Should we have a charter for aeroplane etiquette? Last week two passengers on an Emirates flight from Dubai to Manchester got into a scrap in an ugly seat-reclining incident. Police officers had to be called in to meet them at the gate. It seems a bit much to get so heated over an extra five degrees of tilt, but normal social mores are suspended when 300 people are jammed into a tiny metal capsule, forced to breathe recycled air and get intimate with strangers. Airlines should think about making the experience more relaxing; battery-travel conditions are not conducive to peace and love. Mood lighting, pan pipes and foot spas, perhaps? Complimentary Valium might work. Your child is not as cute as you think it is. Do not allow it to stand in its seat and stare, unblinkingly, at the passenger behind for the duration of the journey. Unsettling doesn't begin to describe it. Similarly, do not let the child stand on your lap and drool on the passenger in front. Peek-a-boo is also forbidden. If you insist on taking the aisle seat, then stand up to allow other passengers access to the window seat. Do not sit there and watch your fellow traveller contort themselves to avoid brushing your nose with their buttocks. Ask before you tilt, especially at meal times as you are in danger of reclining your fellow traveller's gruel into their lap. Be nice to the stewards. They have your dignity in their hands: one look of concern on a steward's face, one meaningful trot to the cabin and the weaker travellers will be whimpering into their sick bags. But when you consider the passenger's lot: the humiliation of the full-body scanners, motion sickness, cramp, jet lag, broken TVs (yours the only broken set on an18 hour flight), poor food, poorer wine, and fear of death, it's not really surprising that they occasionally let themselves down. If passengers are treated like animals then they can hardly be blamed if they begin to behave like them.