A woman has shared how she refused to swap seats on an eight-hour flight so a child could sit alongside their family – explaining how she pre-booked it with a special meal requirement
A woman has sparked a debate after revealing how she refused to give up her pre-booked plane seat so a child could sit alongside their family. Before boarding her flight home from Africa via Dubai, the teacher booked an aisle seat so she could get up and move around the cabin without bothering anyone.
At this point, she also pre-booked a special meal due to her health requirements, directing it to her pre-booked seat. But when she made it to her chair, she was approached by a family who asked whether she would consider a seat-swap so they could all sit together.
Taking to Reddit, she said: “This was my second 8-hour flight on my way home. A family gets on with three kids (they don’t speak much English) and asks if I could switch seats with one of their kids so they can be together. The father of the family wasn’t sat anywhere near the mother and kids, so it looked to me like they had left their seats to random assignment.
“I initially said yes, thinking it was just a move across the aisle, but then realised they wanted me to switch to sit in a middle seat and I said no.” With that, another passenger stood up from his chair to berate her for refusing to move – and blamed her for splitting up the parents from their children.
She said: “Another passenger then gets up and says he has a seat in the back that I can move to (no idea how) and I said no. I said that I had booked my seat and ordered a dietary meal, and there was no way I was moving to a middle seat. He then starts loudly criticising me and saying he hopes I understand that I’m splitting a family up. This eventually attracts attention from the crew because it’s holding up boarding.
“They got a passenger on the other end of the row to switch and sit somewhere else so their kids could sit together. The other passenger from before then starts loudly saying to his kids and the family ‘Do you understand what happened? She thought her seat was too special so she wouldn’t let you sit together.’
“I told the guy to mind his own business and he responded that he wasn’t talking to me. I was exhausted and sleep-deprived by this point and told him to stop talking about me and just can it.” Now questioning her actions, the woman has taken to social media to see whether she was in the wrong and should have accepted a seat-swap.
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She added: “I didn’t think I was in the wrong here. I organised myself beforehand and booked my seat, and felt it was quite unfair to have a random guy criticising me to half the cabin for not wanting to swap to a middle seat for an 8 hour flight.”
In response, one user said: “If the family wanted to be together they could have paid to do so.” Another user added: “I’m tired of entitled people thinking someone should sacrifice for them. If they wanted to be seated together, they should’ve booked seats together. Not your problem and good on you for standing your ground and not letting them bully you.” A third user said: “They wanted to save the, what, ten bucks it is to pick a seat? That’s on them.”
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