Flight attendants have a tough job and, with the rise of TikTok, many outside the industry have started to realize just to what extent, as a number of air crew workers have amassed significant online followings describing the worst things passengers attempt to do during flights.
Some shock with their egregiousness (one YouTuber tried to create content by hooking up a portable battery and trying to cook boiled shrimp and grits in the plane’s lavatory) while others get people thinking because they might have done it themselves without realizing it at some point.
Related: 'Airline considers it stealing': Flight attendant describes sneaky things travelers do
This week, Delta Air Lines (DAL) flight attendant Destanie Armstrong posted a video in which she described how she struggled to herd in passengers who were moving seats before the plane had finished boarding.
@destanieaaa Meanwhile we’re not being paid for any of this lol
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‘She points to this empty row of seats and says they want to sit there’
“So we are waiting on tight connections before we shut the airplane door,” Armstrong says in a TikTok account in which she shares stories from the job. “And this woman asks if the flight is going to be full. I say ‘yeah, for the most part’ ... and she points to this empty row of seats [and says they] want to move there.”
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Armstrong described how, even after she told the passenger that she could not have those seats because they were taken, the passenger told her daughter to sit there once she turned her back. Some of the travelers followed their lead and started moving around the cabin and “getting comfortable in seats that weren’t theirs” while passengers who booked the seats were coming in from a late connection and blocking the aisle trying to ask why someone was sitting in the seat they paid for.
‘You can’t just sit wherever you want…’
“I’m like ‘guys, please go sit in your own seats until boarding is finished,” she described further. “This isn’t Southwest. You can’t just sit wherever you want. You sit in your assigned seat and then after if you want to move, ask the flight attendant.”
Armstrong is referring to Southwest’s policy of boarding the plane in groups depending on one’s traveler class but, once one is in, being able to choose from any available seat. This type of seating policy is also common on certain low-cost airlines in Europe that fly short distances between cities but is not at all the case with mainstream carriers such as Delta.
Armstrong further explained that passengers who assume otherwise (or disregard their rules even after being informed that they need to sit in the seat on their ticket) make her job significantly more difficult as she has to argue with passengers who will give her dirty looks, make exasperated sighs or sometimes even get aggressive.
“Why do people make this job so hard?” Armstrong asked. The video was viewed over a million times and received more than 33,000 upvotes — some of the commenters admitted that they sometimes moved seats without checking and said they would avoid doing this again in the future to not unintentionally make air crew’s day worse.
