Tag Archives for window seat.
A viral video shows a passenger repeatedly pulling down an airplane window shade while a 4-year-old behind him keeps pushing it back up. The two go back and forth in a mid-air tug-of-war — so who was right? Here’s how window-shade etiquette really works, and what you should do when the person behind you disagrees.
There’s a new class action lawsuit against United Airlines for selling window seats without windows. Surprisingly, United actually does this.
Cabin crew kept the windows locked in the dimmed position beginning after takeoff, and up until final approach to London Heathrow.
She is a fearful flyer in turbulence, and asked flight attendants to let her open her window. She was told they would, but didn’t, and believes that window seat passengers should have control of the window. She’ll even choose planes with manual window shades in the future, so she doesn’t give up control of them to flight attendants. She was just too scared when turbulence hit.
A passenger reports being in a window seat while the woman seated beside him in the middle seat kept reaching across him to close the window shade.
“She never asked me,” he said, and he would “immediately reopen it” and then every few minutes “she would reach in front of [him] again to close it.”
Southwest used to say that if you need an extra seat and there’s one available, they won’t charge you. Now they’re willing to give up revenue from ticket sales to accommodate. One plus-sized advocate cheers them on.
When you’re in an aisle seat you direct your own destiny. You get up to use the lavatory whenever you wish and don’t need to worry about waiting on other passengers to gather their belongings to let you out, or your seatmates falling asleep and needing to be woken to let you out. I find window seats claustrophobic.
It turns out that the preference for an aisle seat over a window seat also means you’re a better customer of an airline’s loyalty program, based on data.
The person in the window seat usually has control over whether the window shade is open or closed. However courtesy plays a role too. On overnight flights across time zones window shades should be closed whenever possible – many passengers are trying to sleep, but it may be light out early. The outside light might also interfere with an aisle seat passenger seeing their laptop screen and getting work done.
Reasonable requests should be accommodated, though it’s up to the passenger in the window to make the trade-off decision. One key to peace on board is good communication.
We all know (or should know!) not to stick our hands down inside seat back pockets. Those are bigger germ farms than the monkey in Outbreak. All seats have them though, usually even bulkhead seats. So those seat back pockets don’t differentiate one seat from another.
The question is, if you want to avoid the plague, which seats are the most infected on an aircraft? Which ones do you want to avoid?
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
