Comment: French passengers applaud the pilot for more than just relief

With holiday season just around the corner, consider this a public service announcement for anyone looking to bookend their travels with French flights: the landing clap is alive and well.

Historically, the French have always had a strange fondness for slamming palms together when the wheels touch down.

My colleague recalls childhood hops between Paris and Tunis when these spontaneous eruptions of relief/gratitude/respect for piloting nous were part and parcel of the country’s commercial air travel. 

A map published on Medium.com in 2016 confirmed this: while swathes of Africa and Asia were green, denoting ‘always acceptable’ to clap, France remained yellow for ‘mostly acceptable’. By contrast, the UK and US were red for ‘rarely’.

But like leg room and free snacks, the practice seemed to have disappeared from the radar, a relic of a bygone era when hurtling through the air had a whiff of glamour rather than feeling like one long whinge. 

So disillusioned have we become with the whole business, in fact, that in some anglophone countries applause is now even discouraged by aviation professionals for fear it may be disingenuous.

Flying is an 'act of surrender'

Perhaps the French are just less cynical than us Brits. Or perhaps they have a better handle on the fundamental truth of air travel, which is that all control over our fate is ceded the moment we step aboard. 

I recently heard flying described as “an act of surrender”, and a comparison was drawn between that submission and the self-determination which is feted in anglophone concepts, such as the American Dream. 

Is clapping a landing so anathema in our culture because it necessitates an admission that, all along, we were in someone else’s hands?

Whatever the psychology, just know that the French are still at it; my recent flight from Paris to Madeira concluded with the same ripple of applause my colleague had told me about. 

At the time I dismissed it as a one-off. Although the weather was fine and the entire flight had been turbulence-free, Funchal is known for being one of Europe’s toughest airport landings. Perhaps my fellow-travellers were simply expressing their admiration for the smooth descent, given this hairy reputation.

That theory was scotched on our return flight, however – this time landing at Charles de Gaulle on a clear, windless night after another uneventful four hours. Again, the applause. The French, it would seem, just like a collective cheer.

Which would be fine, of course, if I wasn’t so terrified of flying. 

Sure, I get that clapping might be a convenient way to express relief at being delivered safely to terra firma, but I can’t help but be haunted by the prophecy of comedian Gad Elmaleh. 

Addressing his own aerophobia, he told an audience at one of his stand-ups shows in 2005: “I’ll stop being scared the day people stop applauding the pilot for landing successfully. The guy has gone through 10 years of college, he’s paid a fortune, he lands – and there are 200 passengers who go;’ Woah! That’s so sick!’”

A pause. And here’s the nub: “The guy’s going to get excited and take off again!”