The study was commissioned by Expedia and conducted by GfK, an independent global market research company.
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People who repeatedly bump the back of your seat rate as the most aggravating co-flyers, garnering 61% of worst-in-air-behavior votes from the 1,019 United States interviewees.
Inattentive parents rank a close second, with 59% of respondents registering their aggravation with moms and dads who let their kids run wild.
The “Audio Insensitive”, who either talks loudly or whose music or entertainment is clearly audible to neighbors, annoys 50% of Americans.
“Inside a packed plane at 30,000 feet, both good behavior and bad behavior are amplified”, Expedia.com’s vice president and general manager, John Morrey, said in the release.
What are a few of the other most annoying airline passengers that fellow travelers detest coping with?
The controversial issue of seat reclining also came up, with 32 per cent of respondents saying they would either prefer to have reclining seats banned entirely, or restricted to set times during short-haul flights. 53% of American fliers find themselves annoyed by parents traveling with loud children, and a full third (37%) of Americans would actually pay extra to be seated in a designated “quiet zone” if the airline offered one. Yet only 31% of Americans refuse to recline their own seats.
Even with all of the bothersome behavior, 75 percent of those surveyed said they found that most of their fellow passengers were considerate, 50 percent think air travel is fun and exciting, and 41 percent have helped a stranger with luggage.
And 13 per cent admitted they recline immediately after takeoff.
Single and ready to mingle, 13%.
There is also disdain for those who don’t stow their bags in their assigned spots, who consume nauseatingly smelly food, who engage in overly public displays of affection, who take off their shoes or socks or who frequently go to the bathroom despite having a window seat.
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Around half said they would sit quietly and attempt to ignore them, while 10 per cent would surreptitiously record them using their phones – and three per cent would share the evidence on social media. Specifically, the goal was to rank the most vexing behaviors encountered by US respondents, when traveling by plane.
