Plane etiquette was this week’s subject on Afternoons on ABC702.

Plane etiquette is a particularly current topic with so many people preparing to travel after such a long COVID lockdown.

The main subjects discussed were overhead lockers, taking shoes and socks off during the flight, who has the right to the arm rests, ordering a special meal even though you don’t really need it just so that your meal is served before all the regular meals and the use of face masks.

Several people rang in with their experiences of plane etiquette.  

One man said that he saw an economy class passenger put his bag in the business class overhead locker. He took it out and put it about 5 seats away so that when the man went to retrieve his bag as he was disembarking he would have trouble finding it.

Another man rang in to say when he was travelling with his wife and two children to Europe, another family had a lot of carry-on luggage and used the locker above where he and his family were sitting so he took their luggage out of the locker, put it in the aisle and put his family’s bags in.

While I don’t like aggression at any time, especially on an aeroplane, I thought both of these incidents were funny.  

The issue of wearing a mask on a flight or in a terminal building is a moving one.  At the moment it is not necessary to wear a mask on an outward flight if the country the plane is going to has a no mask policy on its flights.  However, on the inbound flight to Australia it is necessary to wear a mask. It is now not necessary to wear a mask in the terminal buildings.

There is so much aeroplane etiquette to discuss, that I am sure this won’t be the last time Afternoons on ABC702 asks me to talk about it.