Stock Image of Angry Plane Passengers.Photo:Photodisc/Getty
Photodisc/Getty
A couple had an awkward flying experience after another pair of travelers tried to steal their seats — and then attempted to elbow them out of their armrests throughout the entire flight.
“I’ll admit, my tone was rude at this point because they have now held up boarding and picked a seat on their own as if we’re flying Southwest,” added the OP, referencing theairline’s popular first-come-first-servedboarding policy.
Stock Image of Place Aisle.aviation-images.com/Universal Images Group via Getty
aviation-images.com/Universal Images Group via Getty
Eventually, the woman in the wrong seat and her dog moved one row back — to the “window seat I presume they did actually book,” the OP added. The OP took the middle seat in her assigned row, her fiancé sat in the window seat, and the man of the couple in the seat mix-up remained in the aisle seat. The OP shared that the flight attendant didn’t even need to be called to mediate the situation.
“The debacle is over, you would think,” wrote the OP. “No.”
The OP’s post continues: “As we’re taking off, I realize that male who is sitting next to me is psychotically keeping his arm on the armrest.”
For the first 10 minutes of the flight, she quietly battled the man for the armrest because “everyone knows the middle seat gets both armrests,” wrote the OP.
When the man temporarily removed his arm from the armrest, the OP said she quickly moved her arm into the empty space. Once the man noticed her new arm placement, she wrote, he started applying “light pressure” in a supposed attempt to push her arm off the armrest.
Eventually, the woman informed her fiancé of the situation, and he graciously offered to swap with her once they reached cruising altitude.
He “and I switch seats, and I think life is fine the rest of the flight,” wrote the OP. “WRONG.”
Passenger resting their hand on the armrest in an airplane.Getty
Getty
After the OP and her fiancé deboarded the plane — following an hour-long delay on the tarmac in Los Angeles — her fiancé told her that his seat neighbor “silently fought with him over the armrest” for the entirety of the flight.
“I am both shocked and validated at the same time. Because I’m not going to lie, I was gaslighting myself and wondering if I was making up what he did to me in my head because it was such odd behavior,” she said.
The OP added that her fiancé started getting “a little petty” with the man to retaliate for his “armrest antics,” including spreading his legs into the other man’s personal space. But, she maintained, “If anyone deserved that, it was this dude.”
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Another said that they have called the flight attendant to intervene when they’ve dealt with similar situations. “I’m not going to waste my time going back and forth with an unreasonable person,” wrote the Redditor.
A final Redditor, who said they were on the same flight a row ahead of the couple, praised the OP for being “firm” and not putting up with “any nonsense.” “You handled that better than I would, given the circumstances. That couple was out of line, and they knew it,” they wrote.
In April, travel advisor Nicole Campoy Jackson of Fora Traveltold PEOPLE that her rule of thumbfor airplane etiquette is to “always be considerate of the person in the middle seat.”
“If you’re in a three-across seating setup on a plane, the window passenger gets the window and window-side armrest; the aisle passenger gets the aisle armrest; and the middle passenger gets to decide how they’d like to use the two in the middle,” she added at the time.
source: people.com
