When travelling alone, you don't get to choose who sits near you on a plane - it's simply luck of the draw. But most of us still expect flight-friendly etiquette from our fellow passengers. One woman has taken to Reddit to rant about her frustrating experience on an hour-and-a-half flight, after the tall male sitting behind her refused to let her recline her seat.
The holidaymaker was left furious when the 6'8 passenger claimed he was "too big" and insisted she keep her chair upright for the duration of the short-haul flight. Writing on her post, she said: "After take-off, the person in front reclined their seat. No problem, I reclined my seat, but the guy in the aisle behind, but in the middle stopped me.
"He told me that he was too big and the chair reclined into his legs.
"This man seated was extraordinarily tall, and seated in the middle, so his knees extended into the space of both the aisle and window seats."
While she agreed not to put the seat down, they continued to have an argument over his choice of seating on the plane.
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"I said, 'Yeah no problem, I won't recline my seat, but next time you can choose a different seat as to not inconvenience five other people'," she said.
The passenger explained that usually the flight attendants give him an aisle seat or upgrade him, but this time he didn't get lucky.
"He said he didn't have the choice and that I was being selfish," she wrote, adding: "Honestly, what bothered me was the rent-seeking behaviour and the principle of it."
The enraged woman left Redditors divided in the comments section, with some people arguing she shouldn't have tried to recline her seat in the first place.
"I would never recline my seat unless there was no-one behind me. I just can't bring myself to make someone else's life worse," someone said.
Another agreed: "I don't recline either. It feels rude. And the flights I'm usually on are short in tiny planes where the reclining angle is so pitiful that it doesn't make a difference in my comfort anyhow."
Though others believed she had every right to make herself comfortable, especially considering the passenger in front had.
"Reclining is your right as an airline passenger," a user wrote, while a second said: "It's not your responsibility to make anyone else comfortable."
"He should absolutely pay for additional legroom. As it stands, he is expecting everyone around him to settle for less space because he is unwilling to pay for more," a third commented.
What would you do in this situation? Let us know in the comments.
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