As of 2006, it seemed your fellow passengers on flights were quite polite. After all, a whole 62 percent only reclined their seats halfway out of consideration for the person behind them. But maybe 2007 was a bit nastier? (for instance, we learned that Delta started playing in-flight etiquette films)
At least for me, last year wasn’t a good year. On a flight to Beijing, one old guy actually made my girlfriend cry when he admonished her for mistakenly reading a magazine in the seat-back pocket in front of us (it turned out to be his magazine). He just had to quip, “if you’ve flown more, you would know better.”
That same snideness reared its ugly head a couple weeks ago when I was in Peru. Some guy (again, old) blew a fuse when he saw the size of my backpack, which was one of those standard 60-liter backpacking bag. And guess what he said? “If you’ve flown more, you would know better.” (He said I should’ve checked in my bag because it took too much overhead bin space)
Were both cases because we were college students? Or are these two guys just really lonely and have nothing better to do than criticize everyone around them? By the way, the first guy on the flight to Beijing had to put up with my glares for the next 14 hours.