Man Says A Dad Attempted To Fight Him Because He Refused To Switch Seats On A Flight
He lied, yelled, and tried to physically attack him — and it seems it wasn't the first time he's done so.
LightFieldStudios / Getty Images | Gagliardi Photography | Canva Pro At this point, it's starting to feel like getting on a plane is consigning yourself to some kind of drama by default; if your flight isn't inexplicably delayed for hours — if not days — then you're dealing with fellow passengers acting like animals in all kinds of bizarre ways.
But for one man on TikTok, his recent experience with a passenger went far behind annoying habits or mere rudeness—it nearly erupted into violence.
The man said a fellow plane passenger tried to fight him for not switching seats on a flight.
Every week it seems there's a new social media story about someone being asked to switch seats on a plane, and it's a completely bizarre phenomenon.
The entitlement required is pretty staggering, and that's before you take into account the fact that many flight attendants say not to agree to it for safety reasons and because the disputes that sometimes arise cause delays.
TikToker @nickfromohio's recent experience is a perfect example of the latter. The drama that ensued when he refused to switch seats with a man on a recent early-morning flight escalated to the point that the man who asked had to be escorted off the plane by security.
"If somebody ever wants to switch seats with you on an airplane, please just say 'no thank you,' and save yourself the trouble," he said in a video about his experience, "because these people don't have good intentions."
He was sleeping when another passenger nudged him awake to ask him to switch seats so he could sit with his kids.
That alone is a wild level of entitlement — who wakes a person up for any reason other than an emergency or something egregious? But that's what happened to Nick on his recent 5 a.m. flight.
When Nick understandably asked for an explanation, the other passenger said that his sons were in the seats beside Nick and he'd like them all to sit together. The dad then tried to cajole him by pointing out his seat was in row seven.
"You're actually gonna end up getting off the airplane earlier than a lot of people," he told Nick. But he'd already put all his stuff away overhead and didn't feel like dealing with the rigmarole of moving.
"He's like, 'seriously? It's like, not a big deal,'" — which begs the question of why he was even asking in the first place if it's "not a big deal."
Nick then noticed his kids weren't anywhere to be seen. When he asked why, the dad became a bit belligerent, but he stuck to his guns, and the dad walked away.
The dad then told the flight crew Nick had stolen his seat and had to be escorted off the plane by security.
"I thought we were going to be done," Nick said after the dad finally walked away. But then he sent his two sons — who were both grown men, not children — to ask him to switch on their dad's behalf. When Nick again refused, they began berating him.
Their dad then came back to where Nick's seat was and began yelling, too, which is when a flight attendant intervened. That was when the altercation went to an absurd new level. "A flight attendant comes back and asks what the problem is," Nick said, "the man says that I am sitting in his seat."
When Nick showed his ticket to the flight attendant as proof, the man said, "he obviously just stole my ticket," despite the fact that the ticket was on Nick's phone. The dad then completely lost it.
"His son is trying to calm him down like 'don't blow your cap,' like 'don't punch anyone,'" Nick said — which, of course, indicates this type of incident happened several times before. As the flight attendant escorted him back to his seat, the dad broke free, stormed back down the plane, and tried to fight Nick as his kids held him back.
"People are starting to panic because they don't even know what this whole interaction is about," Nick said. Finally, the man was escorted off the plane, and Nick was moved to first class so he wouldn't have to sit beside the man's sons.
Unruly airline passenger incidents are thankfully decreasing. But they're still way more common than a few years ago.
The audacity of this passenger may be shocking, but unfortunately, the fact that this incident occurred isn't. Data from the Federal Aviation Administration shows that what the agency terms "unruly passenger incidents" are still rampant in the air travel world.
They did decrease in 2023, however. The FAA reported 2,031 incidents of "violent or threatening" passenger behavior, an 80% decrease from the all-time high of 5,973 in 2021 when masking disputes seemed to be a constant.
But the impact of the pandemic on people acting like animals the minute they board a plane is clear. Even after that steep decrease in incidents, unruly passenger issues are roughly double the rate they were in 2019 when the FAA recorded just 1,161 incidents. Numbers prior to 2019 were even lower — for decades.
The problem has spun so out of control that the government has even gotten involved — the FAA issued a "zero-tolerance policy" on unruly passengers, and the Senate and House proposed a bipartisan Protection from Abusive Passengers Act in 2023, which would bar unruly passengers from flying.
Until that passes, we'll all have to do what this man was forced to do: weigh the pros and cons of whether it's worth the risk to stand up for ourselves, and hope these weirdos get what they truly deserve — a spot on the no-fly list.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.