Passenger Questions If He's Wrong For Refusing To Give Up His Seat On A 15 Hour Flight To A Woman With Mobility Issues
He was unwilling to give up the aisle seat he paid for despite the woman's request.
Tualek Photography | Shutterstock It's become a popular flying debate — if another passenger asks you to switch seats on a flight should you? What if that person is a parent who wants to sit next to their kids? What about an older woman with mobility issues who would prefer the aisle seat?
One man was asked to give up his aisle seat on a recent long-haul flight to one such passenger. He declined.
The passenger refused to give up his seat on a 15-hour flight to an older woman with mobility issues.
The man explained in his Reddit post that on a recent flight, he was seated in the aisle seat of the bulkhead row in the middle section of the plane. Next to him was a woman in her 60s.
"When I first sat down, she apologized and said she needed to get up," he wrote. "I told her it was no problem since there was enough space for her to move without me needing to stand up."
Yet, just a few minutes later, the woman returned with a flight attendant, asking if he would swap seats with her because she had "mobility issues."
"I politely declined," he recalled, "because I wanted to keep my aisle seat, and the seat next to her was occupied by a very large woman who was spilling into part of the older lady’s seat."
The man's opinion on sitting next to a plus-size passenger is an example of the discrimination that they often face on flights. Policies around plus-size passengers vary depending on the airline, some requiring passengers to purchase additional seats out of pocket. Many have admitted to feeling singled out when on a flight from other passengers and the flight crew.
The man felt that if the older woman really had mobility issues, she would've been accommodated.
"My thinking was that if the older woman truly had mobility issues, she likely would have been pre-assigned an aisle seat," he wrote. "Also there really was plenty of room for her to get out of her seat without me having to move, so it seemed to me that she just didn’t want to sit next to the larger passenger."
Commenters agreed that the man was not required to give up a seat that he paid for. If the older woman truly needed a different seat because of her health, the flight crew should have been responsible for accommodating her. In an update to his post, he revealed that they did offer her an alternative option, but she refused.
"The flight attendant offered her an aisle seat after I declined to move, but she wanted the extra legroom in the bulkhead row and refused the alternative aisle seat offer," he wrote.
Author and etiquette expert Rosalinda Randall weighed in on the seat-switching debate. "Compelling someone to make a decision on the spot, without a lot of information or time to inquire, sounds impolite and a bit unreasonable," she told Fox News Digital.
"No one has the obligation to switch their seat, nor explain why they won’t switch," Randall continued. "And the person making the request has no right to expect, or get angry when they don’t get their way on the matter."
Nia Tipton is a staff writer with a bachelor’s degree in creative writing and journalism who covers news and lifestyle topics that focus on psychology, relationships, and the human experience.