A man wondered whether it was wrong to refuse to swap seats with a fellow passenger on his flight.
In a post on the “Am I the Asshole” forum on Reddit, a husband wrote about a flight he took with his wife from Dublin, Ireland, to Washington, D.C. The couple, in their 30s, discovered they had the entire row to themselves, so he sat in the aisle seat while his wife remained in the window seat before the plane took off.
According to the man, the first four and a half hours of the flight were uneventful – until a passenger from the aisle seat opposite came up to him with his friend and announced that his friend would now take the vacant middle seat between the couple to avoid a screaming baby.
“She didn’t ask – she told us this was happening,” he wrote, noting that the flight was still three hours away. He asked if the flight attendants knew about the change, and after flagging them down, the flight attendants told him there was an “agreement that they could take an open aisle seat but not disturb anyone’s seating arrangement.”
Upon hearing this, the man did not agree to allow the change. The passenger complained that he had been assigned the middle seat and argued that he was not even allowed to sit in the aisle seat. After sitting there for almost five hours, the man noticed that he and his wife had already scattered their belongings all over the row.
After the passenger and her friend spoke to the flight attendant for five minutes, the passenger returned to her seat but yelled at her husband for refusing to move. He reported that she “said that ‘her friend would not sit there – not because she was not allowed to, but because I was so incredibly rude’ and that I was a ‘fucking asshole.'”
The husband wrote that he ignored her and kept his eyes on the program he was watching throughout the flight.
“The only thing I did the entire time was ask to speak to the flight attendant,” he wrote. “I did not say anything else to that woman, although I would have liked to.”
In the comments section, users voiced their opinions in droves, with some saying he did the right thing by flagging down the flight attendant and asking if he and his wife could stay in their seats.
“Asking them was absolutely the right move,” one person commented. “They (flight attendants) need to know where they moved people in case of an emergency. It’s one thing to move a seat, but quite another to completely change rows and seats. That’s what they need to know. It’s part of being able to identify passengers in emergency situations.”
“An empty seat on the plane (in the same cabin) is a surprise benefit. Except in exceptional circumstances, this benefit usually belongs to the first person to use it,” wrote another. “You are suggesting that this benefit should be changed more than halfway through the flight to benefit another passenger. (The original writer) was right to give priority to the empty seat, and the (flight attendant) obviously agreed.”
Another added: “Meh. First come, first served.”
Others, however, felt that the passenger and her friend’s attempt to get the seat was legitimate.
“You paid for two seats, not three,” another added. “You didn’t ask the (flight attendant) because you wanted to ‘check the rules.’ You asked because you didn’t want to lose your seat and hoped the (flight attendant) wouldn’t allow her to move. You were assigned a middle seat.”
They continued: “So in the (flight attendant’s) opinion, the woman could have sat in the aisle seat after you were moved to your assigned middle seat. She is also something of an (asshole) due to her attitude and rude behavior.”
