[Closed] Clapping when your plane lands...

If the flight is bumpy enough people will clap, trust me.

It does, mostly on tourist type destination flights

a business commuter flight could land in flames with only one wing and most would barely look up from the paper...

a business commuter flight could land in flames with only one wing and most would barely look up from the paper…

If they spill even a drop of my Chablis...

My father was a pilot. In his wise words, "Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing."

TBF, the smooooooooth touchdown we had in Krakow a couple of weeks ago, I expect the co-pilot to have leaned over and used a gold marker pen to add an extra stripe to the captain's shirt/blouse... And all of us applauded.

Happens regularly: fly Alitalia, domestic Russian or anywhere in Africa / India.

In the UK I mentally applaud any jet2 flight event. Departures, takeoff, landing, not having the overhead bins fall open randomly. I also think any flight in a Flybe q400 where the wheels actually come down deserves a cheer.

Can’t stand it. Drive home is far more dangerous but I never see an eager crowd applauding enthusiastically when I get to my house without crashing into anything.

Used to be on the Glasgow and Liverpool flights I seem to recall.

"Drive home is far more dangerous"

Oft said, but misleading. Flying is safer per km or per hour but the probability of dying on a random flight is higher than a random car journey. In the same way that space travel is safe on a per km basis but monstrously dangerous by any other measure.

You are roughly three times more likely to killed on your flight as you are on the drive home.

Statistic statistics, I believe 2017 was the safest year in aviastion with no fatalities in any commercial flights.  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-42538053

I belive Flaperon also has some expertise in this area.

KLM "my other plane is a Stuka"

My mate's a pilot and finds it quite condescending.

“Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing.”

and if you can use the plane again afterwards, it's an excellent one.

Music on the vid is awful, so I turn it off.. 😜

I think it would piss me off a bit if I was a pilot, it's basically saying " we weren't really sure if we would make it back alive so thanks for not killing us"

It should be reserved for when they've pulled off a landing with an engine down or broken landing gear etc.

I find the whole experience bizarre. Introducing the pilot and crew is odd. Why don’t you get the same on boats or trains?

I too would find it annoying if I was part of the flight crew. Why people choose to clap somebody for doing their job is beyond me.

If there has been an event or something adverse they have had to deal with then maybe fair enough, but for everyday 'just doing their job', nahhh.

I watched one of the aborted landings in that video in person. Looked a lot more scary at the time! Mad French pilot came back around and made sure he wouldn’t be going around for a third go!

rachel

Why people choose to clap somebody for doing their job is beyond me.

You do NOT want to go to the theatre 🙂

The same could be said for clapping when the film ends at the cinema. No one from the film is going to be there, so what is the point? It's like clapping for the success of the Inca civilisation or something.

Flashy your Dad is Chuck Yeager?

On a similar note, I love the little jingle they play on Ryanair when they land on time. it's just a shame that they play it soooo rarely.

I would imagine it's a response to a dissipation of a tense situation for the nervous flyers, a bit of herd mentality and for a few a genuine thanks because you can't go into the cockpit and thank the pilot

Latin Americans are big on clapping non-fatal landings. I always put it down to a mix of Catholicism, fatalism and daily exposure to really bad road traffic accidents. Ultimately I think it's God they are applauding for not killing them rather than the pilot who is simply HIS instrument. Or something like that...

The same could be said for clapping when the film ends at the cinema.

Is is this a thing?

Yep people have applauded in a cinema normally when a film has blown people away

I took my g/f to Vegas on a standby ticket whilst I was operating Crew and she said there was a big round of applause on my landing apparently.

It doesn't bother me because I can't hear it!

But... to quote an old boss of mine: never judge a pilot by the landing!

Lots of factors go into a competently run, safe flight. No point in having a smooth landing if you've used up half the runway to touch down in doing so. The passengers will never know the risk they've just been exposed to...

Better sometimes a firm 'arrival' than a greaser.

It happens a lot in the Middle East, I think it's because people don't understand how safe modern aircraft are and they think a crash is narrowly avoided on each flight. Religious fatalism plays a big part; people blame their God for everything that happens and don't understand that some very clever and well-trained humans are actually the ones who ensure their safety.

they think a crash is narrowly avoided on each flight.

They're not wrong.

“Drive home is far more dangerous”

Oft said, but misleading. Flying is safer per km or per hour but the probability of dying on a random flight is higher than a random car journey. In the same way that space travel is safe on a per km basis but monstrously dangerous by any other measure.

You are roughly three times more likely to killed on your flight as you are on the drive home.

Not true...whichever way you cut the stats flying if orders of magnitudes safer than driving. If you chose a random flight anywhere in the world every day it would be hundreds of thousands of years before you would be involved in an accident...and even then the chances are you'd survive. Flying is safer per KM, per trip, number of fatalities per journey, however you want to view it. In fact in 2017 there was zero accidents or deaths in commercial passenger Jet aviation....you simply can't get any safer than that, and a small number involving small commercial aircraft less than 50. 3,500 people die on British roads every year and we've got one of the best if not the best road safety record in the world.

Nobody claps when on Indian flights.....the wheels have barely touched down and half of them are getting  up and getting their bags out of the overhead bins and starting to walk up the  isles towards the door. The Cabin Crew don't seem to bat an eyelid.

Yep people have applauded in a cinema normally when a film has blown people away

Weird.

Someone always starts clapping when jet2 land but no one joins in lol

Love the Ryanair jingle "it's the sound of the start of your holiday" as a mate once remarked

A sure sign of the lower classes tbf

I used to fly 2-3 times a week on a corporate airline so regular fliers got to know the flight crew quite well- an old favourite was "did we crash land or were you shot down?" often on a one-wheeler, bouncy-bouncy which pops the overhead lockers when we had a shear-crosswind. Once on a particularly rough flight in an 8-seater King-Air where the co-pilot was sick.

A friend of mine once described a horrific landing during a storm. After two failed attempts at Glasgow, they were diverted to Edinburgh. Now this guy is a typically a very cool customer; the very last person you'd expect to clap when a plane lands. When that plane touched down, he was, in his own words, "clapping like a captive chimp when they bring the bananas 'round".

Someone always starts clapping when jet2 land but no one joins in lol

That's not clapping.

#fifteenfeethighclub

There was a round of applause when we landed at Glasgow returning from Corfu the other week. Might have been relief that folk were finally going to get away from some of the awful weegies on the flight.

We tend to take a trip to the cinema every Christmas to see 'It's A Wonderful Life'. Every time it finishes, no matter what cinema we're in, there's a big round of applause. I've never joined in because I'm usually too busy trying to get the dust out of my eyes at the end...these old cinemas are very dusty, but I still find it a bit odd.

I think you should applaud a bus driver for getting through Wythenshawe with the windows intact.

We clapped along with the rest of the cinema when we saw Deadpool in Canada. It was brilliant though and a much more enthusiastic experience than when I saw it in the UK. Much LOLing (or is it LingOL?) and cheering and somehow not in an irritating way (which it probably would be in this country!)

Introducing the pilot and crew is odd.

I suspect it has much to do with the *perceived* dangers of flight and hoping to calm those of a more nervous disposition by giving them a personal connection to the team - 'Ahh, he sounds a very calm and sensible fellow, he won't be crashing the plane today'.

It seems a strange irony that the people who clap a safe landing tend to be from cultures with the strongest beliefs that there is a better place waiting for them when the plane does plough into the ground at 500 miles an hour.

I had a landing in Edinburgh where the pilot had to have a 2nd try, pulling up from owhat felt ike feet from the tarmac. The descent on the 2nd attempt seemed worse than the 1st...but he landed it OK.

I don't think there was any applause, I for one was checking my underwear...

Month after 9/11 flying into LAX, smooth as anything and big cheers and clapping. Though a view of a fighter jet seeming to parallel us on landing may have contributed to it.

I remember landing at Liverpool in thick fog once. Ryanair flight. Dropped into the cloud at about 500ft. Normally I've got a pretty good sense of direction but I couldn't see a thing, had no idea if we landed east or west but there was a lot of jinking around. Pilot got a big round of applause for that from the whole plane althoguh I suspect it was the autopilot doing most of the work in those conditions.

Sort of related, I was flying into Manchester on New Year's Day about 0.30 so we had New Year mid way up the Irish Sea. The flight had lots of families on board, presumably returning from Christmas holidays and loads of kids asleep. This little beeping alarm went off at midnight and some guy a few rows in front put his hands up and went "IT'S MIDNIGHT, HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!!!" to be met with stony glares of anger from all the parents of the kids he'd just woken up. That one fell totally flat!

I remember landing in Gibraltar where it felt like the plane landed in the tarmac rather than on it, he hit it so hard that i thought may be the engines had failed and we dropped the last 3 feet. Nobody clapped but i think it was because we were all winded. It seems this is the norm for this particular runway.