Preaching of religion by pax on flight
 

I recently flew on a large commercial airline (in one of the big 3 alliances) on a full A320. One of the passengers during the flight decided to start preaching religion out loud, standing up from her seat and encouraging everyone to accept her faith, while all pax were on board. There was no incitement to violence. And no, she didn't want to be quiet when other pax asked her to do so.

I accept freedom of speech... but if somebody in my High Street is preaching, I'm able to walk on by instead of being forced to listen. I accept that this isn't the same as a drunken yob picking fights at 38,000 feet... but it's not a great look either !

Cabin crew in this instance did nothing which I thought was weak. What do cabin crew of major airlines normally do when this sort of thing happens ?

Quiet preaching sometimes on the cabin floor like in the door areas is routine and tolerated. This event sounds more like somebody wanting to do sort of propaganda disturbing his fellow travellers which would not be tolerable.

You should start a sing-song......................

People had been queuing up at stupid o'clock in the very early morning at departures to check their luggage... so presumably had woken up at even more stupid o'clock. Singing kumbaya at Heathrow on a flight full of suits arriving at 7am probably isn't going to go down well

Hare Krishna is a good one.

Surely "quiet preaching" is an oxymoron ?

I meant to say quiet praying.

The goal of cults is to convince members the only safety to be found is in the cult and to do so they encourage members to do public annoyances to humiliate the members. Those members return to the mother ship with the news the outside world is a hostile place. Rinse and repeat. They are in the cult because they were ill or vulnerable and the cult preyed on that.

Dealing with any particular sect requires specific knowledge - I am told that mentioning one is "disfellowshipped" is an effective deterrent for some of the Christian cults.

Otherwise treat it as one would treat any other mental illness symptom. I'd get a small group together to confront the person - "We are all possessed by demons and you are on our dinner flight. Pray more quietly and don't struggle."

If a person were to start that malarkey within my hearing on any enclosed space that neither of us could leave - would bring the strongest (and politest) complaint to the CC and would escalate as required. Fortunately, mobile phone can record such intrusions of those who ignore public transport conventions.

"This is your Captain speaking. Would all passengers please sit down and fasten their seat belt."

Standards of expected behavio(u)r.

Is there not some kind of passenger charter (in the fine print, listing possible penalties) that peeps need to agree to when buying a ticket?

From
'never having read the fine print' in Slough.

I could just about put up with the preaching, but the fire and brimstone would definitely be a safety hazard.

I dare say the small print in Ts&Cs tells you that you must - by law - obey the CC and FC. Yet, each time we see video of a cabin problem, the Pax have only their point of view.

Start preaching the word of Satan or The Flying Spaghetti Monster as loudly as possible?

no-one ever reads them - and like By-Laws (and some laws) no-one ever obeys them. Try stopping someone exercising their dog in a public park, or stopping them parking "just for a minute" outside a shop....................... and as for litter...................

I'm pretty sure it was Malaysian Airlines that had a few arrows stuck on the inside cabin lining of their aircraft indicating the direction to Mecca, regardless of the aircraft heading.

That's OK its non invasive - its the telling other people what they should believe that's not on

For my taste, totally out of order and the person should have been spoken to by CC, given a warning and so on. I wouldn't want anyone to start blathering loudly in the cabin, be it about philosophy, car mechanics, politics, poetry and especially not religion. If it's an early flight, as mentioned, everyone will have been up since perhaps 3am and in my experience want to catch up with their lost sleep on the flight when possible.

Everyone has a right to both have a faith and express it and not have a faith and not want to hear it.

I’ll point to these two videos. One showing the reaction from passengers on a train (like an aircraft an enclosed space where an audience is trapped regardless on whether or not they want to hear the message):


And an example of preaching flipped on its head. Two atheists preach Darwin’s Origin of Species in the home of preachers, Salt Lake City:

Having flown as SLF on Emirates several times, I can testify that a discreet icon showing the current bearing of the tomb of Mohammed (pbuh) is a constant feature of the seat-back moving map display, for the benefit of believers who need to know this. I'm pretty sure this isn't the only airline to do this.

As a person of no faith, I give credit to my fellow passengers who have undoubtedly used this information in their devotions, but have never made me aware of doing so.

Oddly the Latter Day Saints (Mormons) don't preach much in their own patch. I worked for several years with a number of Saints in the office and they NEVER preached - they were a lot better than the Baptists for sure. If you asked politely about their faith or an aspect of it they'd cheerfully tell you but they never volunteered anything unasked. I've found the Jehovah's Witnesses & the Sikh's to be the same