You’ve painstakingly peeled the foil from the overfilled mini bird bath of fruit juice and set it anxiously on the tray table in front of you.
You’ve checked the nutrition guide on the in-flight snack you’ve just been handed and marvelled that an item so small could have a saturated fat content that high (where do the airlines find this stuff?) and you’re just about to tuck into the miserably unsatisfying experience that is the modern “refreshment” service on an Australian domestic plane.
And then the seat in front of you reclines.
Wars have been started over less, and history shows that, while not many of them kicked off at 9000 metres, this scenario nonetheless involves a whole new set of battle parameters that not even the most hardy of pilots are prepared to game.
Two people were recently kicked off a United Airlines flight from Newark to Denver after a man prevented the woman in front of her from reclining her seat. She threw water in his face and a battle that not even the stewards could control then ensued. The plane made an unscheduled stop in Chicago and the two were thrown off.
Imagine: these two had the entire time from the first whistle to unscheduled landing to sort this out and they couldn’t. A confined space can do crazy things to people.
We’ve all dealt with difficult passengers: the children who continue kicking the back of your seat and the parents who won’t control them. The guy next to you who hogs all the armrest. And the sudden and selfish recliner.
In the United Airlines case, the man who caused all the fuss used something you may have heard of here in Australia: it’s called the Knee Defender, a little device you attach to the seat in front of you to prevent it reclining into your space. Can you imagine how furious such a device would make you if attached to your seat? The attendants asked the man to remove it but he refused.
New York Times columnist Josh Barro called this act a usurping of his fellow passenger’s property rights, and it seems that way to me too. But Barro also noted that a surprising number of people leapt to the defence of the Knee Defender, fed up with seats that recline to within millimetres of their nose. Some American airlines are reportedly considering banning the obstruction but, with sales of the Knee Defender booming, the odds are against them.
My question is – what do the airlines think their responsibility is to prevent and manage such conflicts? They’re the ones designing smaller seats, smaller spaces, tougher baggage rules. It seems to me that in so many instances passengers are left to their own fractious devices to sort out among themselves the conflicts sparked by these restrictions.
Someone brings a big carry-on bag on board and starts to roughly shove it on top of yours, containing the bubble-wrapped gift you are gingerly transporting home? No one intervenes and, if they do, the steward will often be the one doing the impatient shoving themselves.
I once had a woman who, for unexplained reasons, leapt and thrashed in her seat the entire trip, making use of my tray table impossible. A subtle appeal to the flight attendant resulted in her offering me a sweet, understanding smile and a shrug of her shoulders.
If airlines allow seats to recline, that should be the end of it. But how about a formal dictum that no seat reclining is allowed until, say, food service is over?
I’ve noticed that on some Jetstar flights the seats don’t recline at all. Whether that’s a fault or a deliberate decision is intriguing. I just wouldn’t want to be there when the fight breaks out.
Virginia Trioli is co-host of ABC News Breakfast on ABC1 and ABC News 24, 6-9am weekdays.
Follow Virginia on Twitter @latrioli
