A plane passenger is wondering if they committed the ultimate sky-high crime: pretending to be asleep and daring to recline their seat for the entirety of a long flight.
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In a Reddit post on the “Am I the A**hole?” forum, a traveler shared their experience on a nine-hour international flight from Dallas to Paris. As they tried to rest, another passenger approached and asked them not to recline their seat.
“Almost immediately, the girl behind me taps on my shoulder and asks me to pull up my seat, which I do, but then asked why,” the beleaguered passenger wrote. “She said there was a baby in a car seat right behind her, so she couldn’t recline, and if I leaned my seat back, she can’t really see the TV screen on the back of my seat.”
The Redditor agreed to the other passenger’s request… but soon realized they couldn’t fall asleep without reclining their seat.
To Keep Their Seat, the Passenger Decides to Pretend to Sleep… for Nine Hours
After reclining their seat and suggesting the woman move to an empty seat in the middle section, the flyer said she was unhappy with the idea. She then called over a flight attendant to complain about the situation.
The flight attendant informed the unhappy passenger that there was nothing she could do about the seat reclining, the Redditor explained.
“The girl then got the attention of two more flight attendants, who all said the same thing, and offered the same seat I told her about,” the Redditor recalled. “Thing is, we were in the window seat, and the girl complained that she picked that seat because it’s the window seat so she refused to move. Meanwhile, I pretended to sleep the whole time.”
In the end, the passenger felt a twinge of sympathy but decided comfort trumped courtesy. Plus, they wanted to remain next to their mom, who “gets super anxious flying.”
The Internet Reacts to a Passenger Pretending to Sleep with Their Seat Reclined for Nine Hours…
Of course, the internet had mixed reactions to the prolonged recliner. After all, it seems pretty extreme to force the person behind you to endure your seat on their lap for nine hours.
However, many Reddit users supported the traveler, saying reclining a seat on an airplane is reasonable and expected.
“Planes suck,” one blunt user wrote. “Having the seat in front of you down is a bummer. It’s less of a bummer than not being able to put your own seat down though. And if you weren’t supposed to recline, the seats simply wouldn’t recline.”
Meanwhile, another commenter pointed out that traveling on public transportation, particularly in economy class, comes with the reality of “sharing a small space with a bunch of people.”