Should You Recline Your Airplane Seat?

newyorker.com

3 pointsbookofjoe4 comments

I almost never recline my seat, and my moral calculus is this: I will get approximately 5 Comfort Units from doing this, whereas the person behind me will lose approximately 100 Comfort Units.

(For comparison, I'd say that sitting in a first class seat on an airplane is somewhere around 1000 Comfort Units.)

The seats are all terrible, they barely recline from my perspective, and there's just no reason to do this. I don't particularly care if someone else's calculation is different from mine. If someone in front of me reclines, I don't begrudge them the slightly more comfortable position they're in now. Flying sucks - my situation didn't get that much worse if they reclined.

It is impossible to use a laptop when the person in front of you reclines. Hell it is almost impossible to use one if they don't recline. I appreciate being able to use one and as a result I never recline out of respect for the person behind me who might want to use theirs.

> Hell it is almost impossible to use one if they don't recline.

Exactly, lol. I just scootch it closer to myself and lose another 5 points of comfort.

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