In a move to enhance in-flight safety and passenger experience, Turkish aviation authorities have introduced fines targeting passengers who prematurely stand up and crowd the aisles upon landing—commonly referred to as “aisle lice.”
According to New York Post, offenders will be fined about $70. “Please respect the disembarkation priority of the passengers in front of or around you and wait for your turn,” the Turkish Directorate General of Civil Aviation said in a notice sent to airlines, instructing crewmembers to report over-eager passengers who don’t comply.
Other fineable infractions include unfastening seatbelts while the plane is still taxiing, or opening overhead bins before the plane has been parked — all of which the notice described as “strictly forbidden.” Under the rules, passengers must wait until the deplaning process has reached their row before they can stand up to gather their belongings and proceed off the plane. The fines were imposed after notable increase in passengers crowding airplane aisles, the notice said, explaining that the behavior poses a risk to “passenger and baggage safety and security” along with affecting the “the satisfaction and exit priority” of others.
Crowding the aisles is technically against Federal Aviation Administration code in the United States, too, with regulations requiring flight attendants to alert the captain if passengers are getting to their feet before the plane is parked. But those rules only apply while the plane’s seatbelt signs are turned on, and do not apply after they’ve been switched off.
Aisle crowders — known in circles online as “aisle lice” — have long faced the ire of irritated travelers who say the behavior is rude and delays everybody’s deplaning process. Etiquette experts told the Washington Post that the most polite way to deplane is to wait until nearby rows ahead are emptied before entering the aisle, with exceptions for people rushing to catch connections. “Aisle lice” are close kin in some travelers’ minds to “gate lice” — people who crowd the boarding gate in the terminal in hopes of sneaking on their plane early. Some airports across the US have even rolled out programs to crack down on gate crowding with alarms that sound for boarding passes scanned ahead of their marked boarding zones.
