No one likes to swap seats on a flight. Often, you're paying a premium for certain seats anyway. Plus, you would catch me walking before I catch that dreaded middle seat. It turns out one passenger agreed with me. A passenger shared a time that one traveler tried to pressure them to give up their seat.
But they quickly turned the table. On Reddit, the passenger decided to share their story. They wrote, "Just sharing one of my favorite seat swapping stories. I was in an aisle seat and the woman in the aisle seat across from me decides she wants to help out this family. She turns to me and says the guy next to her (in the middle seat) would very much like to sit next to his family (wife and daughter seated in the middle and window seat next to me). She asks, would you be willing to help them out by swapping seats?"
In response, the passenger smiled and said, "Sure! So you'll take the husband's middle seat and then I'll take your seat." However, the woman appeared confused by the request.
Passenger Turns The Tables
She said, "They just want to sit together."
The passenger responded, "Sure! Happy to switch with you. So you'll take his seat and I'll take yours." According to the Reddit post, that's when the woman learned to mind her own business.
The Redditor wrote, "The confusion sets in. Brow furrows. And, then...the glorious moment when that lightbulb goes off. Shaking her head violently and frowning, says: 'Oh no, I don't want to give up my seat?' I relax in my seat with my smug smile and thinking my job here is done. By saying yes to her, I forced her to be the one to say no."
It's best to just not be that person. In fact, writer and advisor, Nicole Campoy Jackson told People that you shouldn't ask your fellow passengers to swap seats with you. Instead, it's better to alert a flight attendant if you have issues and let them solve it.
"I am always in the camp of getting a flight attendant involved for sticky in-flight situations," she said. "Tensions run high when we're traveling plus they would know, for example, if there was another aisle seat or another solution to this problem. They have more context than we, the passengers, do."
