Rude but not aggressive passengers

[Juud]

Nice question ProM. The type of pax you mention is indeed a separate specimen. They are a strain on the CC, and their ceaseless time-consumption is detrimental to the other pax.

The procedural answer is let the CC deal with the attention seeker as they are trained to do.
Then again......

These people often play for the gallery, their fellow pax, in the mistaken belief that everybody around them agrees with their jaundiced view of everything and everybody. The approval they percieve from their neighbours appears to feed them.
I have seen a number of instances where, as soon as their fellow pax quietly or loudly, pointed out that they did not in fact agree at all with the attention seeker and heartily supported the CC, the misbehaviour stopped abruptly.

So I for one am always very grateful when a fellow passenger politely or jokingly interferes and puts an end to the behaviour.
Not a very clear answer is it?

... may years ago on the upperdeck of a 747. group of top echelon chaps from our country's biggest bank and a group from a large petroleum company.
The bankers, one of them in particular, were claiming their unfair share of attention, being very rude to the CC and never stopped whingeing. It was as if they were egging each other on to greater feats of rudeness, with one particularly obnoxious ringleader.

Over the pond a petroleum engineer could take no more.
"Hey you big important Banker man. If you hate it so much here, why don't you do us all a favour and fly Virgin next time? Take Branson's balloon and with any luck they won't chuck you out the basket half way!"
Much laughter on the whole upperdeck, and no more whingeing from the bankers. The Oilman had turned the atmosphere around with one yelled sentence, and suddenly all the other bankers privately advised us that their colleague was a known jack@ss and they'd report him to higher management.
The bankers got the service they had paid for, the Oilers got pampered within an inch of their lives.