Third flight in nine days diverted by fight over reclining seats | Hacker News Reader

Third flight in nine days diverted by fight over reclining seats

washingtonpost.com

19 pointsmarkmassie7 comments

Clearly the solution to squabbles among an infinitesimal percentage of passengers is to disable the recline button on all airline seats.

It's not small. My wife was doing some research recently about complaints (to help determine which airline to choose) and discovered that a vast majority of the "horror stories" online are about seat reclining.

That's not a bad conspiracy theory, come to think of it.

Publicize the stories to the point where the public accepts the disabling of the buttons. Then the airlines can knock another 1-2" off the seat distance.

The article would be more interesting if it actually followed up on what the consequences for the passengers were. I'm also curious to know how many cameras there are in planes monitoring the passenger area, that would help settle such disputes after the fact.

The passenger should be banned from flying for 12 months. Seriously. I'm actually on the side of not reclining your seat unless the lights are out but if you're such a moron that you are happy to start a fight over it and force a plane to land you should suffer pretty sever consequences. A flying ban for 12 months seems fair and not too extreme (e.g. large fine, prison).

I think the airlines should just make it clear. They should either disable the seat reclining or explicitly state when you buy the ticket and at the start of the flight that the person in front of you has a right to recline their seat.

It should not be necessary. If you bought a ticket for a reclining seat then you should be able to recline your seat. However there seems to be a persistent belief that nobody should be allowed to recline but you. The airlines need to correct this misinformation.

>> "If you bought a ticket for a reclining seat then you should be able to recline your seat."

I disagree. When travelling in such cramped, close quarters with lots of strangers you need to be respectful of other people. If it's day time on a short (3-5 hour) flight and the person behind you is watching a movie on the screen on the back of your seat you shouldn't recline. If you don't think it will bother them, turn around and ask. Besides, you didn't buy a ticket for a reclining seat to begin with - all the seats recline. Maybe the solution is to allocate a certain section of reclining seats and charge for them separately (if demand dictates).

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