Airplane Deplaning Etiquette Quandary: To Stay Seated, Or Not To Stay Seated

There are a lot of hotly contested airplane etiquette topics out there, ranging from who controls the window shades, to whether reclining your seat is a right or privilege, to when it’s appropriate to swap seats with others, to standing up as soon as the plane arrives at the gate. I have strong opinions on most of these topics, though here’s one where I never know what to do.

This is minor in the grand scheme of things, but I’m still curious how others handle this situation.

“Please stay seated to allow those with connections…”

Have you ever been on a flight that’s running behind schedule, and either shortly before landing or just after landing, the flight attendant announces something along the lines of:

“I’m going to ask you for a favor. We have some passengers making tight connections, and we would really appreciate if you could stay seated after the seatbelt sign goes off to allow these people to deplane first. We know you’d appreciate that same courtesy if you were in their shoes.”

Sometimes they’ll ask the passengers making tight connections to ring their call buttons so they can be identified, sometimes they’ll give a specific time range for what they consider to be a tight connection, and sometimes they’ll just let people decide for themselves what constitutes a short connection.

On the surface this is a nice and logical gesture. If me sitting on the plane for a little extra time means someone will make it home to see their family, or make it on a well deserved vacation, I’m all for it. But I’m becoming jaded when it comes to this, and I’m curious how others feel.

The problem is that most people don’t actually listen

The biggest problem with these announcements is that almost no one listens. So in those situations where I stay seated, I find that I’m basically the last person off the plane.

I had a flight once where we were over 40 minutes late, and one flight attendant recommended to the other flight attendant that they make such an announcement. Her response was “I’ve been doing it for 20 years, and I’ve never seen anyone listen,” yet she still made the announcement.

The fact that virtually no one listens is only one of the things that has made me jaded about this over the years. The other problems include that:

• People can’t be trusted to self-identify — often the people thinking their connections are really short actually don’t have short connections at all (they just don’t travel often, misread the boarding time as the departure time, etc.), or they already missed their connections, so have no chance of getting on that flight
• People book stupid connections, and airlines are at fault for creating a system that encourages this — airlines rely so heavily on banked hubs and unrealistic minimum connection times; people probably shouldn’t have booked a 45-minute connection in Dallas to begin with, but it’s not really their fault when the airline displays those convenient-looking options so prominently
• There’s also a herd mentality element to this, so once some people stop listening, everyone seems to stop listening

So, how do I handle these deplaning requests?

How do I handle these situations? I try to be courteous, which is to say that if the crew specifically identifies a few people, or if some people push forward, I’ll of course let them off first. But I’m done being among the only people who listens.

It makes me feel bad to do that, but I also feel like there’s no point. Personally I think airlines need to do a better job managing these situations, rather than relying on passengers to step in and help. In other words, we’re supposed to do our part to help people make their connections, while gate agents close the door 10 minutes early on those people because those are the metrics they’re rewarded on.

I’m happy to see that airlines like United are increasingly holding connections for late arriving passengers, using a straightforward and transparent system that factors in a variety of considerations.

Bottom line

When flights are running late, it’s common for flight attendants to request that most passengers stay seated, so that those with tight connections can maximize their odds of not misconnecting. While this is well intentioned, the issue is that a vast majority of people don’t listen. So if you do listen, you basically end up being the last person off the plane, even if you’re seated toward the front.

Where do you stand on this — when flight attendants ask people to stay seated, do you listen? Do you appreciate when flight attendants do this?