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We Need to Start Clapping When The Plane Lands Again

BYKhaoula Ghanem

June 13, 2025

At the risk of sounding ancient, but back in my day, people used to break into applause when the plane landed. Today, that simple act has all but disappeared on many flights, especially across North America and Western Europe. What was once a spontaneous expression of collective relief is now often viewed as tacky, outdated, or worse, embarrassing. In the eyes of many frequent flyers, clapping when the plane lands has come to symbolize a lack of worldliness—an amateur move. Somewhere along the way, gratitude got replaced by self-consciousness. But in light of recent events, including the tragic Air India crash shortly after takeoff on June 12 that claimed the lives of at least 290 people, it may be time to rethink that instinct.

Modern commercial flight is so reliable that we’ve stopped thinking about how astonishing it is. But consider this: you’re traveling in a 400-ton metal tube, 35,000 feet above ground, moving at nearly 900 kilometers per hour. You’re suspended in air, held up not by magic, but by the invisible dance between air pressure, thrust, lift, and drag. A single flight involves hundreds of decisions, thousands of interlocking systems, and an enormous amount of trust placed in pilots, air traffic controllers, and machines.

And yet, it’s easy to forget that flying still carries risks. Global aviation safety has improved dramatically over the decades—according to IATA, the accident rate in 2023 was 0.80 per million sectors, a slight improvement over 2022—but the infrastructure behind that safety is straining. Airlines face pilot shortages, aging aircraft, rising costs, and increasingly extreme weather events due to climate change. In May alone, severe turbulence led to injuries on multiple flights. The Air India tragedy is a painful reminder that for all our engineering prowess, things can still go wrong in a split second. And while statistically rare, accidents do still happen, and when they do, they remind us that we’ve perhaps become too casual about something that’s fundamentally remarkable.

In this context, maybe a small show of appreciation when things go right isn’t such a bad idea. So why did we stop clapping?

The answer lies partly in cultural norms—specifically, those shaped by Western ideals of emotional restraint and irony. In many non-Western regions, from Latin America and the Middle East to Eastern Europe and parts of Africa, clapping when the plane lands remains entirely normal. It’s not seen as performative, but as a shared ritual: an acknowledgment of the journey, the labor behind it, and the joy of arriving safely.

In contrast, Western societies—especially post-Internet—often code public sincerity as naïve or unsophisticated. Somewhere around the 2010s, the rise of global meme culture and online snark reframed clapping on a plane as the ultimate faux pas. Twitter users and stand-up comedians began mocking the practice, while Buzzfeed-style listicles categorized it alongside using selfie sticks in public for behaviors that are tragically out-of-touch.

The irony is that this shift says more about cultural values than it does about the act itself. The aversion to clapping is, in many ways, a performance of its own—one rooted in class signaling, cultural hegemony, and a desire to appear unfazed. A refusal to be impressed, even when the situation arguably warrants it (that TikTok skit of the guy joking about being nonchalant during a plane crash so as to not give his airport crush the ick immediately comes to mind).

@simnsanto #planecrash ♬ sound credit sugardoe – 𝓜♱

A broader issue at play here is the erosion of everyday appreciation. In a world where service workers are stretched thin, where emotional burnout is common, and where public life increasingly encourages detachment over connection, spontaneous gratitude has become rare.
And yet, we clap for far less. We applaud when a band plays an encore, when an influencer finishes a TED Talk, when a football player scores a penalty. But not when someone just flew you across an ocean and returned you safely to your family?

The people flying those planes—the pilots, crew, ground staff—are often operating under enormous pressure. According to the International Federation of Air Line Pilots’ Associations (IFALPA), fatigue is one of the most commonly reported safety concerns. Flight attendants deal with growing incidents of passenger aggression, understaffing, and shrinking layovers. We may not see it, but we’re being held in the air by human effort.

Obviously, not every landing calls for celebration, but perhaps we could resist the impulse to judge others for doing it (and seriously question why showing appreciation became something to be embarrassed about in the first place). It’s okay to be a little moved by the fact that you were suspended in the air, and now you’re not, or that someone got you safely from one country to another. So if the wheels touch down and someone starts to clap, let them. Or better yet, join in. You’re not too cool.

We Need to Start Clapping When The Plane Lands Again

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We Need to Start Clapping When The Plane Lands Again

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