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Comment by hermannj314 | Hacker News Reader

Naturally, the FA's warning bothered me and I felt the need to explain myself. I signaled for her to come back and asked her to hang my coat.

What's with the need to exercise control over another human being like that? Hang up your own coat. The fact that he feels entitled to such service says something about him. People that bark orders at flight attendants probably feel that are part of some untouchable/infallible class of citizen. It makes me suspect his retelling of the facts has been greatly marred by his feelings of superiority in the situation.

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He was sitting in business class where this type of request is normal. Also, keeping the aisle clear is a top priority of any flight crew (especially pre-takeoff), so they actually prefer you ask them to do things like this as they will be more efficient.

And you can't actually hang your own coat.

I guess he would know what's appropriate, so I stand corrected on that point.

I guess I'm just too servile. I would have put my iPhone away and read a book and never have been kicked off the plane. (And if my coat needed hung, I would have just sat and been uncomfortabaly warm until I could hang it myself: your failure to prepare should not become the burden of another human being. )

If there's no where to hang it aside from a designated area that as a passenger you don't have access too, you let the crew member do it and remember to be polite. Same as in a restaurant, you don't take your own plates back into the kitchen and clean them off, because the waiting team does that and probably wouldn't like you muscling in.

What are you talking about?

The coat closet is at the front of the aircraft. You aren't really allowed to just go rummage through it yourself. So you ask the FA to put your coat in there or to retrieve it.

Ok, as a guy that only flies coach I thought "hanging your coat" means putting it on the little peg that pops out on the back of the seat in front of you / putting it in the overhead bin. I was mistaken. I didn't realize coats at the front of the plane were treated so much better than the rest of the coats. :-)

Everything is better at the front of the aircraft (except the toilets for some inexplicable reason).

And your chance of survival in case of an accident:

Which is funny, really, because it makes you think people would pay extra to sit in the back...

Sometimes they are: on the ANA 787s (I hope they fix those soon...) the business class toilets are washlets (bidet sprayers).

They'll also memorize your name and make sure to use it regularly when addressing you. And you get metal cutlery instead of plastic. And the nuts are heated, and served in a little cup instead of in a plastic bag.

(Never paid for business, but United is ludicrously easy to get upgrades on if you fly trans-atlantic flights with any frequency and pay attention to ordering correctly coded tickets)

As a courtesy to Business/First travelers, the FAs will hang your coat in a shared closet (instead of you having to place it in an overhead bin). I don't think they'd be happy with a passenger accessing the closet themselves.

Though I agree the timing of the request is kind of odd given the circumstances, I can say that I wouldn't be comfortable hanging up my own coat in First/Business, as the coat closet is under the purview of the FAs and not really a place for passengers to be going through.

So the timing is weird, but the request in and of itself is totally normal for that class of service.

>> asked her to hang my coat

> People that bark orders at flight attendants

I didn't read it the way you did.

That's basically SOP in business class on international flights. The level of personal attention / service is almost jarring at first (this applies 10x to first class).

It's possible that being in business class, that was a service that was a normal request.

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