People shouldn’t recline their seats on a plane; that’s just plane etiquette.
With the release of a new viral plane incident, lots of questions are beginning to surface. Two of which being “Who was in the wrong?” and “What is proper plane etiquette?”
Flight passenger Wendi Williams was traveling from New Orleans to Charlotte on an American Airlines flight when she decided to recline her seat on the plane. The man behind her on this flight was angered that she reclined her chair and proceeded to repeatedly punch, tap and nudge the back of her seat. Feeling attacked by his actions, she decided to record a video of him and post it on Twitter to retaliate.
After taking the video, Williams decided to call the flight attendant. “When the FA [flight attendant] came, she rolled her eyes at me and said, ‘What?’ She then told him it was tight back there and gave him rum!” Williams tweeted. “She told me I had to delete the video! It’s against the law to video on a plane. I asked her name and she gave me a Passenger Disturbance Notice!”
Ever since the incident, the internet has been in shambles trying to figure which passenger was in the right: Williams reclining her seat or the man punching it?
It’s safe to say that both parties were in the wrong, but senior Marali Sanchez shares some of her thoughts on the issue. “Although the man overreacted by punching the seat, I think it’s common travel knowledge to know that you shouldn’t recline your seat on a plane,” Sanchez stated.
In the video, one can clearly see that the man is in the last row of the plane. Typically, the last rows have limited reclination or none at all, meaning the man likely couldn’t give himself more room to make up for the space the woman took.
However, the man did not approach the situation in a professional manner whatsoever. Instead of politely asking if she could simply put the seat up again, he decided to act in a completely childish manner by punching the seat.
Although the man was doing much more harm than the woman, Williams should have known proper plane etiquette and should have asked the man before reclining. There is not enough room on planes anymore to recline seats, and frankly it’s not very hard to sit up straight for a short two hour flight from New Orleans to Charlotte.
