A passenger turned their Spirit Airlines seat into what may be the most bizarre makeshift workstation I’ve ever seen, consisting of a large external monitor (that looks to be about 17 to 20 inches) strapped to the seatback in front of them. It’s anchored to the tray table with a base and a vertical support, and then belted around the seatback and headrest.
He had a split mechanical keyboard strapped to each thigh on kneepads while actively coding on top of a Spirit Airlines half half tray table.
Imagine you’re on a plane and guy next to you busts out a 3 foot tall PC monitor and straps on his keypad kneepads https://t.co/D8RiY2goPP
— ⟠Palis⟠ (@palis) October 24, 2025
Passengers seem to find this obnoxious, inconsiderate, and performative. But outside of the potential encroachment on other passengers’ space, the hazard it represents during turbulence when you’re doing this in such close quarters, and general annoyance is it weird to think it’s also a little bit awesome? What a great productivity hack, to make use of your time at 36,000 feet!
This is really something you can only do on Spirit’s ‘pre-reclined’ seats – imagine if the passenger seated in front of you reclined!
Most people, of course, would just use a tablet holder that many seat backs without inflight entertainment screens now have to hold their smaller “second screen” instead of bringing a giant monitor. They make smaller devices in a way that didn’t exist when I was first flying. I remember carrying a Mac desktop on planes in college when flying to debate tournaments, and our own rig to power it.
Tablet-style devices are actually going to get you more work time, since tray tables have to be stowed for taxi, takeoff and landing and larger electronic devices need to be stowed as well. Plus you can do a better job maintaining privacy and discretion.
Here your work is visible to the rest of the cabin, and you never know who’s seated beside you (although Spirit Airlines is hardly ground zero for corporate espionage). Maybe consider using Apple Vision Pro on the plane instead?
We’ve seen a tech billionaire build an office in the sky but they had plenty of room to do it, seated in American Airlines Flagship First Class. In coach, it’s far more efficient to use the top of the seat in front of you as a standing desk. Ultimately I’m not sure if this monitor setup beats actually using two laptops in coach?
Gary, all due respect, this is not a hazard in any meaningful sense. So many things that are slightly annoying are classified as safety issues because they are in variance of statute or regulation, or because people don’t like it. It’s inhuman and bizarre to cloak personal pet peeves in statements of concern for safety.
Don’t mean to aim this at you specifically – that comment just reminded me of strange society we seem to inhabit where the mass of men and women seem to want their interactions with each other and the world at large to be governed by policy. It’s not natural.
That’s the Spirit!
What I really want to know is, where can I get a ~20-inch monitor with a nice square-ish aspect ratio like that??