The Window Seat Negotiation
A passenger boarding a fully booked flight discovered a man sitting comfortably in his assigned window seat, reading a magazine. When the passenger politely pointed out that he had reserved seat 12A, the man looked up, patted the middle seat next to him, and said, "Look, pal, I've got a bad knee and I really need the wall to lean against, so why don't you take 12B?" The passenger shook his head, pulled out his boarding pass, and replied, "I'd love to help your knee, but unless 12B comes with the wing view I paid sixty dollars extra for, you're sitting in my personal architecture."
The Unclaimed Carry-On
After all the passengers had boarded a commuter flight, the cabin crew found a solitary, unlabeled neon-pink suitcase sitting in the middle of the aisle near the galley. The flight attendant grabbed the PA system microphone and announced to the entire cabin, "We have an unclaimed pink bag in the front. If this belongs to you, please raise your hand so we can stow it." Silence filled the cabin as nobody moved a muscle or claimed the bright bag. The attendant picked up the microphone again and said, "If no one claims this bag in thirty seconds, we're going to hand it over to security, along with the forty pounds of fresh homemade chocolate cookies we can smell inside it," prompting three different passengers in the first five rows to immediately jump out of their seats.
The Extra Baggage Charge
A traveler standing at the ticket counter was told by the agent that his single checked suitcase was three pounds over the weight limit, which would trigger a fifty-dollar oversized bag fee. The traveler opened the suitcase right on the scale, pulled out three heavy winter coats, put all three of them on at the same time over his t-shirt, and zipped the bag back up. The scale dropped right to the allowed limit, and the agent printed the baggage tag without batting an eye. As the traveler stood there sweating profusely under four layers of clothing, he looked at the agent and said, "I may look like a marshmallow, but I just saved fifty bucks on gravity."