Last summer, my sister and I were part of a larger group of people who were heading to Egypt to do some missions work for a month. The first part of our trip was an 11 hour flight from LAX to Heathrow. Since the group didn’t book tickets together, we had picked two seats, one next to the window and the other directly next to it. When we arrived at our seats we realized two things: 1. the bathroom was behind us so we couldn’t recline and 2. that someone was sitting in one of our seats. There was a family of four, two teenage boys, the mom and the dad. The mom and the two boys were sitting in three seats in front of us and the dad decided to sit in our window seat. When we asked him to move, he politely did so and we took our seats, with the mother coming to sit next to us on the aisle seat instead.
As soon as we reached cruising altitude, the father and the two boys in front of us reclined their seats ALL the way back, leaving me, my sister and even their mom in an extremely small space since we couldn’t recline. They kept their seats back for the entire 11 hour flight including when it came time for the meals which was extremely annoying! Every time we had to go to the bathroom or needed to get up to stretch our legs, we would all have to get up and and lean awkwardly to try to pass their seats so as to give them a taste of how uncomfortable we were. Every time we would try to get out we would use the top of their seats to lean on which would end up bringing them further back and then whiplashing them up. They more than deserved it.
Moral of the story: NEVER lean your chair into full recline when in coach or when you KNOW the person behind you doesn’t have much room. Don’t expect that they won’t retaliate either. I’ve flown dozens of times and that is my BIGGEST pet peeve while flying.
Tagged as:
seats
I just got back from a trip to Egypt, Jordan, and Israel, and I have to be honest when I say that the plane flight that I endured from our lay-over in Frankfurt, Germany to Boston was the worst plane flight I have ever encountered. Lets start by saying that I am 6′5″ and I obviously cannot fit, nor sleep in a seat where my knees are already knocking my front teeth out. The guy in front of me is “that guy” who keeps his seat reclined from start to finish during the flight, plus the guy behind me is also my size, and because his knees are hitting the back of my seat, I couldn’t recline my seat at all.
Halfway through our roughly 8-hour flight, the family in front of us has a child who suddenly gets up and starts to gag in my direction. Luckily, his puke hit the seat in front of me, but it started to drip down between the seats and covered my shoes and pant legs. While this is all happening, the giant behind me decided to fall asleep with his head resting on my headrest, so that once I had finally scraped the puke off my shoes with the blanket from the guy sitting next to me (luckily he didn’t notice I was using his blanket), the guy behind me was fast asleep and I couldn’t even lean my head back against my head rest. Eventually, I found a way that I could wedge my head in between the seat, and be semi-comfortable. I just started to nod off, when I felt something wet on the back of my neck. The guy behind me had started to drool down the front of my seat, onto my shirt and down the back of my neck! I was so ripped at this point I shook my chair, and yanked it back as far as it could recline, waking the man behind me up and ticking him off.
To top off the trip, the AC in the plane was broken, and we just happened to have the only aircraft left on this earth that doesn’t have individual air vents, so for the last 4 hours of my trip I sat sweating to death in an 85 degree cabin, smelling like throw up and drool, ticked off at the world.
Tagged as:
children & babies,
seats,
vomit
In January 2008, I was flying in Coach on Lufthansa from JFK to FRA. As the flight was expected to be shorter than usual, I decided to try to get as much sleep as possible, so immediately after takeoff I reclined my seat and began to doze off. However, as a Greek woman immediately behind me was constantly kicking and pushing my seat, it was difficult to do so. At first, I wrote it off to her trying to find the “correct” position that we all try to do on overnight flights in coach.
Dinner came and I put my seat up, both as a courtesy to the person behind me and in order to be closer to the fold down tray. Upon completion of the meal service, the passenger in front of me reclined his seat, and I attempted to do the same. At first, I thought perhaps my seat was jammed but then realized that the woman behind me, with all her force, was pushing against my seat in order to prevent me from reclining. At this point I forced the seat to recline, and she started getting into a heated rage with me saying that I cannot recline because she doesn’t have enough space (let me clarify that the woman was of average size and in no way large or overweight). She proceeded to kick and hit my seat back, and I turned around and told her that if she needs more space, next time she should buy a business or first class ticket. The passenger next to me, an elderly German man, turned around and scolded her, telling her to allow everyone to get some sleep, that she’s acting like a five year old, and that this was an airplane and not a kindergarten. At this point, she violently kicked my seat with all her force to the point that it bent over way past the fully-upright position and to the point that my back hurt.
A flight attendant at saw what was happening and approached the woman behind me. She started going off on how she has “rights” and that reclining my seat infringed on those. She also began to claim that I was moving my seat up and back every couple minutes making it difficult for her to position herself. I explained that that was not the case and had moved my seat up for the meal service. The flight attendant, however, stopped my explanation and told her flatly that whether or not I was moving my seat every couple of minutes was irrelevant, as I was certainly in my right to do so if I chose to. Furthermore, the flight attendant pointed out that the seat in front of me was also reclined as were many others on the plane. The flight attendant also echoed my comment that perhaps she would be more comfortable in business or first class on a future flight. However, for this flight, the flight attendant summoned the purser, who asked me to get out of my seat and reseated me in Business Class (as all Coach seats were taken), while the purser apologized and commented to me that some people are just unbelievably impossible to deal with. Obviously, I told the purser it wasn’t her fault, and we ended up having a good laugh about it later in the flight.
As I returned shortly prior to landing to retrieve the bag that I had left by my original seat, I noticed that I had left the seat in the reclined position for the whole flight. Oops, sorry.
Tagged as:
flight attendant,
lufthansa,
seats,
violence
This is about NOT RECLINABLE seats. Should you have masochistic streaks, you can find them on the Cathay Pacific 747B-400 flights from Europe to Far East. They are something of a kind: a plastic shell 40 cm. wide, with some 3 cm. thick Styrofoam filled sliding cushions… Yes, sliding… the seat won’t recline, only the thin cushions slide 10 cm. onward… after 45 minutes, your previously rounded bottom starts getting incredibly square edges…
Add to this that, should you happen to ask for aisle and find yourself in the middle seat of three, with a fat Chinese lady to your right and her fat nephew to your left (I feel nice here, I won’t swap with you…), the only position you can put your arms are: 1) straight forward along your body, or: 2) crossed on your chest. Alternate every 10 minutes, for the next 12 hours. And this, thanks to the blessed economic recession, that gave my company the justification for suppressing the business treatment for us for the flights longer than three hours. And be informed that we have no transfer allowance as well, so that when flying overseas on some red eye we get paid from 9 to five… but this is a job… something better should be a vacation…
To top it, once disembarking I was so tired that I didn’t answer to the chink steward’s good bye… so that he let me pass a couple of rows and then said loud: …”f**k you!” A good end to a hellish flight…
Tagged as:
cathay pacific,
flight attendant,
portly,
seats
