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Recliners beat stinkers as top air traveller hates

Dean Alston

Smelly passengers have soared up to be the number two hate of air travellers behind those who recline their seat.

According to the annual AirlineRatings.com survey of air travellers almost 35 percent of the more than 1550 respondents put reclining of the seat as their number one nightmare passenger.

DEAN ALSTON'S CARTOONS OF YOUR NIGHTMARE PASSENGERS

However, with 25.5 per cent naming smelly passengers as the most despised it raises the question, have hygiene standards slipped?

According to Australian Business Traveller’s founder David Flynn “it doesn’t surprise me that 'passenger pong' is a hate of travellers.”

“A lot of people tell me eye-rolling nose-holding tales of whiffy seatmates,” said Mr Flynn.

“After all, you’ve got several hundred people crammed together in this tin can – and it’s especially tight quarters in economy – with plenty of recirculated air.”

Mr Flynn adds that you’ve got passengers who’ve been rushing to the airport or dashing between flights to make a connection, and people who take their shoes and socks off during the flight.

“Stir in some hot humid sticky summer weather, or pretty much any day in an equatorial city like Singapore, and it’s a perfect storm of bad smells.”

This year two passengers made global headlines because of their odour.

In February an Air Canada flight from Charlottetown, on Prince Edward Island, was preparing for the two-hour flight to Montreal when passengers on the plane complained about the odour coming from one of their fellow passengers.

The passenger was taken off the plane.

And last month a passenger was asked by cabin crew to leave an American Airlines flight in Paris bound for Dallas because of his strong smell.

In this case the passenger blamed a new fragrance he was trying in duty free!

And three US domestic flights have been diverted in the past month over arguments related to knee defenders, which prevent seats reclining.

In each case an air rage incident developed after arguments over the use of the knee defender.

In the US authorities have not banned knee defenders but have left it up to airlines to regulate.

However in Australia, both Qantas and Virgin Australia have banned knee defenders.

In the AirlineRatings.com survey the parent who let their children run riot was third with 20 per cent of respondents saying it was their biggest nightmare, while the passenger who hogs the arm rest was fourth with 13.5 per cent and the incessant talker a small 5.5 per cent.

Airlineratings.com editors have given the offending passengers special genus names: Reclinus Maximus; Smellus Maximus