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JUNE 12, 2025|TRAVEL & TOURISM


The Consequences of Being An Asshole While Flying


Banned from flying 900x600

Sometimes life seems to offer sadly few consequences for being an asshole. And rarely are they irreversible. Unless you happen to exhibit that bad behavior when flying.

This interesting piece looks at four examples of passengers who got banned for life from flying due to bad behavior. It shows the extreme consequences of making a poor choice while getting aggravated or drunk or simply having a bad day. While the punishments do seem extreme when it comes to banning them from flying (and nearly impossible to dispute), I kept thinking while reading this that it would be nice if other aspects of life had similar rules instead of just flying.

The Consequences of Being An Asshole While Flying: Banned from flights

Some of these passengers do seem to be facing an unfairly harsh repercussions for their crimes, but outside singular episodes there are more than a few people who deserve at least some karma to come back on them for similar behaviour that didn’t happen on a plane. Like bullies at work or overly entitled customers.

I guess that’s a good life lesson in itself. Clearly there are some places where you just can’t get away with being an asshole, and perhaps too many others where you can.

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This is a blog about non-obvious ideas. Originally launched on the Typepad platform in 2005 as the Influential Marketing blog, the stories at first focused mainly on digital marketing while Rohit worked at Ogilvy Advertising. In 2015 Rohit officially rebranded to the Non-Obvious Insights Blog and published his WSJ bestseller Non-Obvious. For the past twenty one years, this blog has coined new terms, introduced future marketing practices and inspired the next generation of non-obvious thinkers and marketers.

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