UniLang

I saw this happen in the Banja Luka to Belgrade flight, and I knew it's something Cypriots also used to do up to 10 years ago. There was no clapping when we landed in Larnaca.

People break into cheers and clap when the plane stops or has decelerated enough. A lot of people seem to hate it when the other passengers to do it though, and I don't really get why. I understand it's probably a sign that most of the people in the plane are infrequent travellers so any landing for them is a special occasion, but what's wrong with a little celebration? I thing it brings the passengers together for a brief moment, when for most of the flight we try to ignore each other.

Is it common in other destinations? How do you feel about it?

md0 wrote:Is it common in other destinations? How do you feel about it?

It used to be common around here 10 or 20 years ago (especially on internal flights), but these days it's getting rarer. Personally, I hate it.

md0 wrote: A lot of people seem to hate it when the other passengers to do it though, and I don't really get why. I understand it's probably a sign that most of the people in the plane are infrequent travellers so any landing for them is a special occasion, but what's wrong with a little celebration?

Because 1) flying is safe (in fact, safer than most other forms of transportation) 2) A pilot landing a plane successfully shouldn't be a special event, it's his job after all.

I bet those people don't start clapping whenever they park their car after an uneventful trip ("woohoo, I managed not to crash!").

md0 wrote:
Is it common in other destinations? How do you feel about it?

It's something that Russians and Belarusians do, too. As you say, many people are infrequent travellers and/or are afraid of flying, so it's a nice procedure of relaxation for them.

I understand how it may frighten other passengers -- they may think that something was wrong during the flight that a safe landing made everyone so happy -- but I'd say they shouldn't be angry and just learn it as a cultural difference if they travel to places where it is common.

Because 1) flying is safe (in fact, safer than most other forms of transportation) 2) A pilot landing a plane successfully shouldn't be a special event, it's his job after all.

Acting is the actors' job as well, but we clap after a play
At the summer school I was, the professors' job was teaching, but students clapped for them at the end of every lecture.
And both of those events are typically safe.

Point being, plane landings are not the only occasion were clapping is not indication of surviving a great danger. Sometimes is just to mark a special occasion (actually, most of the time is for that. Surviving a dangerous situation usually warrants sighs of relief).

It's something I always associated with charter flights of tour operators and not with specific destinations. But maybe it just went out of fashion in the time after I flew with a tour operator for the last time and started to fly with scheduled flights occasionally?

kevin wrote:It's something I always associated with charter flights of tour operators and not with specific destinations. But maybe it just went out of fashion in the time after I flew with a tour operator for the last time and started to fly with scheduled flights occasionally?

I was thinking maybe it has to do with distance. The flight with clapping at the end was only 50 minutes long, while the one without was a 4 hours one. After four hours of being tied to your seat, you are less celebratory I guess.

md0 wrote:I was thinking maybe it has to do with distance. The flight with clapping at the end was only 50 minutes long, while the one without was a 4 hours one. After four hours of being tied to your seat, you are less celebratory I guess.

The tourist flights from which I remember clapping were to the Balearics and I think also Greece, both of which should be between two and three hours. I've had quite a few scheduled flights for about the same distance since then (Barcelona, Edinburgh, Dublin), and also two or three short flights of maybe an hour (Vienna, Paris), and people never clapped there. The only other difference I see is really that the former were some 20 years ago and the latter more recent.

I've experienced this sporadically, but only on one airline: Southwest, the largest discount carrier in North America. So it fits into the association of this practice with infrequent fliers on holiday. I don't recall any correlation with the length of the flight, though I don't recall it ever happening on the relatively short Chicago-to-St Louis run.

I've always considered it a release of nervous energy and assumed that these were nervous flyers celebrating their return to earth. It bemuses me more than anything.

I can't specifically recall ever having heard people clap on a plane, and it sounded weird to me until I started thinking about it and thought maybe I have heard it before. I just don't remember when if I have.

md0 wrote:Acting is the actors' job as well, but we clap after a play
At the summer school I was, the professors' job was teaching, but students clapped for them at the end of every lecture.
And both of those events are typically safe.

I don't think that's a good analogy, because in those cases you're clapping for a very different reason: you do it because you enjoyed the show/lecture, not because you're relieved it's over.

Landing a plane without crashing is the norm and pilots do it every day. When the whole plane reacts enthusiastically to a rather normal event, it's almost as if they doubted the pilots would be able to do it properly.

I've heard it a fair few times although I'm not sure on which flights exactly. I quite like it and join in whenever it happens.

Luís wrote:Landing a plane without crashing is the norm and pilots do it every day. When the whole plane reacts enthusiastically to a rather normal event, it's almost as if they doubted the pilots would be able to do it properly.

This hinges on the unquestioned assumption that people clap out of relief, and I don't know if I can take that at face value. The people seemed to cheer (unless cheering in Serbian has totally different pragmatics than it does in Greek or English).

I am not in those people minds (so I don't know either way), but I never had the tendency to clap out of relief, eg when I am a passenger in a really bad driver's car (eg my brother or some of my friends) where I actually fear for my life (if we are talking about about transport-related fears, that's mine: private cars/cars driven by non-professional drivers).

PS. Next time it happens, I think I will join the people. They seem to be having fun, and it's humanising the crowd.

md0 wrote:

Luís wrote:Landing a plane without crashing is the norm and pilots do it every day. When the whole plane reacts enthusiastically to a rather normal event, it's almost as if they doubted the pilots would be able to do it properly.

This hinges on the unquestioned assumption that people clap out of relief, and I don't know if I can take that at face value. The people seemed to cheer (unless cheering in Serbian has totally different pragmatics than it does in Greek or English).

So do Cypriots also clap when, say, a holiday coach reaches its destination?

Near-impossible for me to say, because barely any Cypriot would use a bus for anything other than going to school/university, so there's never a critical mass of Cypriots in a long-distance bus route. I wouldn't expect it though.

But Cypriots don't do it on planes at least. It used to be a thing before I started travelling abroad, so I only heard stories. The only time I witness it was in landing at Belgrade from Bosnia. Not from/to Cyprus (Serbia, UK, Greece, and Germany are the only places I've been).

I flew to madeira(and back to Lisbon ofc) this year and don't recall any clapping when the planes landed, but it used to be common back in the 90s and early 2000s.

I've seen many nationalities talk about this but I honestly thought ti was a stupid Portuguese trend since I only recall clapping in flights with mostly Portuguese passengers.

In Rio they clap when the sun sets... I think it's worse.

Osias wrote:In Rio they clap when the sun sets... I think it's worse.

Lol what? Why?

I don't know... I think... they're clapping to God or nature or something. I used to think it was a rare occurrence, something done only by eccentric artists... But they I went to Pão de Açúcar last year and saw it with my own eyes.

This is like people clapping when something is shown on TV. I'm always like, "You know they can't hear you, right?"

linguoboy wrote:This is like people clapping when something is shown on TV. I'm always like, "You know they can't hear you, right?"

Or those guys who love to yell at the tv while watching football. That's rather common.