On a flight a gentleman sat behind me. After being seated he took his sneakers off and wedged one of his feet in-between the seat in front of him (which was mine), and under my arm rest. The smell was enough to make me puke. I turned around and asked him to remove his foot, he said no, that he paid for his seat and needed to stretch out. I said please again, he said no, live with it. I told him the stink from his foot was making me sick, at which time he shoved his foot further between the seats causing the arm rest to raise. I told him if you don’t move your foot you would be sorry. He told me to pound sand. At that time I smashed the arm rest down on his foot. He screamed bloody murder, which caused the flight attendant to come back and ask what was wrong. He start spouting off it was my fault, then I gave my side of the story and the lady next to me said the same thing. The flight attendant told the man to remove his foot and put his shoes back on, or he would be escorted off the airplane. He was pissed. As he left the airplane the gave me and the lady a dirty stare.
Tagged as:
flight attendant,
odor,
seats,
violence
A few years ago, flying from AVL (Asheville, N.C.) to BOS, my cousin and I were waiting to get on the puddle-jump from AVL-CLT stand-by. When a party of seven didn’t show for the flight, we were ushered on to the plane and told to “take the first seats we could find” as we would leave immediately.
My folks were sitting further back in the plane, but we found two seats in the second row and sat down. In AVL the planes don’t even pull in to Jetways, they sort of parallel park, so as soon as we clicked out seatbelts the jet rolled towards the taxiway. All of the sudden it became very apparent why these two seats weren’t taken. In front of us was a bloke with huge dreadlocks which probably hadn’t been washed in a year.
My cousin and I started a muffled conversation where every third or fourth word was mimed in order to not offend the offender. Something like, “Do you [sniff sniff] that?” “Oh, god, yes, it’s [holds nose] awful!” We discussed walking back to seats aft, but the flight attendant was standing next to us, giving the safety lecture, so there’d be none of that, thank you.
We hit the runway, and as we spun up the FA sat down. We began to roll–V1, V2–and I looked at my cousin, he nodded and looked at me. We left the ground, and the flight attendant got up and turned around–our cue to sprint up the aisle. We flopped in to seats in row 13 or 14, buckled up, and got to explain to my parents why we were shooting down the plane ten seconds after take off. But at least we could breathe.
Tagged as:
odor,
puddle jumper
It’s sad. Because of unexpected traffic delays, I ran like mad to meet my international flight and made it just as they were about to close the doors. As it turned out, seated next to me on the aisle was a soccer player. When he sat back down after getting up to let me into my seat, I noticed the smell of old sports moldy toe-jam shoes. It wasn’t a little scent, it was very strong and nasty. I was appalled, but I did my best to ignore it the whole flight. Until we were getting close to our destination…
I got up to go to the bathroom. The smell followed me. It was unexplainable, since I was pretty sure the soccer player didn’t touch me with his shoes or feet. I swore it was the soccer player, but in the lavatory I looked down and realized it was my shoes!!! Apparently, the old comfy shoes I liked to wear travelling didn’t handle the dampness of my running to meet the plane very well, and had picked a bad time to start smelling! Never before had these shoes smelled, but now they positively reeked.
I made my way back to my seat, but before I could muster up the nerve to apologize through my embarrassment, we landed and the soccer player got off. No bad looks; no grumbling; he just left the plane and was graceful about the whole thing. I was mortified, but very grateful for his grace.
Now I am especially vigilant about deodorants, perfumes, etc. when I travel – I’ve added shoes onto the list.
Tagged as:
odor
Nothing in the world smells worse than any flight to or from Nigeria. After 4 years of back and forth action between Lagos, Nigeria and London, I began to find my gate not by number but by stench. I understand that different countries have different levels of acceptable hygeine, but… it takes weeks or months of not washing your body or clothing to build a stink like that one.
I do believe the worst job as an air flight attendant would have to be getting assigned that flight on a regular basis. Four years back and forth for me, and every single time that stench.
Tagged as:
odor
