Swapping seats on a plane is a common yet contentious practice. If you and your travel companion haven’t been fortunate enough to secure seats together, you might contemplate asking someone to swap with you.
While some passengers are amenable to this, others prefer to retain their allocated seat – and they’re entirely within their rights to do so.
The most common seat swaps are like-for-like. For instance, if you’re occupying a window seat next to a stranger, their partner might request to swap with you so you take another window seat elsewhere on the aircraft.
However, one man claimed he was nearly duped into accepting an inferior seat after a family deceived him about their situation.
In a Reddit post, the man recounted how he was seated in an aisle seat when a couple with a young child boarded the plane. The mother and her child occupied the middle and window seats next to him, while the father appeared “distraught” before asking the man if he would be willing to swap seats so he could “sit with his family”.
Upon asking where the father’s seat was, the man was taken aback to discover it was actually a business class seat.
However, when the man agreed to switch and accept the free upgrade, the father responded bizarrely. He insisted that his wife would be taking the business class seat, leaving the man to sit in the middle seat instead – completely contradicting his earlier wish to sit with his family.
He wrote: “I started to get up and grab my luggage, but once I stood up, he was like, ‘Wait, my wife actually wanted to go sit up there, can you take her seat instead?’ I said, ‘No, I’m not switching to the middle row and being blocked into a middle seat by a screaming toddler… and you said you wanted to sit with your family’.
“The dad got all defensive and switched up (holding up traffic during this entire interaction), raising his voice, going on about how I said I could switch seats with them and how it’s not fair to his wife, who had planned on taking his seat up in business class.”
Please note: The following Reddit post contains strong language.
However, the passenger had the final victory when cabin crew intervened to investigate the commotion, with fellow travellers nearby supporting his version of events – resulting in his escort to the premium seat.
He continued: “At this point, a flight attendant had finally squeezed her way up to us and asked why we weren’t taking our seats. Before I could say anything, this man had the AUDACITY to say that I had offered to take his wife’s seat and now I wasn’t cooperating.
“I called bulls**t, and thankfully, the passenger sitting behind me backed me up, and the flight attendant was not in the mood to play. She asked to see his ticket, told me to grab my luggage and escorted me up to his seat.
“Needless to say, I had a very nice flight after that.”
Social media users were quick to express their outrage at the family’s “audacity,” while praising the flight attendant for her handling of the situation.
One user commented: “The audacity of trying to downgrade someone to a middle seat for 8 hours is insane. I’m glad the flight attendant wasn’t having it. The fact that he doubled down and lied to the flight attendant makes it even worse.
“Glad karma was instant with you in business class. Entitled people always expose themselves. If he’d just been honest and polite, maybe he could’ve worked something out with someone else.”
Another added: “I love the outcome. He tried to con you out of your aisle seat, and lost his business class seat instead.”