One of the most frustrating parts of air travel is that moment when the aircraft rolls to a stop at the terminal, and despite the order of the flight crew to remain seated until the row is called in order to facilitate an orderly deplaning process, everyone practically races to unbuckle their seat belts and shoot up from their seats, regardless of how far they are from the door.
They must know they can’t get out until the rows in front of them go first. After all, everyone is inside a hollow metal tube with very limited exits, and if it’s a domestic flight parked beside a jetway, there is usually just one exit at the front. And yet they all stand up to crowd the aisle, as if their seats are on fire, only to end up waiting for the rows ahead of them to file out of the aircraft.
When there is only one exit at the front, and everyone has to exit the space, those with any common sense and common decency should know that letting the rows ahead of you go ahead first is the only proper way to do it. Crowding unnecessarily is rude, inefficient, and unsafe, especially when other people are removing heavy items from the overhead bins.
Some airlines just give general instructions, telling passengers to “deplane in an orderly manner,” which never works because a lot of people have no idea what exactly “orderly” means. Others have flight crews that try to impose some discipline, instructing the passengers that exit will be facilitated by the rows being called. In some cases, I’ve seen them even actually try to enforce those instructions, which is pretty impressive given how hard headed a lot of passengers are.
As far as I can remember, I have only been on one flight where the passengers obeyed the instructions to remain seated until their row is called up. I remember that because I was very impressed with the quality of the passengers. It was like winning a small lottery. In another case, I remember the flight attendant scolding the first passenger to stand up and open the overhead bin, a youngish man in shorts. Because of that public reprimand, no one else stood up out of turn. That was also memorable because of the quality of the flight attendant. The rest of the time, deplaning is usually pure and unnecessary chaos.
If you come to think of it, people who must get out of the aircraft as quickly as possible should be willing to pay extra for business class seats or preferred seats located as near the door as possible. Standing up too early, just to crowd the aisle when there is physically no way of getting ahead of everyone else seated in the rows in front of yours, is rude, counterproductive, and dumb.
No wonder the Turkish government has decided that passengers can be fined if they “stand up, go to the corridor, open the overhead bins, and proceed along the aisles… despite announcements about the rules during taxi after landing, when the aircraft has not yet reached the parking position and the seatbelt warning lights have not turned off.” While there is a bit of jealousy in knowing that their flight attendants have been given teeth in that part of the world, it is actually a bit of a relief to know that it is not an entirely Filipino problem. I’m sure other nations have it worse, but that doesn’t mean that we can be as uncouth as them, right?
People’s inability to form a simple queue has long been documented almost anywhere. Even in church, the impatient among the faithful have this annoyingly hypocritical tendency to form their own lines for communion. What makes this doubly frustrating is the ministers who tolerate and therefore condone it, when all they have to do is deny dispensing the body of Christ to those who make their own queues, thereby easily forcing them to the back of the proper ones. It’s such a simple response…they don’t even have to lose their temper to make a point, the way Jesus did at the Temple when it was being turned into a marketplace.
Anyway, back to the topic. One would think that in a hollow metal tube with only a couple of exits at each end, people would be more considerate and organized. Unfortunately, our experience has proven that even then, even when we possess the technology of flight and the convenience of air travel, deep inside, we are still no more than animals (or is it sweet potatoes?) that are essentially incapable of waiting even just a little bit.
Hopefully, humans are not yet done evolving.*
