The phrase "what does this button do?" is rarely something that one wants to hear while on a plane — years of comedy and cartoon movie tropes have caused many to associate it with the famous last words uttered before things truly go haywire.
But over in the real world, a flight attendant on the Belgium-based TUI Airlines TUIFY went viral for an innocent travel hack revolving around a "hidden button" found at one's plane seat.
Related: Plus-Size Traveler's 'Hack' For Getting Two Plane Seats Is Going Viral
"Are you sitting on the aisle seat wondering why your armrest doesn’t go up?" flight attendant and travel influencer Charlie Silver asks her 115,000 followers in a TikTok video that gained nearly 1.5 million views in a week. She then points toward a button underneath the armrest that, when pushed, lifts the entire armrest up to give the passenger more room to spread out or get in and out of the seat.
@silvercharlie This video is for people who didnt know that the aisle seat armrest moves too, its like this on most aircraft types 😇✈️ #airplanehacks #travel #aviation #cabincrew #flightattendant #flyingtip #fyp #aisleseat
♬ original sound - Charlie Silver
'This video is for the people who didn't know'
"This video is for people who didn't know that the aisle seat armrest moves too," Silver wrote in the description to the video. "It's like this on most aircraft types."
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The video then pans out to another flight attendant who demonstrates the same button on a different seat.
"Well, here you go," Silver says in the video. "Here's a little hack for you. Press this little hidden button, and voila! Your armrest will move freely up and down."
While the entire video is only 13 seconds long, it quickly garnered attention online from travelers shocked to discover that they have flown hundreds of times and never noticed this button.
"I want her as my flight attendant," wrote one of the commenters. When another said that the many planes he has flown on did not have such a button, Silver said that Boeing BA's 737, 787 and 767 models all have one while Airbus EADSF's 321, 330 and 350 models also do.
Here is why these travel hacks keep going so viral
Tui Airlines generally flies on Boeing 737-700, 737 Max, 767-300 and 787-8 Dreamliner models on top of also using the occasional Embraer E-Jet E190.
"Thank you sooo much," wrote the founder of the Two Broke Student TikTok account. "I was on a TUI flight fighting with the arm rest." In total, Silver's video was upvoted nearly 16,500 times.
Over the last few months, there have been multiple instances of flight attendants sharing hacks than then go social media viral. Some are more controversial (and less likely to work) than others. Last September, scandal-ridden former flight attendant Cierra Huffman suggested giving one of the flight attendants on one's flight a gift card to sway them into offering you an upgrade — a suggestion that, as some of Huffman's 3.5 million-plus followers pointed out, crosses into the territory of a bribe.
A year ago, Huffman was temporarily banned from TikTok after hundreds of flight attendants complained about some of her more questionable "travel hacks" and unprofessional suggestions — in particular, a viral video about how to join the "mile high club" and it being okay for crew to hang out with flight passengers outside of work hours only "if they're hot."
