Travel Horror Stories - Noisy Passengers, Babies, Loud Talkers and Chatty Grandmas

In this edition of our ongoing Travel Horror Story Series, we focus on noise. It’s all about the noise today! On airplanes it’s already very loud. The din of the engines themselves is a bit too loud for me (hence why I invested in good noise canceling headphones).

But noise comes at from all over the place! Here are travel few horror stories about noise!

You might be interested in The 7 Most Annoying Airline Passengers (A Travel Rant)

The Screaming Toddler

This first horror story involves my kid! During a family vacation to Hawaii many years ago my 2 year old son had his first experience with air travel. And it did not suit him. Not one bit.

We were THAT family.

During our five hour flight he fussed and screamed and pretty much lost his ever loving mind for about 3 of those hours. An exploding diaper doubled the fun.

Nothing worked and despite our best efforts it just wasn’t happening. In addition to the trauma of your kid feeling generally horrible on the flight, the shame of causing so much disruption was pretty severe. Most people were reasonable about it and sympathetic.

Some, not so much.

I have tremendous sympathy for families traveling with younger kids who have trouble articulating what’s bugging them on the flight. I don’t let a baby or toddler’s discomfort bother me. In about 99% of the cases the parents feel horrible about it and are doing their level best to just simply get through the flight.

So while it’s a travel horror story for us passengers, it’s a far worse horror story for the parent. So, suck it up, and cut ’em some slack. Nothing lasts forever, and this flight won’t either.

The Lady (or guy) who won’t shut up

I am all for being friendly. In fact, I encourage folks to be a little more friendlier when they travel as it helps fight some of the travel loneliness that can often creep up with sustained, recurring business travel.

However, some people can’t take the social cues I am throwing down when I simply want to watch my movie or do email.

I had one lady, a grandmother, who wouldn’t leave me alone. Now before you crucify me about how I could be mean to some old granny. She was technically a granny…but she was pretty young still. She told me all about it!

After the basic pleasantries and maybe a little more it became apparent she wanted to “talk” – the whole flight. I simply didn’t have the energy for that. Finally I just donned my headphones and ignored her.

Not to be deterred, she switched her attention to the fella in the window seat and began an uproariously loud conversation that involved a lot of physical gyrations as she laughed (physically) and managed to bump my arms and knees repeatedly.

Ugh!

The poor fella in the window was less successful in extracting himself from the conversation and she consumed his flight regaling him with stories about her life (which I could hear THROUGH my cell phones. See the loud talker, below, for more on loud talkers.

As with all horror stories, the flight ended and life went on, but man, I was feeling pretty grumpy for a while!

The Loud Talker

We’ve all been there. It’s night. You are tired, exhausted. And trying to sleep.

But apparently “Bill” in seat 13C feels the need to share every bloody detail about the deal he just closed or how he feels about the current administration with everyone in a 14 row radius.

Come on man! Shut the heck up, already!

This has happened to me too many times to name a specific incident, but it’s always so irritating. Keeping your voice at a reasonable level is basic travel etiquette!

Speaking of travel etiquette, you might be interested in our article Airplane Etiquette: The Unwritten Rules for Traveling on a Plane

The Millenial playing Mario Kart on his phone with no headphones!

focus photo of super mario luigi and yoshi figurines

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Some people have no chill. I was sitting a row across from a young adult the other day and he was either forgot his headphones or simply didn’t care. He was beeping and booping for the entire 3 hour flight.

At max volume level!

Finally, a flight attendant suggested he turn his volume down (which he did), although he was shocked (and almost offended) at the request.

Where have our manners gone these days?

I’ve had kids do this before too (you know, like 7 year olds who’s parents ought to know better). Again….come on!

When those dang announcements keeping coming on an interrupting you

“We have now reached 10,000 ft and you can use your approved electronics”

“We have now reached our cruising altitude”

“You are now free to move about the cabin” (I know…you turned the seatbelt sign off!!!!!)

“We would like to extend a warm welcome to our platinum, gold, silver, tin, copper, turquoise, and rusted steel members…”

“On this flight we are featuring the following snack items.”

“We’d like to offer you this special credit card”

OMG

Please…stop. We’ve been traveling for 45 minutes and yet I am only 12 minutes into my in flight movie!

No explanation needed for this one…you know what I am talking about. And the volume difference between my movie and the announcement system is like 4 trillion decibels. Yup…reading you loud and clear about that credit card!

Thanks for tuning in to another episode of our in our Travel Horror Stories

Read them all here, including One Night in a Mexican Jail and Southwest Airplane Malfunctions on Takeoff and we fly from MDW to ORD.

What’s your worst travel horror story? We want to know. Share it in a comment below or tweet us @CBoardingGroup.

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2 comments

Lars S. April 6, 2019 - 9:52 am

Overnight return flight from Kona Hawaii to Denver and I sprung for lay flat seats for my family of three. Only person who was able to sleep was our son since the couple in the first row kept their reading lights on the whole flight and talked loudly the entire time oh and got up to get stuff out of the overhead bin at least ten times. They were drunk and oblivious to the rest of us trying to shove our ear plugs further into our ears.

My other pet peeve is the announcements especially when flying internationally and they have to say them in two or three languages. Arghhh.

The C Boarding Group April 6, 2019 - 9:53 am

Brutal!! And yes 100% agree on the multi language announcements. Drone on forever

Travel Horror Stories – Noisy Passengers, Babies, Loud Talkers and Chatty Grandmas