There are different questions that are 100% inappropriate to ask in different situations. For example, you don't ask the lady about her age, the rich guy - about making his first million, Tom Brady - about deflated balls... and while on the plane, you don't ask the cabin crew about anything really suspicious. For example, regarding flight safety.
Otherwise, you - no matter what class you are flying - are almost guaranteed to get increased attention from flight security, and subsequently, even if you were 'just curious,' this can cause a lot of inconvenience during further flights. And yet, there are people who clearly ignore common sense - for example, as in today's story of ours, by the user u/gabe840.
More info: Reddit
The author of the post was once flying from LA to Fort Lauderdale and they met quite a weird passenger on board
Image credits: Dragana Stock / Freepik (not the actual photo)
That guy was a first class passenger - and he started pestering the flight attendant with questions about cockpit access during lav breaks
Image credits: gabe840
Image credits: Jomkwan / Freepik (not the actual photo)
The flight attendant told him that they can't provide such information to passengers - and the man assured them he was 'just curious'
Image credits: gabe840
Image credits: maximdenisenko / Freepik (not the actual photo)
The flight attendant then told him that it was all about the security measures after 9/11
Image credits: gabe840
So the only reaction that man actually got was additional attention from the cabin crew during the next lav break
The Original Poster (OP) tells us that they once flew from Los Angeles to Fort Lauderdale and were seated in 2B. Just ahead of them, in 1B, there was some random guy who couldn't think of anything better to do than pester the flight attendant with various weird questions right when the cabin service was about to start.
For example, he said that on his previous flights he'd seen that the flight attendants didn't block access to the galley when the pilot used the lavatory - and he wanted to know if the cabin crew instructions had changed in such cases. The flight attendant asked him point blank if that meant the passenger was inquiring on access procedures for the flight deck.
The passenger looked embarrassed and said he was just curious - and when the flight attendant flatly refused to provide any information on this, he quipped that he didn't know he had no right to ask questions. The flight attendant wasn't going to argue, but simply replied that the passenger had apparently forgotten about 9/11 and all the security measures that had been put in place on planes and in airports since then.
It's possible, the original poster notes, that this guy had no intention of doing anything dangerous and simply decided to make some small talk with the flight attendant - but in doing so he only attracted additional attention to himself. As a result, when the pilot went to the lavatory, they called two extra flight attendants from the rear to come up and block the galley - and one of them kept his eyes on that very dude the whole time...
Image credits: Guohua Song / Pexels (not the actual photo)
Of course, we are talking about the increased security measures on airlines, not only in the US but all over the world, which have been adopted since 9/11 and have become practically the standard of passenger transportation in a quarter of a century. So it's not surprising that any passenger who starts to take an intense interest in such questions before takeoff attracts security's attention.
Yes, the adopted set of measures has completely changed the entire paradigm of air travel, making everything a much longer process - but the safety of flights has clearly increased. It is no longer possible to go from the airport entrance to boarding in half an hour (remember, again, the Home Alone 2 movie and their airport run - today something like this is simply unthinkable).
On the other hand, these are all completely reasonable measures - because no one actually knows what the next threat to passenger safety might be on literally any flight. "Our threats have continued to change. And our regulations and our lawmaking is not always fast enough to adapt to those changes," Jeffrey Price, an aviation security expert at Metropolitan State University in Denver, says in an interview with NPR.
Many people in the comments to the original post claim that this guy will now attract special attention from federal services for a long time - and maybe forever - on any flight. Or, alternatively, he will end up on that notorious "randomly selected" list by TSA - so who knows? In any case, flying is unlikely to become easier for him in the coming years... So do you, our dear readers, agree with this as well?
People in the comments also agreed his questions sounded weird, and assumed he'd be in the 'randomly selected' list by TSA soon
