If you’ve ever had the good fortune to be travelling on a plane, or perhaps misfortune defending on your choice of airline, then you’ll know that as you board the flight the cabin crew will say ‘hello’ and might give you a look up and down.

You may feel as though you’re being appraised in some sort of way, and you’d be correct.

There’s lots of things to think about when it comes to air travel and there are all sorts of reasons why the flight attendants might be looking at you.

In fact, they’ll be looking out for several things at the same time, which could result in you not being allowed to travel or being called upon in the case of an emergency.

If you’re a nice, normal passenger then it’ll just be a quick look as you move towards your seat, but there are some people who get onto planes that can cause trouble.

“Did you sneak an extra bag on board?” (Getty Stock Photo)

The sobriety or sickness test

This is one of the most cited reasons among flight attendants who have explained why they’ll give you a look up and down as you board the plane.

Flight attendant Rania said they were looking out for signs that a passenger might be ‘too drunk or sick to fly’.

If you need medical attention then you certainly shouldn’t be confining yourself to a pressurised metal tube for several hours that’ll be away from any sort of hospital.

Even if there’s a doctor on board, you might be in more peril than they can manage just with their knowledge alone.

Meanwhile, drunk passengers are a handful to deal with and could end up being escorted off the plane if their behaviour becomes a serious issue.

Knowing who needs an eye kept on them is crucial to staying on top of any situation that might develop.

“I’m watching you, problem passenger. Then I’ll talk s**t about you in a TikTok video.” (Getty Stock Photo)

Naughty or nice

Speaking of which, it’s entirely possible for passengers to be dangerous or disruptive without imbibing any alcohol.

Getting a good look at you can help a flight attendant gain a first impression of who might be a troublemaker and which passengers may be more pleasant to deal with.

Completely sober passengers can be kicked off a flight after kicking off at the flight attendants, and some airline staff have revealed in the past that they’ll play little pranks on the ruder passengers.

On the other hand, former Emirates cabin crew member Kamila Jakubjakova said: “It always pays being nice to flight attendants.”

She explained that ‘if you go the extra mile, we’ll probably also go the extra mile in return’.

“A flight where no passengers are acting conspicuously like d**kheads? Must be my lucky day.” (Getty Stock Photo)

ABP check

Flight attendant Kat Kamilani said that they were looking out for something else when they greeted you on the plane, and that’s who might be an ABP.

She said: “So, when you’re walking on the airplane and you see our happy, smiling face – we’re actually looking you up and down and we are trying to find our ABPs.

“And what that is called is our able body people or person – so, these are people who are going to help us in an emergency.

“For example, military personnel, firefighters, nurses, doctors.

“So, in case of an emergency, like a medical emergency or we are going to land the plane or there’s a security breach, we know who is on our plane and who can help us.”

In the event of an emergency, they need to know who could help and where on the plane that help is located.

You look like you’re a doctor, in the case of a medical emergency I’ll know exactly where to find you.” (Getty Stock Photo)

Suspicious baggage

The flight attendant said that they were also keeping an eye out for something else from those passengers boarding the plane, and that’s the stuff that shouldn’t be there at all.

Kamilani said: “We’re also looking for one more thing – beside from looking for things that don’t belong on the plane, like a boxful of liquids – we’re looking for human trafficking.

“It happens a lot in the industry and our passengers’ safety is our number one priority.”

Some people will try and sneak extra bags onto the plane without a larger nefarious goal, but it pays to be vigilant and have an eye out for what the passengers have brought with them

If you want to know what’s happening on a plane you should ask a flight attendant as they’re well aware of all the tips, hacks and dos and don’ts of air travel.

They’ve got you from the moment you board the plane to the time you disembark and are someone else’s problem, and they’ve done this dance so many times that you aren’t going to escape their gaze.

Of course, having put up with passengers for so long they’ve developed their own list of pet peeves which you lot get up to that they wish you’d knock on the head.

They can go through a lot of s**t having to deal with the general public and know how to navigate the rougher patches of air travel.

That being said, it’s best not to upset or annoy them largely because that would be an unpleasant thing to do but also because they might bring you up in conversation later on.

You’re as close to the heavens as you’re going to get, it might be time to remember ‘thou shalt not steal’. (Getty Stock Photo)

Speaking to the Irish Times, flight attendant Paula Gahan was talking about the most annoying thing passengers do, and one of them involves pilfering certain items on the plane.

The main thing they steal is food, if it’s not nailed down there’s a big risk a passenger is going to steal it.

In fact, she had a story about passengers actually stealing her own supply of snacks as she’d made the rookie error of leaving them out.

She said: “It’s a funny old phenomenon on aircraft, any food that’s sitting around, even if it’s in a lunch box, seems to be fair game to passengers.

“They come in and swipe it. Yes, the passengers will steal your food without an ounce of shame. It’s like some unwritten rule, ‘if it’s visible in the galley and edible, I can take it’.

“I was just on a flight back from San Francisco and I bought a bag of Haribo for a sugar hit to get me through the 10-hour flight.

“I leave the bag on the counter and turn around to see some cheeky woman helping herself.”

“For the passengers who stole my Haribo the exits are located here and here, you have five seconds to use them.” (Getty Stock Photo)

Just as a reminder, you shouldn’t steal and eat other people’s food and you really ought not to go nabbing sweets from a bag that someone has left out.

The passenger got described as ‘cheeky’ by Gahan but that’s possibly the flight attendant being very polite.

Other flight attendants have shared the passenger habits they find most annoying.

One of the big things is not to take your shoes off when you’re on the plane, nobody needs you to be walking around in your socks or even barefoot.

There’s also some things they really don’t need to know, as some have said that passengers do not need to ask permission to go to the toilet and definitely don’t need to announce it’s because they have diarrhoea.

A man says he was ‘shocked into silence’ after being told off for ‘manspreading’ on a flight – but people had limited sympathy for him.

The 26-year-old said he was on a six-hour flight a few months back where he was sat in the middle seat with a woman in her 30s in the aisle seat and a woman in her 20s having the window seat.

The ‘tall’ man says that the flight had ‘even less leg room than usual’ – and says that part-way through the journey his lengthy limbs ‘inched’ their way over towards the window seat.

Describing the incident on Reddit’s ‘Am I the A**hole’ he wrote: “About half an hour after take-off I found my left knee inching to the side for the sweet relief of open space – specifically, the no-man’s-land in between seats, level with the shared armrest.

“But I wasn’t paying attention to my knee the entire time. I’ll concede it’s possible that at some point I was occupying space that rightfully belonged to my window seat neighbour. All was well for two hours.”

Pexels/Pew Nguyen

However, a couple of hours into the flight the woman sat in the window called over the flight attendant and said: “Could you tell him to keep his f***ing leg in his own f***ing seat.”

At this point and ‘with horror’ the man realised she had been talking about him and ‘instantly retracted [his] leg in deep shame’.

“I had been shocked into silence,” he added. “But when the FA left I frantically began to apologize. But she refused to speak to me. She acted like she didn’t hear me.”

The man said she spent the rest of the flight on her phone and so he – somewhat bizarrely – ‘started sneaking peeks at her phone’ where he claims she sent a message saying: “Men really do be too much sometimes.”

The long-legged passenger says he went from being embarrassed to confused, adding: “I kept replaying it in my head, wondering why she didn’t simply ask me to move my knee instead of calling over the attendant.”

Pexels/Athena

But if he was hoping that people would side with him then he was sadly mistaken as fellow Reddit users quickly branded him ‘the a**hole’, with many suggesting that if he needed more leg room he should have paid for it.

One wrote: “[You’re the a**hole] full stop. Did she handle it great? No, but she should not have had to. The snooping is f***ing bizarre as well.”

Another said: “You knew you were in her space and hoped she’d say nothing and make herself smaller and uncomfortable so you’d feel better. She probably paid extra for the window seat so she could be comfortable and you felt entitled to occupy her space.”

While a third added: “Pay for extra legroom. Having some random guy pressing his leg against me is enough to make me get up from my bus or train seat because it creeps me out. I don’t like being touched, and I make sure I always try to avoid it. You need to be mindful of those around you.”

You may have noticed that flight attendants tend to make us feel very welcome when stepping onto the plane.

It’s not because they secretly know about your fear of flying, or because they love a good chat.

Their friendliness, it seems, is not just a case of being nice, but to keep a look out for the condition of the people stepping on board.

(Getty Stock Images)

Flight attendant Rania (@itsmekikooooo) is based in Austria has taken to social media to explain why they say hello as soon as you board the plane.

Apologies in advance if you thought you were getting chatted up.

Anyway, this is what Rania had to say: “Your flight attendant greets you, not only out of politeness, but also to check whether you are too drunk or sick to fly.”

Not only this, checking people out is also to analyse which passengers could help cabin crew in the unfortunate event of an emergency, she added in the video’s description.

And social media users were quick to share their thoughts in the comment section.

One person commented alluding to already knowing this, saying: “I had pancreatitis when I was in Corfu, I acted normal going on to the plane otherwise I knew they wouldn’t let me on.”

A second joked: “Me with headphones walking on the plane completely ignoring the flight attendants…”

While a third said: “Ah okay this makes a lot of sense, I always get the same look going on flights.”

Influencer Kat Kamalani, has also shared a video on the situation.

In a clip on her TikTok account she explains that there are a number of reasons they stare intensely at passengers when they board.

(Getty Stock Images)

And the majority of the reasons are down to making sure we’re all as safe as possible.

“Have you ever walked on a plane and saw the flight attendants standing right here greeting you?” Kamalani says in the clip. “Or the flight attendants walking up and down the aisle?

“Well I’m about to tell you what we’re really doing.

“So, when you’re walking on the airplane and you see our happy, smiling face – we’re actually looking you up and down and we are trying to find our ABPs.

“And what that is called is our able body people or person – so, these are people who are going to help us in an emergency.

“For example, military personnel, firefighters, nurses, doctors.

“So, in case of an emergency, like a medical emergency or we are going to land the plane or there’s a security breach, we know who is on our plane and who can help us.”