Flight Attendants Can Tell When Passengers Are Lying About Being Frequent Fliers

One of the many things that your flight attendant won't tell you is that they know exactly which passengers are lying about being frequent fliers. It may seem strange, but people announcing or bragging to crew members and other passengers about how often they travel by plane is a common occurrence. As a former flight attendant, I would have some version of this conversation with a passenger at least once a week and I was never sure exactly why some people felt the need to announce how often they travel.

Flight attendants are always watching passengers and there are a lot of things that they notice about you when you board a plane. Being observant is part of the job. Flight attendants travel more than any other career, and they take multiple flights every single day. Most other frequent fliers are also people who travel regularly for work. Whether they're digital nomads who move around often or business travelers who take meetings in different cities every week, they have mastered their travel routine. One of the easiest ways to spot the fibbers is that they are the ones who are constantly talking about how often they fly. True frequent fliers are almost never concerned with letting other people know how often they travel because they're just focused on getting where they're going. Another major giveaway is that people who are lying about flying often tend to be rude with crew members and become agitated when things don't go as planned.

"People lie about being frequent fliers all the time," Maddie, a content creator and former flight attendant, said in a video posted on her TikTok. She added that flight attendants can definitely tell who isn't being truthful. One of the easiest ways to spot the passengers who are being dishonest, according to Maddie, is that they claim to travel more than the crew members.

"We know you're lying because flight attendants fly up to four flights per day," Maddie said. "Unless you also work in aviation as a pilot or flight attendant, there's just no way that's true." Like Maddie, I worked as a flight attendant and spent majority of my 20s on airplanes. During a particularly heavy work week, I could fly as many as 20 flights. A passenger who claims that they fly more often than someone who spends most of their time on an airplane for work is obviously being dishonest. A true frequent flier probably wouldn't make such a claim, because during their many flights, they've had conversations with crew members and therefore understand the demands of the job.

In another video, Maddie outlines other ways flight attendants can tell if passengers are lying about how often they fly. She said that people who announce that they are frequent fliers loudly to everyone are usually being dishonest. "People that actually fly on a regular basis board the plane quietly, sit down, take their seats, and stow their luggage," she said. In other words, they're comfortable enough with the process that they usually keep to themselves. They don't need to brag about the frequency in which they take flights or make annoying requests of the flight attendants during boarding. 

People who fly frequently are used to interacting with aviation professionals. If you're boarding planes on a regular basis, you've likely met your fare share of flight attendants. You've also probably had a conversation with them more than a few times. You've witnessed crew members in action and have likely watched them respond to serious situations on board the aircraft.

Frequent fliers know that flight attendants have a challenging job with long hours, so they're usually very polite to crew members. A lot of frequent fliers even offer a helping hand when they can. At the very least, they tend to look after themselves without demanding too much attention from crew members.

According to TikToker Maddie, passengers who claim to be frequent fliers but are rude to crew members are definitely lying about how often they travel by plane. "People that claim to be frequent fliers but are not are usually very rude to the flight crew and do not understand things like delays," Maddie said. Frequent fliers know that delays are extremely common and that things like plane swaps, bad weather, and mechanical issues happen all the time. There's no point in getting angry about unavoidable issues, and frequent fliers know that the best thing to do is keep calm. As Maddie discusses in her video, they definitely know that flight attendants aren't to blame: "If you actually flew on a regular basis you would know that flight attendants have zero control over this."