Why People Clap When Their Plane Lands: The Real (And Not-So-Real) Reasons

by SharonKurheg

Whether you’ve been flying for 45 minutes or 4.5 hours, it invariably happens…the plane lands and at least one person claps.

What’s up with that? I mean, can the pilot even hear when people clap? (By the way, we did find out the answer to that.)

When the pandemic was diminishing and people were flying again, we noticed more folks were clapping when we landed. But that could almost make sense, since so many were just so happy they could fly again. But what about before COVID (B.C.)? And since?

Over the years, there’s actually been quite a lot written about the topic, from ABC News, Slate and Medium, among others. But we wanted to go with a more scientific model. One that had done much research with a substantial representation of people who fly. So we went right to the source:

Orlando International Airport’s Twitter feed.

We’ve already written about how MCO’s X feed, formerly known as Twitter, is one of our all-time favorites in terms of travel-related content. So when it turned out that their Guru Of All Things Social Media had asked this question, I was VERY interested in hearing the answers. And some great ones ran the gamut from absolutely sincere to…not so much. You decide which is which…

Screen Shot 2019-02-20 at 10.30.01 AMScreen Shot 2019-02-20 at 10.29.40 AMScreen Shot 2019-02-20 at 10.28.56 AMScreen Shot 2019-02-20 at 10.27.55 AMScreen Shot 2019-02-20 at 10.27.09 AMScreen Shot 2019-02-20 at 10.26.32 AMScreen Shot 2019-02-20 at 10.23.58 AM

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So there ya go. 😉

Are you a clapper? Why or why not?

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1 comment

YmKx December 16, 2024 - 1:40 am

And I thought it wa an Israeli thing because on El Al flights there is clapping only when Landing in TLV. Not on the way out.

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