I’m tall and have long legs, and am a nervous enough flyer as it is. I don’t sleep on planes myself, usually (so I don’t recline my own seat - there’s also the fact it might annoy the person behind me.) I hate it when the person in front of me reclines their seat, but I realize there’s not much I can do about it. But if “knee defenders” aren’t usually allowed on planes, it’s a moot point.
Like I said, those seats aren’t always available and passengers don’t always have control of that. If you get sent into O’Hare during a weather delay, you may be lucky to get to get where you are going at all. They can put you wherever they want in the plane, but you may be getting the worst seat they have. It has certainly happened to me more than a few times and there was nothing I could do about it except agree to be fired from my job and live in Chicago from then on.
Armrest issues can be annoying but they aren’t generally a matter of pain or injury. Rest assured, having your knees crushed by a seat coming back quickly is very painful for taller people. That is the best case and I can’t think of anything else like it that is allowed in the mass consumer market. In unusual cases, you can truly injure someone that has knee issues like recent surgery or chronic orthopedic problems but the size of the airline passenger market ensures that it still happens with alarming regularity.
You can argue one of the following: (You should just stay home if you don’t like it / You should have bought a better coach seat / You should have flown first class / You should be more like Oprah and have your own jet). However, that type of commentary is generally viewed is stupid and hopelessly naive by the same people that make the arguments in this discussion. The fact is that a major industry is selling a product that not only has the guaranteed potential for real pain or injury, there is often no way around it for a large percentage of people even with advanced planning.
You can buy whatever seat you think you need but there is no guarantee that you will get it and there are not enough of them to go around in the first place. That is generally considered completely unacceptable in every other market that I know of but not this one.
I think we need a viral video to induce change. Maybe you could have an older white male repeatedly slamming his seat back into the knees of minority member that is practically crippled already while making quiet but derogatory comments the whole time. Versions of that type of thing happen every day on flights to lots of different types of people but people still insist on defending that type of behavior in particular for some unknown reason.
Or you could show some common courtesy and consideration for the person behind you.
Armrest issues are oh so fun when you’re a woman stuck between two big men and neither will concede an armrest. Guy by the window pretty much passed out, guy on the aisle wouldn’t give up the inside one and would snuggle his arm right against mine if I tried to claim part. Ew. I spent the flight with my arms basically pressed together between my knees so that I didn’t have to snuggle with a stranger.
Oh, and it’d be nice if people would be considerate about reclining, but then you get bitches like the woman who insisted she had to recline her seat into my (6’4" tall) husband’s kneecaps, even when he cried out in pain and surprise, and then politely asked if she could not recline so far. She insisted she had a bad back, cranked it back further, and refused to compromise when the flight attendant came by to see what had happened. Fortunately there were a couple empty seats elsewhere and the attendant moved us. (If she’d been apologetic I’d have simply switched places with my husband - I have very long legs but not quite so long.)
Excellent point. The arrogance and lack of basic manners displayed in threads like this astounds me (well, no it doesn’t anymore but I wish it did). The logic is completely flawed too. The airlines often have airsickness bags around as well but I don’t make it a point to loudly puke in them just because they are there and they won’t charge me for them. There are a whole lot of things that they have available that can be used but probably shouldn’t just because they exist. I never recline my seat unless there isn’t anyone in the seat directly behind me and usually not even if there is anyone in the row behind me at all. Do you know why? Because it is rude - full stop.
Plane travel is hard enough on everyone these days. The Golden Rule really works the best of all for making the world a slightly better place for everyone. In this case, it can mean a whole lot to someone if you don’t intentionally try to inflict inconvenience at best or pain or injury at worst just because you like to gobble up every entitlement you think you can get for yourself. Sometimes, it is much nicer just to give someone else a break because it may mean more to them than it does to you. The whole system works better for it too.
This is a perfect opportunity for airlines to add another fee. Charge a fee for people who want reclining seats and charge a fee to tall people who want to sit behind a non-reclining seat. Win-win!
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Well it sounds like it says knee pain trumps back pain.
Yes it does as a matter of fact. The difference is about chronic versus acute pain. There isn’t much you can do in the short-term to fix back problems. There is a lot you can do to hurt a knee with just one aggressive motion.
I have had three knee surgeries in my life and my left knee is basically OK most of the time until it gets hit the wrong way. It is one of the most painful, acute feelings you can endure. I can demonstrate it to anyone even with undamaged knees with just a few simple hits from a solid object like an airliner chair back.
Here is a good experiment for everyone that does not understand this problem intuitively:
Try sitting in a low chair with your feet rigid on the floor at a right angle and let someone hit your kneecaps with just moderate hits from a solid object. Very few people can endure that and all find it quite painful. Try it yourself tonight.
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Bend your legs and set your feet firmly on the floor.
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Now close your eyes and wait while you have someone take an object like a dinner plate positioned at an edge and strike just below the kneecap on the inside edge of your knee. It doesn’t have to be very fast but it does need some inertia behind it just like force of a 140+ pound person laying back quickly.
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See how many strikes you can endure at various angles before you either cry, assault them or react in some way. That is exactly what it feels like when a tall person gets hit in the knee area unexpectedly by the back of a plane chair.
I am dead serious about this. Have someone do it to you and see if it isn’t on the high end of the torture scale. People aren’t trying to be wusses about something mundane. The design of those chairs really does make that truly painful and that is why so many people feel strongly about it.
If you’re too big to fit behind a reclined economy seat, that’s your problem.
That applies to basically anyone over 6 feet tall is these days and that is even pushing it. I would love to buy a ticket for the cargo hold and hang out with bags, bodies and livestock but they haven’t enabled that option yet. I take over 100 flights a year and I am starting to understand why so many people are just stowing away in the wheel-wells of large planes. The cost and space are much more favorable than typical coach accommodations these days. I may have to buy some warm clothes and an oxygen mask to do that myself.
In all seriousness though, some airlines have nearly gone past the limits of human accommodation for size calculations and I don’t understand why so many people are defending them for it especially because I am supposed to be one of the business conservatives around here. There is only so far they can push things before a human kennel on FedEx starts to look like a better option. The legacy carriers like American are poor but marginal on space. JetBlue, Spirit and Virgin Atlantic are somewhat reasonable but some foreign carriers like COPA depend on you having a malnourished childhood to even fit in your seat at all (not that I can control the Panamanian state airline but they are one of many examples of such outfits that operate in the U.S.).
I am not a large person especially for an American but I am somewhat tall. However, there are people a whole lot taller than I am and I have given up my better seats for them as a courtesy. There was one teenager going to Las Vegas on Southwest a couple of years ago that was at least 6’9". He didn’t have a chance of having a reasonable ride unless I gave up my premium exit row seat with a seat missing next to it. I would do the same for anyone that tall because being tall is only good up to a point and he exceeded that. At that point I look at it more a disability at least in the context and give special accommodation to them for it just like I would a blind person or someone in a wheelchair. I don’t mean that he was disabled in general. He wasn’t except he was for purposes of airline travel because no normal seats could fit him and there was nothing he could do about that.
I don’t expect airlines to have great accommodations to fit 100% or even 99% of people perfectly. However, there is something very wrong when 10 or 20% of people are tall enough to become potentially become injured or at least made miserable just by being forced to fit in a one-size-fits-all seat when it doesn’t even come close to that.
Just ask the flight attendant if the captain’s name is Procrustes. If so, he will have the solution to this problem.
If you don’t fit in the seat, then pay for more room.
Look, it’s easy to say that airlines “should” provide more room in economy, but that means there are fewer seats on the plane, and prices go up. Americans have consistently voted with their wallet, saying that they prefer the lowest price possible on air travel, amenities be damned. And that’s why seats are small and cramped, and food service is poor.
I love it, personally. I can fly anywhere in the world on a few days’ salary. 50 years ago, I probably wouldn’t have been able to afford near as many plane trips.
Well, until the other guy just starts kicking the seat or hitting it with his knee or whatever. Then it’s your problem but you have no room to complain about how he’s moving his leg in the space he paid for.
Now you can BOTH be acting like spoiled little children!
That is a good point. I have always been super strict about not letting my kids kick the back of the seat in front of them because I always thought it was rude and discourteous. Now I can see that view was wrong. It is all about technicalities and movable space based on arcane rules that you need to always be really aggressive about in order to win just like a game of Risk. I know for a fact the back of the seat is ours because it has ‘our magazines’ and emergency instructions in it so that is our home base from now on and we will use it as a jumping off point to slowly build the empire.
That is good to know. The next flight we go on is going to be like soccer training camp using the back of the seat as an exercise tool and there is not a thing in the world that is wrong with that according to many people in this thread. The kids will get some exercise and be nice and worn out by the time we get there. Awesome! 21th century social norms really are cool after all.
Selfish [sel-fish]
adj. Devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others.
Now THAT’S the American Way! 
I personally don’t care if people recline or not, as long as the lil bastard behind me shuts the hell up & stops kicking my seat!
(I’m all for stuffing small children into the noisiest, most cramped part of the plane along with their inconsiderate breeders/handlers & cutting them off from the rest of the passengers.
Good parents, with quiet, well mannered kids however, are awesome.)
I think the outrage for me in this story would be the airline rerouting & making everyone else late on account of these morons. Escort them off & punish them when they reach the destination instead.
Yes. Yes, it is. It’s my problem, though it was created by the guy directly in front of me. My gargantuan 6’ 2" body is a physical anomaly, I’ll admit. No one should have to accommodate the physical needs of a freak as large as me. But it is uncomfortable to have someone slam their seat into my grotesquely enormous frame (again, I am a full 6’ 2", which I know is hard to even envision), and then spend the rest of the trip with my knees squashed.
I like this guy’s take:
I don’t smoke any more, but I almost wish airline policy could suddenly return to the days when cigarettes were permitted on all planes, just so I could see the reaction from some of the same folks who hand-wave away people’s concerns about the reclining seats. “I’m smoking. I paid for a seat on a plane that permits smoking. If you don’t like smoke, that’s your problem. Find an airline that doesn’t permit smoking.” That’s different, they’d say. That’s a true health risk. Blah, blah, blah. The difference is this: then it impacts you.
Like I said, “almost wish,” not really.
He did not pay for the space my seat occupies. He paid for the space his seat occupies, and the unoccupied airspace in front of it. Just like I paid for the space my seat occupies and the unoccupied airspace in front of me.
Frankly, if you have a problem with it, take it up with the airline, not me. Complain to the airline, make it their problem. Vote with your wallet and choose to fly with an airline that gives you enough space, instead of just taking the cheapest fare. You know damn well that they lower the fare by cramming more people into the same sized plane, giving you less space. Stop rewarding airlines that don’t give you enough space.
You know, if it was legal to smoke in airplanes and carriers offered smoking seats and I knew that when I bought my ticket then yes, I would suck it up (haha). If the smoking bothers me that badly then it is on me to stop flying and tell the carriers why or fly carriers that offer non-smoking flights.