Last night on my flight, I was sitting towards the back of the plane and witnessed a large family that had been sitting in the back rows suddenly all get up as soon as the plane had come to a stop. Immediately, they rushed the aisle, cutting in front of everyone. This nearly caused a flight mutiny as passengers in the back started yelling at the family to wait their turn and shouting, "What happened to your manners?"

I’m pretty non-confrontational, but let me tell you, this act of cutting in front nearly put me over the edge and ready to jump up and start yelling too. After sitting in the same uncomfortably confined, barely-reclining seat, breathing the same stale air and listening to the same babies cry for hours, we are all more than a little anxious to get off the plane.

The way I see it, that type of behavior is justified when maybe you have about five minutes to get to your connecting flight, or if one of your kids is about two seconds away from being extremely sick on the plane, but when I see the same family that cut in front of everyone, casually standing at baggage claim awaiting their luggage without any apparent hurry, my faith in some people's ability to just be better humans completely diminishes.

What happened to simply being nice? To the manners we were all raised with (or should've been)? For some reason, there’s a point in our lives where we disregard everything we were taught, like how to treat others decently. Manners could be simply something that starts with some small act on an airplane, some common courtesy like being friendly to the flight attendant or treating others’ luggage in the overhead bins with care.

It’s time we got back to our roots and practiced a bit more kindness in our everyday lives, for the sake of promoting happiness and sanity, and most importantly, for pleasant air travels.