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Earlier this week, Jeffsetter shared an article written by Geraldine on the Everywhereist about seat on a recent longhaul flight.  The whole post is worth reading but the short recap is that she was trying to recline her seat and the guy behind her would not allow it.  He threatened to just shake her seat and then continued to bully her, even once the flight crew got involved.

Eventually she ended up getting upgraded to business class by the flight crew, though I’m still not clear why the jerk in question didn’t get booted off the plane and/or detained when they landed.

airline-seat-reclining

So…. who owns the seat reclining?

Let’s get it started by saying yes, it is not always super comfortable when the person in front of you reclines their seat.

But I think it’s generally accepted that the person whose seat it is gets to control whether they recline the seat or not.  If the person in front of you reclines their seat, then them’s just the breaks, as far as I am concerned.  If you don’t like that, then I believe there are some airlines that feature seats that do not recline; go fly one of those!  (Or use the “Knee Defender” :-D)

(SEE ALSO: Is the Knee Defender the worst airplane product out there?)

I should say that I personally do not recline my seat, though that is my personal choice.  Though if I was on a longhaul flight and trying to sleep, I probably would recline.  Generally I’ve found, at least on shorter flights, with a window seat I’m okay sleeping on the plane without any “extra” recline (it’s not like they recline very much!)

(SEE ALSO: 4 tips to survive a red eye flight in economy)

I’m okay if you recline the seat in front of me, though I do appreciate some warning or a slow recline – I almost cracked my laptop screen once because I had the tray table out and my laptop on it when the person in front of me reclined the seat it got caught on the lever that holds the tray table in the upright position – I was barely able to extricate it before the seat came crashing back.

So…. what’s your take on who controls the recline of an airline seat?  What would you have done had you been in Geraldine’s situation?


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