Airline Passengers Say 'No' to Inflight Mobile Phone Use

As airlines around the world consider whether potential and existing customers would regard the option to use their mobile phones inflight as a benefit or an annoyance, it would do no harm to consider a survey that was conducted by low cost airline Monarch in November 2005.

In the survey results 67% of passengers claimed that using a mobile phone during a flight and having to listen to other people’s annoying ringtones would be one of the most annoying inflight experiences for them.

1,548 Monarch passengers responded to the survey, in which they were asked to identify the three things that would annoy them the most during a flight. Top of the ‘annoying things’ table with 78% was the person sitting behind them knocking their seat (which frequently happens with touch screen seat-back TV's), with this being closely followed by the person infront of them reclining their seat (69%).

Despite the use of mobile phones not currently being permitted on flights, passengers clearly believe that their use would be a huge irritant and voted it into third place (67%), beating having to sit next to a smelly passenger (53%).

In the survey responders were asked to select the three things that would annoy them the most during a flight, with the following results:

78% The person behind knocking your seat 
69% The person infront reclining their seat
67% Mobile phone use during a flight
53% Smelly passengers
18% Obnoxious passengers
10% Passengers leaving the toilets in a mess
3% Other passengers music/games
1% Overly chatty passengers
1% Overly amorous passengers

See other recent news regarding: Travel News Asia, Monarch, Mobile Phones