This one is controversial.
After we read that ordering a Diet Coke on your flight is one of the worst things you can do to your flight attendant, we wondered if it really bothers flight attendants quite that much or if this is a bit of hyperbole.
As Heather Poole, a flight attendant, wrote on her blog and was quoted in the above article saying, "Of all the drinks we serve, Diet Coke takes the most time to pour — the fizz takes forever to settle at 35,000 feet. In the time it takes me to pour a single cup of Diet Coke, I can serve three passengers a different beverage."
But as the headline of Poole's article suggests — "Do flight attendants REALLY hate serving Diet Coke? (How the misconception began)" — while it may be annoying to wait a little longer to pour someone's drink, flight attendants don't expect you to stop ordering Diet Coke. They certainly won't.
"For the record, I drink Diet Coke both as a flight attendant and as a passenger," Poole writes.
To get to the bottom of this one, we asked a couple of flight attendants specifically if ordering Diet Coke mid-flight is all that bothersome, and we also got mixed opinions.
One flight attendant we talked to said he's never even heard of this before — the only time he found a passenger ordering a Diet Coke annoying was when he dropped the can and it shot across the galley, spraying soda all over him. So really, nothing to do with the passenger.
And another flight attendant echoed much of Poole's sentiments:
"It takes a while to pour because of the fizz. It's just a few extra seconds, but when you're in the aisle trying to do a bunch of things it feels a lot longer. It happens with any of the diet sodas, I think. But Diet Coke is all I drink, so I can't get too annoyed."
Considering all of the far worse things you could do on a plane that we highlighted, we think you can let yourself off the hook on this one.