Being asked to swap seats on a plane can be frustrating, especially if you’ve paid for a good spot.
Depending on what airline you fly with, booking a ticket may come with the option of picking exactly which seat you’d like to sit in. Whether you’re a lover of a window seat or prefer the small amount of extra legroom that the aisle provides, you can usually choose the perfect option for you.
This also means that if you’re travelling with other people, you can make sure you all sit together and don’t have to spread out around the plane and sit beside strangers.
Sometimes, however, this doesn’t work out. Some airlines don’t allow you to book seats, so they assign you them randomly based on what’s left available. Other times the airline charges for seat bookings, so you decide to risk the random seat allocation because you don’t want to spend the extra cash.
In these instances, you might consider asking someone if they’d be willing to swap seats with you so that your family can continue to sit together. And while there’s nothing wrong with asking, you should be prepared for them to say no.
This is the problem one man faced when he boarded a plane and settled into his “economy plus” seat that he had paid extra for to have a comfortable flight. However, he was then approached by a mother who asked if he would be willing to swap so that her nine-year-old son could sit with her.
While he would normally have no problem swapping, the man claimed the seat switch would put him in a much worse seat without the extra legroom that he had paid for.
And it was then that the woman confessed her real reason for asking him to move instead of asking someone else – she wanted to enjoy the extra legroom too, and didn’t want to compromise her seat to sit with her own son.
He said: “I board the plane and settle into my economy plus seat. A woman approaches and asks me to change seats to 32B so her nine-year-old can sit with her. I ask how much cash she has to repay me for the money I spent on the seat, she says I’m cruel for leaving her son with anxiety sitting alone.
“I asked if she offered the person sitting next to her son her seat in economy plus, but she said she ‘needed the leg room’. I said clearly she cares more about her own comfort than her son’s well-being; if she cared, she would give up her seat and move to the back. She breaks out in a screaming wail filled with ‘HOW COULD YOU’S.'”
The man put his foot down and refused to move, and eventually, he was joined by another man who was thrilled about his upgrade, as the mum had agreed to sit in his seat so she could sit with her son.
Commenters on the post were firmly on the man’s side about his seat decision. Many said the mum wasn’t wrong for asking to swap, but should have taken no for an answer without complaining.
One person said: “Whenever anyone is asking to swap seats, it’s always for a better one, and they always throw a fit like this to try and get what they want when told no. People like this should be removed from the plane.”
Another added: “Seat swappers make flying horrible for everybody else. The sheer level of entitlement they display is shocking to me.”
In response, the man also clarified the seat next to his was “already taken” when he booked his own seat, so he believes the mum always planned on trying to get a free upgrade by “guilting” him into giving up his seat.
