The golden rules of air travel revealed You don't want to get a reaction like this! Picture: Hoyasmeg/Flickr Source: Supplied ARM rest hoggers. Slow movers. People who grab your seat as they walk past. Flying is painful enough these days without the extra annoyances from those who break the unspoken rules of air travel. So here are the top four flight rules according to Erica Golden, traveller and editor of the Golden Rules of Travel website, which provides etiquette guidelines for passengers. Rule no. 1: Don't grab and push off seats as you walk down the aisle of the plane. Pushing off and bouncing down the aisle does not make you a good passenger; it makes you a bumper car. When it comes to seat preference, I go for the aisle. Some of you prefer the windows. I don't personally know anyone who like the middle seats, but I'm definitely an aisle. So I'm used to the occasional bag smack in the face while someone is boarding the plane, and that really is to be expected. With all planes (particularly regional jets) taking the Alice in Wonderland 'drink me' potion that seems to makes them smaller and smaller every day, people sometimes underestimate their total width and collide into the seats. OK, fair enough. But it's when the plane is at a cruising altitude that I get confused by people continuing to bump into other people's seats. These are the only seat bumping situations that are acceptable: Turbulence (obviously) Pregnancy (pregnant women can't really be expected to judge their own size - they're basically growing all the time) Age (I'm not giving a specific age, but if you've walked some 192,000,000 odd steps in your lifetime, you'd stumble a bit) YOUR SAY: What are your golden rules of travel? Tell us below In pictures: Plane etiquette Now, that list is really short. Intentionally short to prove my point that cuts and bruises given to those in the aisle in collisions can be prevented by the bulk of us with a little focus. If you need to balance while walking down the aisle, slow down your pace and then gently hold the side of the chair momentarily, but not the top as this pulls the person's seat down. Generally, just don't act like a bumper car. 2: The middle seat gets both arm rests connected to their seat Yesterday, I was stuck in the dreaded middle seat. The man sitting by the window kept to himself. He didn't even have a magazine or anything really, which always makes me nervous. I attributed this no-magazine-or-other-reading-material-or-technology-watching behaviour to be either poor planning or super planning, which made me really want to know which was the case. Are they stewing over a breakup, or are they a Zen master? The man who sat in the aisle seat, however, turned out to be many things, including: A nose picker (like a get-up-in-there kind of picker) A page flipper (not normal flipping, but flipping as an Olympic sport) A dandruff sharer (he didn't stop touching his head, even to pick his nose, he just used the other hand) An arm rest stealer Now, it's the fourth point that gets to me and this may be a little controversial: the person in the middle seat gets both arm rests. For those of you yelling in disagreement, let me give you some points to consider. The person in the middle seat has less flexibility than you do when in an aisle and window. You know that the window has (at least) five centimetres of grace before the panelling. The aisle ... well, you know what you have. You can get up. You can lean. You have freedom. The middle doesn't have that luxury. Even if no one 'uses' them, the arm rests provide breathing room for the person in the middle seat. Yesterday, the aisle man was, at different points, almost eight centimetres into my seating space - and I haven't even told you about the leg situation! In short, be kind, aisle and window. The middle got the short straw and needs a little something. Something like their sanity when they land. You can give it to them. Oh, and it's wise to avoid using other passengers as pillows! Steve Cullum was on a flight back home when he decided to film the woman next to him encroaching on his personal space while she slept. Credit: SteveCullumVideos/YouTube 3: Get out of the aisle as quickly as you can It IS possible for you to drop your smaller carry-on in your seat or on the ground, stow your larger carry-on and sit down in a matter of seconds. Any longer and you're holding up the plane. 4: Carry on a maximum of two items This means a purse and a carry-on. This does not mean: a coat, a shopping bag, your purse, a carry-on that doesn't fit into the overhead locker, food, your iPad, some magazines and a teddy bear. That means two. In pictures: Amazing surreal landscapes Erica Golden, the editor of the Golden Rules of Travel site. Picture: Erica Golden Source: Supplied