I agree that everyone in a seat that can recline has the right to recline. There is a way to not be a complete douche about it though. I’ll usually turn around to the person behind me and sort of ask /tell them I’m about to put my seat back - “you gonna be okay with my seat back?” - type of thing. I’m not actually asking their permission but trying to show them that I do have a modicum of concern for their feelings. It’s a bit of a charade but it does sort of lubricate the wheels of civilized interaction.
I think we tend focus on how inconvenienced and uncomfortable *we *are and forget that everyone else is in the same cramped, smelly, wretched situation.
If anyone actually thinks that your choice of seat on an airline is either affordable economy class or stupidly expensive first class, I would invite you to join air travel as it has developed over the last fifteen years.
Probably all the major airlines, and a growing number of the non-majors, have introduced extended economy sections that provide usually another four inches of legroom compared to regular economy. These seats can either be bought when you book your flight, or often you can go back later and pay for an upgrade. Depending on the length of the flight, somewhere between $25 and $100 seems to be the most typical charge.
Many airlines also offer an option to book an exit row seat for similar charges. Depending on the aircraft, this can involve a foot or more of extra legroom.
If someone is so seriously inconvenienced by the size of airline seats, there are clearly other options than either paying $4,000 for a business or first class seat, or paying $300 for an uncomfortable economy class seat. If you know what to look for, you can probably get an upgraded economy class seat for maybe $450 or so.
If you think that you ought to get extra legroom with your $300 ticket, I will simply have to remind you that when someone pays for the lowest level of service, you not only don’t get a lot of legroom, you also don’t get complementary alcoholic beverages, priority baggage service, priority boarding, bonus frequent flier miles, or other amenities.
Forgive me if I’m being wooshed here, but you don’t really think those figures represent anything other than a general distribution right? You don’t seriously believe that every person who is 5’ 9" earns exactly 789 bucks more than every person who is 5’ 8", and that there are literally no people who are 6’ 5’ earning an average wage? Nah.
Leaving that aside, access to funds doesn’t guarantee a first class ticket. What if I’m called to an emergency meeting in Oslo tomorrow, and the only flight from Heathrow has 5 economy seats left. Do I tell my client “Sorry, can’t make it, no first class seats left”? Or do I lie and say there are no seats left at all (and surely get caught in the lie, as they can check availability just as easily as I can)?
I don’t really disagree with anything you’ve said, but nothing guarantees you one of these seats, especially if you’re travelling at short notice as I often am. It’s a choice of taking the cheap-ass seat or pissing off the client.
No, you tell them you couldn’t make it because you were too concerned that the person in front of you might recline their seat by 1.5 inches in economy class and watch as they fire you thus explaining why you are unable to take advantage of the 789 dollars per inch that you should, on average, be able to earn due to your height.
The seats recline. I don’t like it but I deal with it.
BUT I get really annoyed with those people who, after reaching the limit of their recline, lean back further and harder to try and get an extra few inches. The seats are flexible so they do this, driving their chair into hard my knees and all for nothing. The seat springs back to its limit that they reached by normal reclining behavior. Really bad passengers will try this trick several times before getting the idea that the chair won’t recline anymore.
When the passenger in front of me does that, the will get a knee kick. I don’t care if you think it is Passive aggressive or whatever. I accept the chair reclining, not a selfish smashing of my legs and knees because you want the seat to recline like your Lay-Z-boy back at home.
Sure, nothing guarantees you a seat. But in each one of these threads, it seems like many people who complain about seat sizes are just totally unaware of their options.
If someone tries to upgrade to such seats, depending on the route, odds are that it will work out a pretty good percentage of the time. Some times it won’t, of course. But if someone is genuinely uncomfortable in standard economy and never tries to do anything about it, well, then they either are not smart travelers or they are whiners.
My husband gets inordinately pissy with the person in front who reclines into his knees…as if it’s the other person’s fault hubby is so tall. I’ve said to him rather than be aggravated all the time just accept that it’s a simple fact of life that he’ll have to pay the extra £50 for the extra leg room seats.
When you buy a ticket you are renting X number of square feet for the duration of the flight. X is defined, at a maximum, as the space in between your seat back and the seat back in front of you, regardless of the recline of either. This is the understanding when you decide to buy a ticket.
Fox X, you are paying Y. You can’t have X + 25% and expect not to pay more.
C’mon tall people, this is the one place where us short people have the advantage, and you want to take that away as well?! Tall privilege.
Doesn’t work very well when you are flying on business for a company which does not let you buy these seats. I would up taking United instead of American on one trip because the last leg on American had extra cost seats only.
In my experience the increase in comfort I get from reclining my seat is much less than the decrease in comfort when some asshole smashes his seat into my face. So I don’t do it unless there is no one behind me.
Seat reclining was never a problem in the old days before you wished for the plane to break open in order to get more rooms. But now the space between the seats is of a magnitude which makes modern semiconductor fabs green with envy.
