Passenger Demands Entire Row Of Seats For Claustrophobia — This Is Where Disability Demands On Planes Cross The Line

A woman on the phone with her airline insisted she’s entitled to an entire row of seats to herself at no extra charge – because she’s claustrophobic.

She’s at home, filming herself while speaking to a reservations agent. She explains that she has “a serious medical condition,” claustrophobia, and that she has a doctor’s note. Because of that, she says, “I will be needing three seats,” so there’s nobody sitting next to her for the flight.

• The agent is remarkably patient. He tells her, multiple times, that she’s free to buy three seats but she’ll need to pay for the other two.
• She insists, “I shouldn’t have to pay for something if it’s a medical condition. You’re discriminating against me.”

Woman says she needs 3 free seats on plane because of claustrophobia.pic.twitter.com/3YPM8MwEmA

— Defiant L’s (@DefiantLs) November 28, 2025

She tries a couple of analogies. If there’s a passenger with a peanut allergy, she says, no one is allowed to eat peanuts on board – so why is she not entitled to three seats if that’s what she needs to travel? When the agent calls the request unreasonable, she pivots to tall passengers: “What about people who are tall? You give them extra leg room.”

Tall passengers don’t get free extra-legroom seats, either. Then he drops the line the internet has latched on to: if she can afford a ticket to Croatia, he says, he assumes she can afford the other two seats. She objects that he doesn’t know what she can afford, threatens to Karen-escalate to a manager, and signs off with, “Thank you for absolutely nothing.”

Versions of the clip are now everywhere, under captions like “They refuse to give me extra seats for my medical condition” and “I need free seats for my serious medical condition,” and it’s being debated as if it’s a real, live call.

As Much As People Hate Airlines, Almost No One Is Sympathetic

The comment sections are almost entirely unsympathetic.

• “Overweight → Pay for 2 seats. Tall → Pay for extra legroom. You want 3 seats → Pay for 3 seats.”
• “If you’re claustrophobic you shouldn’t be getting on a plane.”
• “Three seats? Sure, your ticket will be [price of three seats].”

Even self-described claustrophobic passengers are unimpressed. One writes that they do get anxious but simply book an aisle seat and, if they have to, pay for extra legroom – they’ve “never even thought about asking for 3 free seats.”

What Airlines Actually Have To Do For Medical Conditions

In the U.S., the Air Carrier Access Act and DOT’s disability rules require airlines not to discriminate on the basis of disability and to provide certain kinds of assistance: wheelchair help, boarding and deplaning, help with assistive devices, and seating accommodations that meet disability-related needs.

That “seating accommodation” language is where things like:

• moving a passenger with limited mobility from a middle seat to an aisle if one is available,
• seating a blind passenger with a companion, or
• keeping someone with a service animal out of an exit row

come from.

What it doesn’t say is that if you’d be more comfortable with three seats to yourself, the airline has to comp you two revenue seats.

DOT has gone out of its way to make this explicit.

• In the seating rule, 14 C.F.R. §382.85(f):

“You are not required to furnish more than one seat per ticket or to provide a seat in a class of service other than the one the passenger has purchased in order to provide an accommodation required by this part.”

• DOT’s public pamphlet (“Accessible Seating Accommodations in Air Travel”) explains:

Must an airline provide an extra seat free of charge for a qualified passenger with a disability who needs that space?
No. Carriers are not required to furnish more than one seat per ticket purchased.

• Another section on charges (today §382.31) says carriers may not charge for services that are required by the rule, but they may charge for services not required and may charge a passenger “for the use of more than one seat” if their size or condition causes them to occupy more than one seat.

DOT has decided, at a regulatory level, that an extra seat is not a “required accommodation.” The ‘no special charges’ rule doesn’t apply to extra seats, and airlines are expressly allowed to make you pay for them. Extra seats are, in almost every jurisdiction, a commercial question, not an entitlement.

There are a couple of notable exceptions:

• Southwest’s “Customers of Size” policy – If you can’t fit comfortably in one seat with the armrests down, Southwest will let you book a second seat, then after travel they refund the cost of that extra seat. That’s a company policy choice, not mandated by law.  (Starting January 26, 2026 when Southwest moves to assigned seats, there’s no more guarnateed complimentary second seat at the gate, and refunds for the extra seat become conditional – the flight has to depart with at least one open seat of the same seat type and refund must be requested within 90 days.)
• Canada’s “One Person, One Fare” rule – On domestic flights with Air Canada, Jazz, and WestJet, certain passengers with severe disabilities – including those who are functionally disabled by obesity – are entitled to an extra needed seat without paying an additional fare.

Claustrophobia isn’t a free-row pass in those systems either.

The Peanut Allergy Analogy Is Wrong

The woman leans heavily on peanut allergies: if one passenger has a peanut allergy, she says, no one is allowed to eat peanuts, so why doesn’t her condition get equal treatment?

A few problems with that:

• Banning peanuts (or just not serving them) is mostly about liability: if a child goes into anaphylaxis because you served peanuts next to them, that’s a major safety incident and an obvious lawsuit.
• Asking other passengers not to eat peanuts is an inconvenience, not a revenue hit.
• There’s no general federal rule that forces airlines to ban peanuts either and they generally don’t force passengers not to eat them.

Who Pays For Your Space On A Plane?

A couple of years ago I wrote about the plus-size influencer who wanted airlines to provide extra seats for free because squeezing into one economy seat is painful and humiliating. The core argument then is the same as now: who pays for your space needs?

• If you need a wheelchair, a ventilator, or a support person to travel safely, the law leans toward requiring accommodations.
• If your body literally doesn’t fit in one seat, you need to buy more space. That’s not just for your own comfort but because you’d otherwise be imposing an unreasonable cost on others.
• If you prefer more space to feel comfortable, airlines have products for that: extra-legroom coach, premium economy, business, and buying an extra seat.

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If airlines are forced to give you that space, and can’t sell it to other passengers, they need to make up the revenue elsewhere (or the flight itself may not be profitable enough to justify). That means either higher fares for other passengers, or less air service. And don’t kid yourself that it would be just one passenger and one seat on the occasional flight, either.