Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Either people are getting ruder and more thoughtless, or I’m getting less tolerant the more I travel. Here are two recent tales of fellow passengers who deserved to be bitch-slapped for their behavior with their seat backs.

You heard me. Seat backs.

Last week Michele and I were returning from England on a British Air 777 that was less than half full. There were completely empty rows of seats. In fact, there were rows of empty seats with rows of empty seats behind them.

In front of us, the lone passenger in the row moved to the middle seat, obviously relishing the ability to stretch his elbows to the left and the right without hitting a seatmate. But as soon as the pilot turned off the seat belt sign, a woman changed her seat to the aisle seat next to this poor guy, then reclined her seat all the way back, practically into Michele’s lap leaving her about as much room as a sardine has in a tightly packed can. She chose this seat despite the fact that there were at least six or seven rows where she could have had an aisle seat with nobody next to her and nobody behind her.

During the flight, any time I had to stand up, I couldn’t avoid jarring her seat back in my effort to squeeze by. Each time, she turned and gave me a nasty look for disturbing her. She kept the seat reclined for the entire 9-1/2-hour flight, including a good 10 minutes after the announcement asking all passengers to return their seats to the full and upright position.

Right now, I’m on a a US Air Airbus 320 from Phoenix to Kansas City. I’m in the second of three first-class rows, having been upgraded without asking for an upgrade. (This never happens on United, where I’m a million-mile flyer and where I have my miles, but US Air, United’s Star Alliance partner, does it routinely. But I digress.) As soon as the pilot asked flight attendants to take their seats for takeoff, the asshole in front of me reclined his seat as far as it would go; we were still a good seven or eight minutes from takeoff, but he clearly figured that if the flight attendants couldn’t see his seat reclined, then it was just fine to go ahead and recline it.

Update:On landing, Mr. High Regard for My Safety kept his set all the way back, and nobody from the cabin crew looked back to check.

Is it me? Am I getting cranky? Or am I right in thinking people wouldn’t behave to incredibly selfisly 25 years ago and that this kind of cavalier self-centeredness is a relatively new development among travellers?

Posted by Shel in • Planes
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