You’d think having to sit shoulder to shoulder 30,000 to 40,000 feet (9,144 meters to 12,192 meters) in the sky and going 575-600 mph (925-965 km/h) would make people more cooperative. After all, it’s not like they can just leave if things get unpleasant. Yet we often find ways to get on each other’s nerves.

A week ago, Reddit user Leather_Ad_5602 submitted a story to the platform’s ‘Petty Revenge’ community about just that. In it, the man explained how he and a fellow passenger got into a silent (but at the same time, very loud) disagreement over the space between them.

This airline passenger felt like his neighbor was wrongfully occupying too much space

Image credits: Skitterphoto (not the actual photo)

So he decided to retaliate

Image credits: Ryutaro Uozumi (not the actual photo)

Image credits: Leather_Ad_5602

Travelers find many ways to annoy each other in the air

We managed to get in touch with the author of the post and the Redditor said he looked for other ways of settling the issue with the passenger before resorting to the soup.

“He was trying to strike up a conversation when he sat down and we were waiting for takeoff, but he was pretty drunk and was repeating himself,” Leather_Ad_5602 told Bored Panda.

“Once we’ve taken off and the seat belt sign switched off, he took off his shoes, lifted the airline seats, and proceeded to lie down. While he was doing this, I asked him what he thought he was doing. He said ‘I’m going to sleep’ and then he put earplugs in and an ightshade over his eyes. I tapped his leg a few times but he ignored me. He knew exactly what I was trying to tell him but he really wanted that ‘bed.'”

The Redditor initially ordered the miso soup to drink himself. “It was when I received it that I thought about pouring it onto him,” he explained.

“I was going to pour warm water, but thought the missile soup would be more uncomfortable. Also, I only poured a couple of tablespoons, not the whole cup. It wasn’t like his trousers were drenched.”

Leather_Ad_5602 said he did it only because he found the other passenger to be really rude and selfish. “If I had my time again, I would do something a lot less invasive, like keep waking him up until he sat up again.”

Skyscanner, a travel search engine company, commissioned a survey to determine which behaviors irked passengers the most when flying, and after 2,000 people responded, seven things stood out from the rest:

• asking another passenger to switch seats with you (31%);
• using both armrests of your seat (31%);
• reclining your seat — and not just during meal service (31%);
• taking your shoes or socks off on a flight (35%);
• talking to other passengers or being a chatty seatmate (39%);
• putting your phone on speaker when you’re on a call (42%);
• clipping your nails on a flight (42%).

The sad part is that major airlines are once again reporting a rise in emotional meltdowns and people otherwise losing it on airplanes. For example, Dutch carrier KLM has seen a 100 percent increase in unruly passenger numbers compared to 2019, the world’s oldest airline reported in December 2023.

At the same time on the other side of the globe, Air New Zealand noticed a “concerning trend” in disorderly and abusive passenger conduct, with nearly 200 reports per month, up from 572 reported incidents for the whole of 2019.

In June, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) reported a global increase in unruly passenger incident reports, from one incident per 835 flights in 2021 to one in 568 flights in 2022.

“While it’s true that only a tiny minority of the 4.3 billion passengers that travel by air each year (pre-COVID-19 pandemic) become unruly, they have a disproportionate impact” on the safety of other passengers and crew, the IATA stated.

One study, ‘Flying the not-so-friendly skies,’ by a University of Texas at Dallas team published in July in the journal Deviant Behavior — a review of more than 915 unruly incidents reported over a 21-year span — found offenses ranged from minor arguments to physical assault. (The authors purposely excluded reports during the early COVID years because most of the increase then was related to mask-wearing, and that would have skewed the data, they said.)

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Physical misconduct included punching, hitting, slapping, grabbing, and pushing, while verbal misbehavior included name-calling, yelling, swearing, and threatening. Flight attendants, most of whom are women, usually bear the brunt.

Other delinquencies were failing to follow crew members’ commands (being seated, turning off personal electronic devices, stowing luggage, keeping pets in their carriers, and not smoking in the lavatory or drinking personal alcohol).

Generally, it’s the booze. In fact, alcohol has long been the leading “precipitating factor” for unruly actions, and, consequently, aircraft diversions, the authors reported, “largely because of its accessibility both within airports and on airplanes.”

But, as it was in this story, the loss of personal space is also a common trigger; cramped cabins, where every inch becomes highly valuable, open the door to potential conflicts even between people who would otherwise have no problem with each other.

So while every situation is different, it’s in everyone’s best interest that we find common ground in the sky.

Image credits: Suhyeon Choi (not the actual photo)

As the story went viral, people began sharing their own similar experiences

Leather_Ad_5602 said he understand the reactions, “but I can assure you I am no sociopath. I think a lot of the negative commentary is from people who haven’t traveled and have not experienced the inconvenience that selfish people impose on fellow passengers.”

“My preference is not to let them get away with it but nowadays, I’m more likely to deal with it less passive-aggressively. I have raised three children who are all really well-balanced, responsible, and conscientious adults, and I spent three years working as a volunteer counselor on a suicide telephone line,” the man explained, highlighting that the post was about a flight from about 20 years ago.

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“In retrospect, I would advise people not to do [something like this],” Leather_Ad_5602 added. “For example, what if that rude passenger was a psychopath who worked out what had happened to him and decided to come after me?”

“The whole ‘Petty Revenge’ subreddit is about having a bit of a laugh, which is why I wrote it,” he said.

But some thought that the author of the post had gone too far

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