Right Seat: Fly nice

While maybe a better reflection of poor airline service than poor passenger behavior, the saying does give some insight into how we feel about our passengers. Sometimes fun, sometimes a distraction, our flying companions always make the adventure a little more interesting.

Every pilot has funny, sad, and scary passenger stories. I’ve had one lose his lunch (of orange airport vending machine crackers, no less), a few talk so much I couldn’t concentrate, and at least one little guy get such joy out of the headset that he randomly screamed into it just to hear what it sounded like.

We talk around the office often about our favorite and least favorite passengers. The anecdotes seem to confirm that our favorite passengers don’t talk much, don’t touch much, and don’t expect much from us.

Anecdotes seem to confirm that our favorite passengers don’t talk much, don’t touch much, and don’t expect much from us.What’s especially telling is when the nonpilot passengers relate their stories of these same flights. “He told me to shut up and not to worry,” and “That guy almost killed me” are surprisingly frequent explanations.

Clearly we have a problem here. Are pilots really so tone deaf as to not notice the state of their passengers, do they not care, or are passengers completely ignorant of what’s really going on? The truth is undoubtedly somewhere in the middle, but if the passengers leave with even a nagging feeling that we weren’t up to snuff or that the flight was less than stellar, we’ve failed as pilots in command.

The regulations say we have a duty to carry out a safe flight. That’s a minimum. We should also strive to make the flight enjoyable, and never make our passengers doubt the outcome. Clearly some are afraid to fly, and nothing we do will help—but that shouldn’t stop us from trying.

One great way to put everyone at ease is by explaining, in the most basic language possible, what’s going to happen before it happens. Steven Mark Sachs explores several different scenarios in “Be Quiet!” beginning on page 36. Among them are ways to deal with wind, weight, and maneuvering. His story will get you thinking about the ways you can make your own passengers feel more comfortable.

Sachs’ words resonated with me because I feel a need to repent for many passenger-related transgressions from when I first started flying. I’m a different pilot today, thanks mostly to lessons learned the hard way. I’ve learned to announce my turns before they happen when flying with my airsickness-prone wife, for example.

And I’ve learned the Isolate button on the intercom does wonders with my son’s propensity to scream into the mic.

Email Editor Ian J. Twombly at [email protected]; Twitter: ijtwombly; and visit Flight Training on Facebook.