As a woman reclines her seat, it repeatedly lurches forward. The passenger behind her gives it a hard push every time she moves back. This is her “worst plane ride” but the ride is fine, it’s the person behind her who’s actually the worst.
She went to the flight attendants for help, but there’s no indication it was actually resolved. No matter what you think of seat recline, and there really is an etiquette to it, shoving is out of line.
@ameejau Worst plane ride #fyp #trending #plane #travel ♬ original sound – bobi🍏
Seat recline is important for passengers on long flights with poorly-padded seats. Recline works to distribute passenger weight and reduce back stress. Reclining is also a basic right when it’s a feature of your seat (certain airlines like Spirit and Frontier feature seats they call “pre-reclined” i.e. that do not recline).
- A passenger controls their own seat
- Airlines ban the Knee Defender device, which prevents recline – a device was designed to stop reclining. While their interest is prevent damage to the seat, they do not allow the passenger seated behind to interfere with the recline function
There is a proper way to exercise your right to recline, though. Don’t recline during mealtime. Try not to recline unless it serves a real purpose (if it doesn’t actually benefit your comfort, don’t recline).
Ultimately you need to buy the space that you want, ask politely that passengers around you conform to norms, and if they don’t get a crewmember involved. You can also consider a Coasian solution: you each have an initial set of rights and they can impede on each other’s preferences, so find a (cash) bargain.
There are a number of ways passengers take this into their own hands to fight recline. Recline rage is real! One woman got mad and used the passenger’s headrest as a footrest and clapped their shoes over the passenger’s head.
Another braced their hands on the seat in front of them for an entire 8 hour flight to stop that passenger from reclining. And one woman (dubbed ‘economy class Karen’) instructed the passenger in front of her that reclining is against the rules and “not allowed” on a 10-hour flight.
Start recording their behaviour and if they touch you it is assault.
How about making the last 5 or so rows of seats able to recline while the rest of coach has fixed position seats. People can book their seat preference by choosing seats at the time of reservation.
I’m a big guy (ex football lineman) and I can assure you I can not function when the coach seat in front of me reclines. I can’t exit the seat, eat a meal, drink a beverage or look at a tablet unless I hold it on top of the seat in front of me. Most of the time people just recline automatically even if they are smaller healthy adults and even children. As coach gets tighter and tighter eventually a conflict will occur as it has here. Airline seats are a joke in terms of safety design- no lumbar support for the spine, inadequate seat padding and too short (my head, neck and top of my shoulders are above the top of the seat. Each generation gets taller. New cars have been made shorter to reduce wind resistance. I can’t see traffic lights when driving a sedan so I drive a truck or a Scion XB (47″ headroom). This is just the reality now, designers will not address the changes and their clients do not want to spend the money. Until they do there will be increasing conflict as our society continues to devolve.
I’m sorry, but plane seats shouldn’t recline, particularly lately when they disturb the working space of the passenger behind them. In my travels, I’ve had a few devices broken this was, and some flights where I couldn’t adequately work because of the individual in front of me. Just like people state that perhaps I should have bought J, perhaps those who want to recline should pay more.
I had this happened to me on a short business class flight on AA years ago. I tried to recline my seat but the the man behind me would stop the seat from reclining by pushing it forward. After a few tries, I asked the flight attendant to help me recline seat, she looked at he guy behind with a stern face while helping me recline the seat. I thanked her and that was the end of it. I hope that’s the case for everyone else but it isn’t so these day with some people having a certain sense of entitlement. Most unfortunate. Being a tiny woman weighing a 100lbs, I try to avoid any kind of confrontation as much as I can. Now if I were seated in economy at that time, I am not sure if anything will be done. Having said that, I wish airlines would stop making economy seat space tighter and tighter.
I asked someone to stop reclining until the drink service was over. They complied. But it’s not always easy to stop the person in front reclining.
There is a degree of courtesy that should be involved i.e. checking with the person behind you before you slam (hopefully don’t slam) your seat back. However, wishful thinking in today’s ‘society’. BTW Gary, stories about this are getting old. I would almost prefer to hear about your latest $900 annual fee card!
Slow news day, eh?
Gary, with everything happening with the ME airlines, and other things happening in the aviation and travel world, why are you regurgitating this stuff? Every month some tik tok seat recline post is reinvented on slow news days. OK, fine. The difference is, this isn’t really a slow news period. There’s real things happening folks with trips on a ME carrier or transit through that region actually care about and have immediate need to know. Even the Alaska or Hilton devaluation is more newsworthy, and the latest Hilton devaluation was barely a footnote in a roundup. But yet the seat recline story gets reincarnated, like it’s ‘new news’.
It looks like the video was a skit. That being said, the ability to recline does not make it a right. If it was a right, every seat would have recline and a number of seats do not have recline. People would be able to sue if they could not recline.
100 pounds. Tiny. And reclining.
The word for people like you rhymes with runt.
Alas, the Coasian solution — bargaining — won’t work when property rights are unclear, a situation we call “legal failure.” Disputes over the “right to recline” on airplanes provide a textbook example of a situation involving unclear or contested property rights. If property rights were clearly assigned to either party (the recliner or the reclinee), then we would expect to see more Coasean bargaining. But in the absence of clear or well-defined property rights (the current situation on commercial airplanes), we would expect to see more conflict. (By the way, we previously modeled this conflict as a Prisoner’s Dilemma: who will be the first to defect? What do you think?) In any case, the lesson here is clear. If we wish to reduce conflict (and promote Coasean bargaining), all the airlines need to do is to clearly assign the right to recline or the right not to be reclined upon to one party or the other.
I haven’t seen any coach seat that reclines enough to make the life uncomfortable to the person sitting behind in the last decade or so once the airlines started restricting the amount of recline.
@IsaacM: Then you must not be looking at the seats behind the wings. If you’re over 6’2″, just sitting in one of those seats is uncomfortable, even if the seat in front of you is upright. Even the slightest recline makes it worse.
@ThatOtherOtherGuy — LOL. I’ve noticed mostly conservative-types misunderstanding and over-using false and excessive claims of ‘assault’ as a strategy, lately. Fellas, good luck with actually charging, civilly or criminally, anyone of assault on that basis; enjoy paying attorneys to pursue such a case, months and months of fees. Nice online ‘hot-take,’ but in reality, that’ll cost ya. The juice ain’t worth the squeeze, most of the time.
I’ve flown around 1.5 million miles and I have never reclined my seat unless it’s a lie flat seat. Space between seats is too small and people who choose to recline, deserve whatever they get coming to them. If I’m in the unfortunate position behind someone who reclines, I just direct the airvents near me towards the tops of their heads, on full blast. If they don’t care about my comfort, I couldn’t care any less about theirs.
At 6’7″ my inseam is longer than any seat pitch. I try to purchase whatever the airline upgraded or exit row economy seat is. I even do not bring carry on that goes under the seat in front of me as my feet go there. I do not have enough to purchase buisness or the whatever they call the best seat on the plane.
Sometimes my knees pressed against the seat ahead even with my feet under the seat where carry on should go the person in front of me cannot recline. This has led to some very heating meetings with those people in front of me.
In this day and age I assume that means most people will say I shouldn’t fly until I can afford a seat that I can fit in. My height did not come from eating too many donuts and before all this upcharge for everything I could just walk up to the counter and request exit row and one look at me they would give it to me. Now some 5′ 2″ 85 year old person is willing and able to assist in that exit row since it was sold at $160 for a transcon.
If you don’t want the passenger in front of you to recline their seat, try to book your seat in the row behind the Emergency Exit row. The seats in the Emergency Exit row are generally designed to NOT RECLINE.
I’m not in the S business and won’t take any S from Recline Ragers. I’ll have them removed from the plane and taken into custody by the airport police at the gate.
1990 Really?! I’ve seen it more liberals whining and complaining.
A long time ago people used to have common courtesy. They can recline their seat but they wouldn’t do it necessarily all the way back A little bit of compromise both ways. Seemed to work pretty good with very few exceptions.
@ Ictpilt. and a long time ago seat pitch was 34-36 inches in Coach (Economy).
@F.E. Guerra-Pujol – the airlines clearly have given passengers the right to recline their seats- there’s even a little button to do so.
I agree with the others that you should have common courtesy when you recline- put the seat back up for meals & drinks, and when you are out of your seat. And if the person in front doesn’t recline, I often won’t. But if they go back, I’ll go back as well- there’s too little space otherwise.
And if you are big, you gotta buy the bigger seats in the exit row (added advantage- seats in front do not recline) or the premium + seats. Modern coach seats on most airlines do not have sufficient seat pitch for large people. Think of it as a necessary fee.
I used to fly quite a bit and I never once had an economy seat that reclined back more than 2 inches. I do feel that you should ask (or at least warn) the person behind you that the seat will be reclined and give them a minute for them to move whatever. I also feel strongly that if anyone interferes with reclining a seat (such a a knee defender device or other physical obstruction) should be removed from the flight and further connections and flights canceled. If you can’t behave like an adult, dont fly!
Actually, the FAA bans the recline defeater as an unauthorized modification of an airworthy part and the person installing one may be fined and otherwise penalized.
In many instances, forcibly pushing a seatback forward with a person resting on it, may be considered assault and the police may handle that matter on landing. Otherwise, if the flight attendant instructs someone to stop pushing on a seat back, the perpetrator may be penalized by the FAA for violating FAR 121.580: failure to follow aircrew instructions.
§ 121.580 Prohibition on interference with crewmembers.
No person may assault, threaten, intimidate, or interfere with a crewmember in the performance of the crewmember’s duties aboard an aircraft being operated under this part.
It’s not a small matter.