Passenger Pretends to Be Asleep to Avoid Raising Their Reclined Seat on 9-Hour Flight — Leaving Fellow Traveler Mad

“The airlines let you recline. It’s part of the seat, part of your right,” one person said in defense

A plane passenger is wondering if they were in the wrong after reclining their seat during a long flight.

In a post on Reddit’s “Am I the A——?” forum, the traveler said they were trying to get some shut-eye on a nine-hour international flight from Dallas to Paris when they were asked by another passenger to not 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 person 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.”

Agreeing to the other passenger’s request, the Redditor quickly found that they weren’t able to sleep unless they reclined their seat.

After proceeding to learn their seat back again, and also telling the woman that there was a nearby empty seat in the middle section of the flight that she could move to, the flyer said the woman was not pleased with the suggestion and proceeded to alert a flight attendant to complain about the seating situation.

However, the flight attendant told the dissatisfied passenger that she could not do anything about the reclining, the traveler wrote.

“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 continued. “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.”

Ultimately, the passenger wrote that they felt bad for the other person but did not want to move because they felt more comfortable being next to someone they know. They added that their mom “gets super anxious flying.”

Several Reddit users sided with the traveler in the comments section of the post, stating that it should be expected that people recline their seats on airplanes.

“Planes suck,” one person candidly 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.”

Another shared, “The airlines let you recline, it’s part of the seat, part of your right.”

A third commenter, meanwhile, said people need to understand that traveling on public transportation – especially in economy class – means they will be “sharing a small space with a bunch of people.”