UKC

Whilst not of the same calibre as mindless air passenger insisting on removing their cabin bags after a crash landing I feel that what my elderly parents experienced on Wednesday equally illustrates how inconsiderate some people can be.
Ma and Pa, both in their seventies, boarded a train at Tunbridge Wells to travel to Charing Cross. They saw two facing aisle seats which they thought they would occupy. The adjacent window seats were occupied by what appeared to be a mother and daughter(forty/fiftyish and twentyish) Daughter had a full sized suitcase ON the adjacent aisle seat.
My ma sat in the empty seat whilst pa indicated that he would like to sit in the seat "occupied" by the suitcase. The only effort the daughter made was to reposition the suitcase so that it was still only leaving half the seat "empty". There was obviously not room for my father to use the seat and rather than cause a rumpus he moved further down the aisle.
I wish I had been with them. The least I would have done would have been to report it to the guard.

In reply to FesteringSore:
How selfish.

Edit: I think your dad needs to become 'crustier'

In reply to Timmd:


Quite. Conversely, on arriving at Charing Cross, they had some stairs to negotiate and were delighted to be assisted by a thirty something man who carried Ma's case down the stairs. A gentleman.

In reply to Timmd:



He can be when Ma's not around. He doesn't like upsetting her.

In reply to FesteringSore:

Really selfish behavior. I haven't seen it often but it's depressing when you do see it.

In reply to FesteringSore:


My own Dad now in his early 70's once happened to have a female in her 20's help him with his case up some stairs because he has a bad back which he quite appreciated. It was done years ago by him carrying things which were too heavy, look after your backs folks.

In reply to FesteringSore:


That's nice of him.

In reply to FesteringSore:

I went to Euston to fetch mother in law once. She had commandeered some bloke with a wife and small kids to help her get her enormous suitcases off the train. I only had the body language to go on, but I dont think he volunteered as such!

In reply to FesteringSore:

I often travel on that Tunbridge Wells line. It's full of wankers like that, to the extent that when I board at Charing Cross
I make a point of asking people who have put things on empty seats to move their stuff even whilst the next seat is empty (it won't stay empty because the train is always full by the time it leaves). It's so selfish of people to hog seats like this on a crowded train.

Reverting to airline passengers. I get pissed off by people with more than the one cabin bag who cram their extra bags into the overhead locker above your seat, leaving you nowhere to put yours. With long legs, putting it under the seat in front of you is a very uncomfortable option. I have, particularly on a long haul flight, taken down someone a else's extra bag and told them to put it under the seat in front of them. I wish the airlines would be stricter about the i cabin bag per passenger rule.

In reply to Trangia:

We'd be good pals on a flight - i actively choose to put mine under the seat so that i can slide it towards me to put my feet on as my feet don't reach the floor properly!

On the rail passengers, I am on a train into Edinburgh at the moment which is overcrowded, and people have been very good at making sure elderly and disabled get seats

In reply to Trangia:

I always resent getting onto a flight, knowing how much effort I've had to spend on making my hand-luggage fit the regulations, just to see other muppets boarding with huge, over-sized backpacks, shopping bags and separate laptop cases, then taking up all available space with them. Rules are fine if they apply to everyone!

Train passengers in the UK, though... don't even get me started...

In reply to FesteringSore:

Curious to know why somebody saw fit to award my OP 2 dislikes. I see nothing offensive in it.

In reply to Trangia:

Ma and Pa were of the opinion that it was the train from Hastings.

In reply to FesteringSore:

The thing that bothers me is when the luggage rack is full up of small bags or tiny cases that could go on the overhead safely. I use the trains a lot to go back home from London to Aberdeen, as I go for a couple of weeks at a time I have a large suitcase so it has to go in the luggage rack or else it ends up in the vestibule between carriages and gets in the way. The best thing though is as it is a long journey, I travel for comfort , I'm not scruffy but I often go in jeans and t-shirt. I book first class well in advance as it makes the long journey comfortable and for me it works out cheaper than flying at peak times of the year. I had a family try and tell me that I didn't belong in first class on basis of my appearance.

In reply to FesteringSore:

Agreed. If there is a choice between a free seat and one that has a bag on it, I sometimes opt for the one with the bag on it just to be a bit of an @rse. Of course, I offer most kindly to relocate the luggage to a luggage holder. I find it bizarre that people are so attached to their luggage. I mean, you aren't exactly going to win if you half inch someone's 25kg suitcase in a run for it.

In reply to ByEek:

I know someone called Dave the Hedgehog. Hedgehog as he routinely slept in a hedge on his way home from the pub and his name was Dave. His dad was an SAS sergeant allegedly.
Now Dave had some issues and had to sell his house to Dodgy John. This transaction was in cash for £50k.
Hedgehog left the town after a morning in the pub with this briefcase full of cash.
The morale is that you don't know whose case you are moving, and Hedgehog would have bitten your leg off above the knee

In reply to Dave the Rave:
I know a few people who'd have taken the (quite English?) approach of thanking the girl for moving her case thus far, and asking if she'd mind moving it just a little bit further at the same time as sitting down.

I generally have my laptop so keep that in my vicinity if it's packed, but civility should find a way of solving case related issues I would have thought.

In reply to Trangia:

Strongly depends on the airline's carry-on rules. Nearly all the flights I've taken in the past 5 years permit 2 pieces of hand luggage, typically a small suitcase and a laptop bag. On long haul, there's always enough space in overheads with a bit of thought and if you can live without your bags being directly above you (quite often they can accommodate them in first/business if you don't need them during the flight). The story is different in short-haul though, where the carry-on per passenger ratio is generally higher. Hence airlines like BA and the like are issuing 'under seat' tags for the second bags -- note they do not do this for their long haul flights.

In reply to Trangia:


I also wish they'd be stricter about enforcing the boarding by seat row - it'd all be so much quicker and smoother if they boarded from the back rows rather than allowing gormless fools with too many cases to clog up the aisles while trying to ram them into the overhead lockers, as the queue of people sitting further back builds. Grrr.

In reply to Removed UserBwox: There's an article about hand luggage etc on the BBC website (in the wake of the Emirates crash) and a bloke was reckoning that if they didn't charge for hold bags then boarding and disembarking would be quicker, even if people had to go and wait for bags at the carousel (though he's obviously never arrived at Leeds Bratfud when the last two Jet2 flights of the day have arrived together and they've only got one man and a wheelbarrow to get the bags off).

In reply to Removed UserBwox:


That's not the best way to control boarding, according to research reported in this BBC article:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14717695