Pajamas, personal grooming and seat reclining - airline etiquette

What's the strangest thing you've seen a passenger do on a plane? If you said, "Change into pajamas mid-flight," then maybe you were on my red-eye from Orlando to Frankfurt, Germany, during which a passenger disappeared into the restroom and emerged in a nightgown.

It happens more often than you'd think. I've spent most of my life in the air as a writer, editor and consumer advocate.

John Gray, who owns a company that sells gift baskets in London, admits to changing into his jammies on long flights. "I like to wear my Pikachu onesie," he says. "It's super-comfy and helps me get a good night's sleep on long-haul flights. I usually get a smile from everybody who sees me, and nobody has ever said something weird."

Brave man, John.

There's a subset of airline passengers like him who take hitting 30,000 feet as an invitation to make themselves at home - and then some. Here are some of the types you're likely to encounter, along with some airline etiquette to arm yourself with.

The Exhibitionist

"Children in pajamas on a plane are one thing," says Barbara Warrington, a retired occupational therapist from Incline Village, Nevada. "Grown-ups are quite another - and, I would suggest, a no-no."

But wait. Isn't there a waiver for first-class passengers in those lie-flat seats? Yes, suggests Lauren Guilfoyle of Emirates Airline. Her air carrier hands out sleepwear with "moisturizing" qualities to first-class passengers. "The natural ingredients of Shea butter and argan oil are released as you move, so your skin stays moisturized and protected," she explains.

Well, if you have $12,000 to spend on an airline ticket, I suppose you can wear anything.

Getty Images / Illustration by Matt McClane

For the rest of us, April Masini, an etiquette expert based in New York, has the following advice: "Adults should not wear pajamas on a plane."

Those people, she says, are "exhibitionists looking for attention," and you should probably expect more and stranger behavior from them, especially if the flight is long."

Whatever it is that causes some air passengers to put on their pajamas prompts others to take off their shoes - and even their socks. It's baffling because, on land, these people would never dream of placing their shoeless feet on, say, a restaurant table. It can also turn ugly when those same passengers feel it's acceptable to rest their feet on the seatbacks or armrests in front of them.

"It's a personal-space invasion," says Lori Geoffroy, a frequent air traveler from San Francisco. "It's annoying when people put their feet on the armrest of the passenger in front of them, and it's even worse if they're shoeless."

The Groomer

Todd Brown remembers a recent flight from Hong Kong to Istanbul. A man across the aisle calmly removed his shoes and socks and began clipping his toenails.

"After finishing his toenails and fingernails, he then got a bottle of clear nail polish and proceeded to start painting his nails," recalls Brown, a sales manager from Newtown Square, Pennsylvania.

Lisa Cortez, a frequent air traveler who runs a tour company in Phoenix, found herself in a similar situation on a recent flight from Los Angeles to Rome. Soon after the flight attendants served a snack, a passenger seated across the aisle removed his shoes and began clipping his toenails.

Cortez waited in vain for the man's seatmate to react. Meanwhile, "I grabbed my tablet computer from the side pocket of my seat and set it to a standing position as a barrier between flying toenails and my yummy mid-flight snack," she says.

Sometimes, that's all you can do - protect yourself from whatever a fellow passenger sends your way. From my experience of mediating travel disputes, both in the air and on the ground, your options for how to handle such instances are limited.

Dirty looks only ratchet up the tension. Your best move is to move. Find an empty seat or ask a flight attendant to reseat you. Don't make a scene.

If another seat isn't available, try hanging out in the galley in the back of the plane. You may have to take your seat if you hit turbulence and a crew member might shoo you back to your seat during meal service, but it can be preferable to the alternative.

The Stressed Mom and Crying Baby

On a recent flight from Newark to Amsterdam, Retha Charette's seatmate opened her tray table, placed her infant on it and began to change the baby's diaper.

"It's the most disgusting thing I've ever seen on a plane," says Charette, a tour guide from Arlington, Vermont, who writes a blog called Roaming Nanny. "I didn't know what to do."

Charette says she tries to keep her cool when a seatmate does something irritating.

"I think the No. 1 thing to remember when something weird starts happening is not to lose your temper," she says. "I firmly believe that when most people travel, they don't think about those around them. We're all worried about our comfort."

Seatmate problems are as numerous and varied as the solutions, but if there's a common thread, it is this: Stay above the fray. Otherwise, you could end up starring in a viral video - or worse.

"A crying baby can be annoying," says Marianne Perez de Fransius, the CEO of Bébé Voyage, a site for parents who travel with young children. "But the absolute wrong reaction is berating the parent or caretaker for having a crying baby. Parents want their baby to stop crying more than the other passengers."

Instead, offer to help or try distracting the baby. "Maybe you have a cute video on your phone you could show the baby, or you have something entertaining like a colorful key chain," Perez de Fransius says.

The Seat Recliner

Infants are hardly the only passengers who can grate on your nerves. Oh, those seat recliners!

Kat Koppett, an actor and improv consultant from Albany, New York, had one on her last flight.

Getty Images / Illustration by Matt McClane

"It would have been easy to react mindlessly," she says. "I could have passively aggressively bumped her seat a lot."

Instead, she applied the principles of improv and used the moment as an opportunity to stretch her performance range, cycling through possible responses.

"I could tap her on the shoulder, politely explain that I had a deadline and ask her to move up," she says. "I could see if the flight attendant might help me. I could choose not to work and find out how that decision might lead to other options, like meditating or listening to music."

She could also vow never to fly on an airline with such a scarcity of legroom again. Or book a ticket on an air carrier that limits seat recline, such as Delta or Spirit.

In the end, she suffered in silence, as most of us do. But there is a tactful way to deal with someone who leans into your airspace.

* Ask them to lean forward. Timing and tone are important here. The moment someone leans back, gently tap the person on the shoulder and politely ask them if it would be possible not to recline their seat. Be. Extra. Nice.

* Get a flight attendant involved. Some leaners are clever and wait for you to go to the restroom before leaning. Then they feign sleep, which makes you reluctant to bother them. Oldest trick in the book. You can always ask a flight attendant for help.

* Move airplane seats. If you see another open seat in your class of service, feel free to move, as long as the seat belt sign isn't illuminated. You might also want to ask a flight attendant for permission. As a reminder, the seats in front of the exit row don't recline. So usually, an exit row seat means you'll keep your legroom. And maybe, your sanity.

It's also worth considering what happened to Gregorio Palomino when a passenger boarded late and took a middle seat next to him.

"He sat down next to me and pushed me and the other seatmate off [the armrests] after we had settled in," says Palomino, an event planner from San Antonio. "He looked at me and said, 'Are we going to have a problem here?'"

Palomino stood up, walked to the front of the cabin and asked if he could move to a different seat. Instead of reseating him, the attendant called the airport police, who ushered Palomino and the aggressive passenger off the plane.

At least it hadn't reached cruising altitude.

Christopher Elliott is a syndicated columnist whose work has appeared in National Geographic, Travel & Leisure, USA Today and Forbes. His latest book is "How To Be The World's Smartest Traveler" (National Geographic). Elliott also founded two nonprofit organizations for consumers, Travelers United and Elliott Advocacy.