Why People Clap When the Plane Lands (and Whether Pilots Even Notice)

A harmless tradition for some, cringe for others — and apparently no one can agree on why we do it.

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 easing and people were flying again, we noticed more folks were clapping when we landed. That almost makes sense, since so many were just so happy they could fly again. But what about before COVID (you know… ‘BC’)? 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 a more scientific method. One that had done a lot of research with a big sample size. So we went right to the source.

Orlando International Airport’s Twitter feed.

Turns out they had asked about that very thing WAY, way back.

We’ve already written about how MCO’s Twitter/X 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…

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So there ya go. 😉

Are you a clapper? Why or why not?

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