The 11 Best Travel Secrets From Airport Workers

"Be nice to the ticket agent and they will pretty much always let you get away with overweight bags," said Redditor WorseToWorser. "If you were funny, I'd even not charge you for bags."

Same goes for flight attendants, according to ihatcoe, who says, "The nicer you are to us, the more we can do for you. Ran out of beef? Ask politely and we will get you a fillet mignon from first class. Your neighbour is noisy? Tell us nicely and we might be able to get you a better seat." So, treat others the way you want to be treated. Got it.

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According to user nunswithknives, "You can pop a zipper with a pen and drag the locked zipper pulls around the bag to close them back up. I've done this many times to identify bags that are tagless and locked."

IAmDotorgBU suggests zip ties, which he uses. "I usually toss a few spare in the bag. In one case, I opened the bag (still zip-tied) at my destination and there was one of the TSA papers in it. They'd opened it, and whoever did it re-zip-tied it for me with one of the spares. Thumbs up to that guy."

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"Not a secret, just common sense; the reason some bags miss their flight or get misrouted is because passengers don't remove old tags," said Redditor aurelius. "It confuses handlers as well as the conveyor belt scanners. I see it happen all the time."

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"You know how all the other armrests can be raised except for the one next to the aisle? Turns out that one can be raised as well via a small button in a divot on the underside of the armrest," revealed user Goat_Porker. "Useful if you want to spread out a bit more, though some flight attendants may tell you to put it back in place."

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"I used to work for warehouse that supplied a certain airline with items. The headsets that are given to you are not new, despite being wrapped up. They are taken off the flight, 'cleaned,' and then packaged again," said Reddit user ichigo29. Ick.

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"I work Revenue Management for an airline," said user Drama_Llama. "On average, the cheapest time to BUY a ticket is Tuesday afternoon. The cheapest time to FLY is Tuesday, Wednesday, or Saturday. This applies to US flights in my experience."

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"Flights are routinely overbooked because there's an estimate per route of what percentage of people tend to miss the flight," informed user paradoxofchoice. "So if you don't have a seat assignment, you might not get on. Which is why they ask for volunteers. If you are a frequent flyer and know the busy times and flights you could volunteer all day from every flight going to a hub and make $1,000 in credit." Ka-ching!

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"You get more customer protections buying directly from the airline," said Redditor Mudbutt7. "All those third party travel sites are owned by the same company, and you lose a lot of the rights afforded to you in the airlines contract of carriage." It might cost you more, but better to be safe than sorry?

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"The coffee is absolutely disgusting because no one washes the container that goes out every morning," said WorseToWorser. "The station agents who get paid way too little don't give a sh*t about cleaning it. I certainly didn't when I worked for AA. Also, because we weren't given the proper supplies to clean it. We pretty much just rinsed it out and dumped coffee into it." Hmm, got any barf bags handy?

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"When the drink cart is coming through, you can ask for a full can of pop instead of the tiny little cup filled with mostly ice," said user Emzam 209.

"If you checked your dog there's about a 30 per cent chance it's terrified before it even gets on the plane, who knows how scared it gets during the actual flight," said Redditor RabbitMix. "Bag room agents will usually try to comfort a scared animal, but all we can really do is talk to it, so if you write your pet's name on their carrier it usually helps a lot." This one's a no-brainer.