a cell phone on a table

My seatmate on my United Airlines Los Angeles to London flight was busily engaged in a rather loud in-flight FaceTime conversation, leaving me wondering why people are so clueless about respecting others on an airplane.

Woman Yammers On FaceTime From LA To London On United Airlines (Sigh)

I’ve completed the first impression posts of my Asia trip and now will revert to the Ethiopia trip report. Looking back, I neglected to mention this little side story in my United Airlines 787-10 review from LAX-LHR.

It’s pretty simple, really: the woman across the aisle from me decided to have a conversation with her friend seated in another part of the cabin. But instead of standing up and walking to her, she called her on her iPhone and they engaged in an extended gab.

a room with a tv and a table

I mean, it could have been worse…at least it wasn’t in economy class. But it’s not like United’s Polaris Suites are soundproof…everyone could hear the conversation and the laughing.

Lately I’ve been more likely to speak out directly…I could have ducked my head in and joined the conversation in a way that hopefully would have shut it down. But I don’t think that was appropriate here. It was a younger woman, and I didn’t want to be accused of violating her personal space or getting uncomfortably close to her (sorry Scott Galloway).

As a general rule, I don’t think it is wise to confront people on your flight, period. The conversation did not go on the entire flight, but it still went on far too long, and it should have been a flight attendant who noticed it and told her to disconnect. Not to bag on flight attendants (especially the nice ones on this flight), but the passenger was yammering away. Could they really not hear that?

I’ve argued before (even on NPR) that cell phones would not be the end of the world on airplanes. After all, many carriers allow cellular phone calls onboard, and we are not hearing about brawls stemming from those calls. But I think there’s a difference between phone calls (in which you only hear one side of the call) and speakerphone or FaceTime calls where you hear both sides of the conversation.

I do understand why many fear that Americans would not be able to handle onboard calling and we might see fights and disruptions far worse than we saw from mask violators during the pandemic.

I don’t know. I just wish that flight attendants would put a stop to this sort of behavior the moment it starts. It should not be up to passengers to scold fellow passengers about their breaking the rules, especially when such rules are made very clear during the in-flight announcements by flight attendants.

Should I have handled this differently?