A new week, a new idiot on a plane gets into a fight over legroom. Last week it was a flight from Newark to Denver, this week it’s a flight from New York to Palm Beach. The common thread is that the participants are idiots.
A woman I can only assume is a brain surgeon or a rocket scientist decided sleeping on her flight like an adult, meaning sitting up in her chair, was a bridge too far. She decided to sleep like a 10 year old in class, resting her head on the tray table.
But, as anyone with an IQ greater than their shoe size can tell you, if the person in front of you reclines their seat, that impacts the room you have on your tray table. The woman sitting in front of sleeping beauty decided to recline, which disturbed the narcoleptic narcissist…And you’ll never guess what happened next!
Actually, you will.
Rather than act like an adult human being and sit up in her chair, an argument ensued. A flight attendant tried to instill maturity in the tuckered out tantrum thrower, but it didn’t take.
According to the flight attendant, the egomaniac “said something to the fact that ‘I don’t care about the consequences, put this plane down now.’”
The pilot obliged, and the disrupting moron was led off the plane by police (and hopefully beaten).
Sorry people, you don’t own the airspace above your tray table, nor do you get to decide if the person in front of you reclines their seat. You can, and this is a crazy idea, talk to the person sitting in the seat in front of you, ask them not to recline because of X,Y, or Z, but it’s up to them. Knee Defender or not, you don’t have a right to anything involving their seat.
There’s no legroom on planes. I’m 6’5”, I get it. My Knee Defender is my knees, which dig into the back of anyone as they try to recline even a little. I have long legs, there’s nowhere else for them to go. I get the look from the person in front of me when they fight it, but once they see their choices are bony knees in their back or they sit up straight, they sit up straight.
As a courtesy, I don’t recline my seat either. Not out of some perverse justice for the universe because the person in front of me can’t, but because I’m not a dick.
But buying that ticket entitles you to be a dick and recline your seat, if you so choose. An airplane isn’t Dirty Dancing, you don’t have a “dance space” that isn’t allowed to be violated by the person one seat up. In fact, that button on their chair gives them “air rights” over your tray table, just as it gives you the same over the person behind you.
Next time a fight breaks out on a plane, rather than divert it to deal with temper-tantrum of some self-important douchebag, show them this clip from Con Air.
Tell them that they can sit down and be adults, or they can get off the plane. But it isn’t going to land. They’ll either grow up, or the world will be a better place if we Nick Cage them.