Sitting Next to the Passenger from Hell

by Srinivas Rao
on July 8th, 2010
10 Comments

As a red blooded straight male, over the course of my many travels, I’ve always fantasized about sitting next to an attractive female who during the course of the flight would fall completely in love with me and perhaps give me an opportunity to join the mile high club. Yet, in all of the years I’ve been on planes this has never actually happened. For the most part, I get seated next to fairly normal people, and we don’t have much to say to each other. However there is one flight that I will never forget.

It was about a year after I had finished college and I was flying from Oakland to Ontario, CA to visit my parents. As luck would have it, I was seated next to a lady who was completely out of her mind.

3 Things That Made Her The Passenger from Hell

Unusual Conversations: Right when I sat down next to this lady she started to grill me on whether my parents had arranged a girl for me to marry because I was Indian. Personally I thought it was a strange way to start a conversation and it was only after I decide to engage in the conversation that I realized I had made a mistake of gargantuan proportion. Even after I tried pretending to go to sleep she seemed to have plenty to say. But her chatter was the tip of the iceberg.

She Drank 3 Beers in a 45 minute flight: I’m all for enjoying a drink while you are in flight, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody throw back three drinks on such a short flight. As it is, there was something clearly off about this woman, and now she was going to add getting drunk to the mix. All I could think was “of all the seats I could have picked, I picked this one.”

She Was Stoned: By the time the flight landed, the flight attendants were more than happy to get this crazy lady off the plane. I was one of the last passengers to exit and the flight attendant says to me with a thank god she’ gone face “apparently she was stoned.”

These days I’ve learned to appreciate a normal flight. After all at least I’m not getting seated next to somebody who’s drunk, stoned and out of her mind.

Srinivas Rao

Srinivas is an avid surfer and personal development blogger at The Skool of Life. He's also the host and co-founder of BlogcastFM, a podcast for bloggers.

10 Comments

1 year ago
Unexpected Traveller
I’ve had strange and unusual passengers sit next to me – the weirdest one being this one: http://wp.me/spqxP-patience

1 year ago
Rhonda
Try eleven hours with a horrible flu, sandwiched between an Indian guy that smelled of curry and body odor, (no offense) to my right, and an extremely chatty English guy trying to chat up a woman he was sitting next to on my left. I had seen this guy in line with his girlfriend saying his sweet goodbyes to her, and here he was chattering nonstop flirting with this woman. Behind me were two older English women who seemed to have an observation about nearly everything. And this went on for HOURS. Meanwhile, waves of fatigue, fever, chills, and nausea washed over me. All I wanted was to sleep, and we all know how difficult that can be as it is on a plane. I wanted to punch out the English guy and the biddies behind me.

I’m not exaggerating when I say this was the most miserable I’ve ever been in my life physically, even after surgeries. At least then I was able to drift off into a sweet Vicodin coma to forget the physical pain. I’m just saying…

1 year ago
jeff
I know I must be getting old or something because, before a flight, I used to hope to be sitting next to a hot girl; now I just hope for someone who doesn’t talk.

1 year ago
Srinivas Rao
@Rhonda: That sounds like a truly hellish flight experience. I’m amazed you didn’t actually lose it. I don’t know if I would have had the patience you do

@Jeff: Yeah, I’m kind of getting there, but there is still a part of me that would like to be sitting next to an attractive girl

1 year ago
Sara
Wow, the real question here is, what kind of crew would serve her three beers on a forty five minute flight? Yikes;-)

1 year ago
Srinivas Rao
@Sarah: That’s a good question . If you work for Southwest maybe you can tell us.

1 year ago
Rhonda
Actually, I was able to get a whole row of seats later in the flight thankfully. As soon as the opportunity arose, I POUNCED on that row after they said we could move up into the middle of the plane. Otherwise, I might have done something drastic, lol.

1 year ago
Bobby Laurie
Whoa! Sounds like the lady who decided to confess her life story to me headed to New York 2 weeks ago. She talked about her kids, her divorce, her travels.. all, at 5:30am. All I wanted to do was sleep! I agree with Sara though, as a FA I wouldn’t have served her 3 beers in 45 minutes.

1 year ago
Michelle
Hi Siri,

Excellent Post! I was lucky enough to have one of the best flights last October from Dubai to Mumbai. Never really thought of the romanticism of flying am not the hard core romantic, just wanted to go home for 3 days.

The guy sitting next to me was fun to talk to we really enjoyed the flight, laughing and joking about everything. Never knew how the delayed flight took 4 hrs. nor missed the movies on board. Of course we did have the glances from the crew and other passengers, but as long as we were having fun never really cared.

I wouldn’t call this romantic but it’s always nice to have good company on those cramped flights, rather than having guys brag about themselves at which point I just ignore and snore!!
Bye
Michelle

1 year ago
Srinivas Rao
Michelle,

Sounds like you had quite a pleasant flight experience. I’ve never had quite a pleasant experiences as yours, but for the most part they’ve all been pretty mellow and the people I’ve sat next to have been quite normal.

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