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Man praised for refusing to switch seats with a dad who was traveling alone with his daughter

He made the right decision.

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Man praised for not switching seats with dad traveling with daughter

Airlines charge for everything but breathing nowadays so people tend to be protective of their seat assignments. They picked them with their own hands with their needs and preferences in mind before paying the extra money to confirm the seating. Choosing your own seat can range from $5-$80 extra per ticket depending on where in the cabin you choose to sit, barring first class options.

It's for this reason that people aren't keen on trading their seats with someone who chose to let the airline auto-assign a seat for them. This doesn't stop people from asking unsuspecting fellow travelers to swap seats with them, likely relying on the social pressure of the situation to coax a yes. But one man refused to be swayed, even when the other passenger points out that he would like to sit next to his minor daughter which may have been enough to encourage others to oblige the request.

The passenger who was being asked to move had already paid additional money to sit in an aisle seat he explains, "I always book an aisle seat. My company allows me to add the small surcharge for an aisle seat (it was $18). I sat early and this guy comes with his daughter. His daughter had the middle seat next to me. He had another middle seat elsewhere. He asked to switch with me. I said I would if he had an aisle seat. He said he has a middle seat."

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The middle seat is typically the least desirable seat due to being stuck between two other passengers, no designated armrest and nothing to comfortably lean your head on should you fall asleep. Waking up only to realize you've been asleep on a stranger's shoulder can make for an awkward interaction, so there's no surprise the man didn't want to trade seats with the dad on those details alone. But the man didn't choose the aisle seat because he was afraid of drooling on the shoulder of a fellow passenger.

"I said sorry, I am a big guy (6 feet, 260+ pounds), I am [un]comfortable in middle seat. It's a 4.5 hour flight," the befuddled passenger shares before adding. "I explained I am physically uncomfortable in the middle. The aisle gives me more room."

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One might think the interaction would end there but it didn't. According to the six-foot-tall man, the dad then involved a flight attendant to encourage him to give up his seat so the dad could sit next to his child. But the man continued to refuse the dad's request which resulted in the dad having to sit in his original seat and the teenage girl being seated next to the original man. He had no desire to be uncomfortable for a fairly long flight and while he was expecting for people to disagree with his actions, they were overwhelmingly on his side.

"You paid extra for that aisle seat, and it’s your comfort on a long flight. The guy should've booked better seats if he wanted to sit next to his daughter. Plus, it’s not your job to accommodate his poor planning," one person writes.

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"If you want to sit together, pay for the seats. Good for you, people like that need to learn they cant have their cake and eat it too," someone else says.

"I hate it when a FA asks you to move one you've already said no. They should stand by their company who sold you the seat and reiterate that to the person asking," another chimes in.

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"I’ve been in the situation traveling, when my kids were small and flights were canceled, etc. that we were seated separately. When you REALLY do NEED compassion, people are generally OK with it and they are understanding and will likely move if able. I’ve also raised my kids to be independent and as teenagers they would have been just fine. In a case where it really is a need (like a special needs teen), the airline owes its passengers some sort of a solution like upgrading an inconvenienced traveller," someone else adds.

The man does admit that maybe the dad assumed the solo traveler would be inappropriate with his daughter saying, "Maybe he thought I was some creeper? I AM NOT. I popped a prescription muscle relaxer, put on relaxing music on my earphones and zoned out." In the end the man did not give up his seat and the teen girl and her father were both fine sitting in the seats assigned to them.

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Pop Culture

Airline CEO works a flight attendant shift and is 'astonished' at how 'challenging' it is

More CEOs should do this.

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“Sometimes, you need to change perspectives in order to gain new insights!”

“Sometimes, you need to change perspectives in order to gain new insights!” is not exactly a sentence one might expect to hear from a corporate exec, but it is a philosophy that led Jens Ritter, CEO of German company Lufthansa Airlines, to taking on a shift as a flight attendant.

In a post shared on LinkedIn, Ritter detailed his experience of working as additional cabin crew for a flight heading to Riyadh and Bahrain, taking care of passengers in business class.

Though Ritter’s previous career as a pilot gave him some insight into the challenges of working a flight, taking on the responsibilities of an attendant left him “astonished.”

"I was amazed by how much there is to organize, especially if something doesn't go as planned,” Ritter recalled, noting how on his flight the offered menu items weren’t actually the meals loaded onto the plane.

Beyond purely administrative tasks, Ritter acknowledged the difficult task of addressing individual wishes and dealing with different energies (something airline attendants don’t get credit for nearly enough).

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Jens Ritter working as a flight attendant on Lufthansa Airlines

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And on that note, Ritter found it particularly taxing to “be present and attentive and charming” during an overnight flight “when the biological clock just tells you to sleep.” He confessed that it was an “entirely different” experience than what pilots endure.

Ritter concluded his post by thanking the cabin crew and said that his time spent on the ground (well, on the ground, in the air) would make “deciding things in the office different” moving forward.

At a time when stories of out-of-touch, greedy CEOs inundate the headlines, it’s refreshing to see those in managerial positions actively try to connect, empathize and support their workers, rather than exploit all resources for a bottom line. Not enough business heads recognize how crucial this kind of connection is—not just for the sake of virtue, but for the profit they so desperately want to maintain. But as Ritter’s action shows, it’s not all corporate greed out there.

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Ritter found it particularly taxing to “be present and attentive and charming” during an overnight flight.

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We could probably all stand to benefit from taking a shift in the service industry. The stress of having to maintain everyone’s good time while simultaneously problem-solving, organizing and generally keeping things afloat is not for the faint of heart. And flight attendants in particular juggle it all on a daily basis—and some even manage to make it a show. It’s great that Ritter is advocating for flight attendants by stepping into their shoes.

All in all, a change in perspective can lead to wonderful things.

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Identity

Women share the unbelievable ways they were treated on planes for being fat

"The most important thing that fellow passengers can do is just acknowledge the humanity of the people they're traveling with."

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Plane rides can be a dehumanizing experience for many

Before moving to London to pursue a degree in anthropology, Stacy Bias had to decide if it was worth getting on the airplane.

"As a woman over 300 pounds, flying was pretty anxious for me," Bias says. Over the years, Bias came to fear being stared at, subjected to rude comments from seatmates, or asked to purchase an extra seat. The anxiety got so bad that at one point, she stopped flying altogether.

With a little determination and encouragement from her partner, who had recently relocated to the U.K., Bias faced down the fear and got on the plane to London. Soon after, she started a Facebook group to offer discussion, support, and tips to other fat travelers who had encountered similar roadblocks. The group quickly grew to nearly 4,000 members and Bias, in conjunction with a research project for her undergraduate dissertation, presented the group with a survey, encouraging members to share their experiences in the air.

"I had to take the survey down after three days because I was overwhelmed with respondents," Bias says. Like Bias, the overwhelming majority of survey takers reported feeling leered at, harassed, and like an unwelcome intruder in a public space.

Bias interviewed nine of the respondents. The result was the short animated documentary "Flying While Fat," which Bias posted to YouTube in 2016.

"The goal of the animation is to humanize fat people," Bias explains.

"I think fat people are talked about a lot — especially fat passengers are talked about a lot — but rarely spoken with."

Some of Bias' subjects love to fly and to travel, but they express frustration at having to endure "the expression" — the look of disappointment and anxiety that crosses their potential seatmates' faces as they walk down the aisle. Others describe having a "hyperawareness" of their bodies at all times, constantly evaluating how much space they take up. Verbal harassment, threats, even physical abuse are common threads in the interviews.

For one participant, the struggle over fat peoples' access to plane space fundamentally comes down to fairness.

"Everyone is fully aware of how much money they spent on those cubic inches," she poses. Because of the ever-shrinking size of airline seats and aisles, fellow passengers, she hypothesizes, are primed to go to the mat over how much room they believe they deserve.

For smaller people, one person's ability sit comfortably in an airplane seat may seem trivial. But for Bias' subjects, it's anything but.

"It's a topic that people feel strongly about," Bias says. "It really impacts the ability of people to partake of the world, to see family, to travel internationally, to go to funerals, to go to weddings. It's a thing that really impacts peoples' life in a profound way."

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Animation showing the different shapes and sizes of airline travelers.

Image via YouTube video.

Fat flyers, she contends, frequently feel like excess baggage and a problem to be solved — and that, coupled with hostility from fellow passengers, can make them think twice before purchasing a plane ticket.

Bias believes the solution to the problem starts with standardizing customer size policies across the industry and creating more accessible spaces on aircraft.

Currently, those policies are a patchwork. Some airlines, like Alaska and United, require passengers who can't put both armrests down comfortably to purchase an additional ticket. Others, like Delta, simply "recommend" that customers who can't fit comfortably in a single seat do so.

Airlines "need to prioritize the well-being of passengers over profitability so that people literally can fit into the bathroom if they need to," Bias says.

This lack of concern could pose real health risks for some fat flyers. According to Bias, roughly one-quarter of her subjects reported dehydrating themselves before boarding so they wouldn't have to walk down the aisle or attempt to fit into the restroom.

Fat people, she believes, aren't the only ones who could benefit from an industry-wide policy review.

"It's disabled people, it's people with injuries, it's people with long legs. Everybody is deeply uncomfortable on the plane. It's getting more so."

Bias hopes to publish the results of her study in the coming year.

In the meantime, she hopes the film helps smaller flyers understand the frustration and helplessness their fat counterparts often feel in a space where cruelty can sometimes erupt subtly and without warning.

community, sociology, obesity, health and fitness

Animation of various physical shapes each with a heart.

Image via YouTube video.

For passengers of any size, Bias believes a little empathy and respect go a long way.

"The most important thing that fellow passengers can do is just acknowledge the humanity of the people they're traveling with."

This article originally appeared on 12.07.16

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Joy

WestJet flight attendant's funny safety presentation may actually make flying safer

Nobody's zoning out during this safety spiel.

Photo by Hanson Lu on Unsplash

A flight attendant makes the safety demonstration highly entertaining.

Most of us who fly on commercial airlines with any regularity at all have heard the preflight safety presentation so many times we tune it out. Emergency exits forward and back, seat cushions act as flotation devices, put your oxygen mask on first before assisting others, and so on. Once you've heard it a couple of times, you feel like you've got it down.

However, we've seen evidence that most people actually don't have it down. In 2018, a Southwest flight had an emergency midflight and passengers were asked to put on their oxygen masks. Photos from the flight showed that the majority of passengers put them on incorrectly, indicating that people actually do need to be paying attention to the flight crew's standard safety spiel.

Let's face it, though. Even most flight attendants appear to be robotically going through the motions in those presentations, and who can blame them? They have to do the same thing over and over hundreds if not thousands of times.

But occasionally a flight attendant comes along and breathes new life into the routine with some unexpected humor and flair.

Case in point: A WestJet flight attendant whose physical comedy was nearly impossible to ignore. Watch how he makes a standard safety demonstration into a hilarious comedy routine:

According to Narcity, the flight attendant's name is Michael McAdam and videos of his hilarious safety presentations have been circulating since at least 2011.

Here's a longer version of the above video. This is a guy who truly makes the most of his job.

While McAdam's dramatic antics are entertaining, they could actually make passengers on his flights safer if an emergency actually happened. Instead of zoning out while he demonstrated the aircraft's safety features, people were giving him their rapt attention. Who's going to forget his goofy face when he pulls on the straps of the oxygen mask? Humor is a clever way to get people to actually tune in, which may make it easier for people to remember what to do in case of an actual emergency.

Getting passengers to laugh is also a wise way to influence the overall emotional tenor of the flight. Travel can be stressful, and the COVID-19 pandemic has only added to passengers' stress levels. Setting a light, jovial tone at the beginning of a flight and getting everyone's feel-good chemicals flowing with some collective laughter might preemptively fend off conflict between cranky flyers or conflicts with crew members.

Finally, some people are very nervous to fly. Hurtling through the sky at 500 mph with nothing between you and the Earth 30,000 feet below you but few layers of sheet metal and a fairly uncomfortable chair can do that to a person. Having a flight attendant put on a mini comedy show might put them at ease, lessening the likelihood of panic setting in as the crew explains what to do in an emergency.

While we can't expect all flight attendants to be this entertaining, it is a treat when you get a funny one. Thanks, Mr. McAdam for giving us all a good giggle.

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