doing one of these annoying things and you may not even realize it.

“Flight attendants, what’s your biggest pet peeve on the airplane?” a recent tweet from the account Two Guys on a Plane read.

Their tweet garnered responses from other flight attendants who wanted to share their own pet peeves. 

Airplane against pink sky taking people to travel

(Image credit: Getty Images)

One pet peeve that was unanimously agreed upon in the response stowing your backpack in the overhead bins.

You might wonder if this is really a big deal - the overhead bins are supposed to be for storage, right? Plus, let's be honest, there are already enough factors of flying that give us airport anxiety - maybe you can't be bothered to worry about which bag goes where.

The overhead bins are actually meant solely for carry-on luggage and large bags, and backpacks or smaller personal items are meant to go under the seat in front of you so that all passengers have available room for a carry-on bag.

"Putting backpacks in overhead bins when we specifically tell people it's a shared space and intended for the big suitcases and to put them under the seat in front of them,” the reply specifically reads. So, if you packed for vacation and prepared to put both bags in the overhead bin, you might want to think again.

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There were a plethora of other flight attendants who chimed in with their biggest flight pet peeves and second up is when passengers wear noise-cancelling headphones when the flight attendant is trying to talk to them.

"We’ll start: passengers wearing noise-cancelling headphones and yelling “what” when you try to speak to them," they said.

Another flight attendant said they find it frustrating when passengers wait until the beverage and meal service to decide to use the bathroom. 

"Passengers waiting until you start the beverage and meal service on long haul flights to go to the lavatory. Those carts weigh 300 to 400 pounds fully loaded for us to maneuver them back and forth to let you in and out. We have 30 min. to prepare at level off," the user replied.

Another common reply was that they dislike it when customers leave trash and food (or... worse) in the seats for the flight attendants to clean up. "When parents let their kids throw food and trash all over the seat and isles or change their child’s diaper on the damn plane seat with no towel underneath… Yes, I’ve witnessed this," one user replied. 

With the help of this resourceful Twitter thread, now everyone can make sure they're a star passenger.

Madeline Merinuk
US Lifestyle News Writer

Madeline Merinuk is woman&home's US lifestyle news writer, covering celebrity, entertainment, fashion, and beauty news.


She graduated in 2021 with a B.A. in Journalism from Hofstra University, winning multiple student journalism awards, including a National Hearst Award, during her time there. After graduating, she worked at today.com, the digital site for the Today Show, where she wrote pop culture news and interviewed big-name personalities like Emily Ratajkowski, Haley Lu Richardson, Emma Corrin, and more.


Her personal interests, in no particular order, are: cheese, Joni Mitchell, reading, hot yoga, traveling, having multiple chapsticks in every handbag at all times, and dancing to ABBA songs as if she were in the Mamma Mia movies.