DH says I should complain about this situation to make the airline aware but I am not sure

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Got back from a week away in New York a few days ago.
Me and DH got on the plane the plane had rows four seats in the middle. DH was on one end, me next to him. The seat next to me was free and then there was another lady at the other end.

One of the last passengers on was this very large lady who ended up sat next to me. She ended up taking a good bit of my seat, the armrest could not be out down, she could not get the tray table done. I soon realised that when I put my tray down it was digging into her and every time she moved it was flipping up anyway. So I put it up and left it
DH is quite tall and he did offer to move but I don’t think he would have fit in three quarter of a seat to be honest. We are now just after take off and I can feel my fibromyalgia and begin to kick because can’t move properly. DH pretents to go to the toliet and discreetly the flight attendant asks if there is anywhere I can move to.

The flight attendant says no the flight is full and says the lady should have booked two seats especially as the arm rest doesn’t go down.

I manage to sit for a hour and then I get up and stand in the aisle. The flight attendant asks if I am ok and I said yep I just needed to move for a while.

The inflight drink comes so I sit down and have a drink without using my tray.

When the meal was served I put my tray down as there was no other way I could eat it and I have diabetes so had to eat.

The women then nudges me and asks me to put my tray up and I said no sorry I needed to eat and I can’t do it with my tray up. The women then calls the flight attendant over and complains and the flight attendant says I am entitled to use my tray as I want. The women bursts into tears. My husband offers to swap with her then she can have more room with the ailse but she says she is sitting in her booked seat and it being shamed into moving.
I gulp my meal down and raise my tray as quickly as I can.

By this time I am in agony and on the verge of tears myself and keep having to move into the aisle. The flight attendant takes pity on me and lets me sit in one of the jumpsears till we start coming into land. I was so grateful.

On landing a returned to my seat and the women turns to me and says I have made her feel awful and I have fat shamed her. The guy in front turns around and said it was not my fault and most people would not have been as polite as me. She bursts into tears again.

I have never been so glad to get off the plane.

Two days later I am still in agony as it has triggered a flare and feel awful. My DH says I need to complain and say the airline should have made her book 2 seats. I just don’t know as I know the seats on aircraft are not generous anyway and she could be big through no fault of her own and may not be able to afford to seats in the future.

I am up now in agony and can’t sleep and it’s all going through my mind with me thinking was I horrible and could i have handled things better.

I bloody hate flying

Well the larger person could say that the seat was designed too small! And they are small. I am a slightly smaller than average female and even I can feel a bit claustrophobic.

I think it is a slippery slope to begin getting people to pay for a second seat.

I think it is something that can be discreetly dealt with by staff at the checkin stage if a larger passenger who has only a single seat book checks in. And it should be written up as a policy within the terms and conditions.

The cabin crew did what they could

I disagree.

They could have rejigged the seating so OP and DH sat together and larger lady had two seats.

There were no spare seats, the flight was full.

Surely the cabin crew have a responsibility to ensure passengers are safely seated before take off. This wasn't safe.

Trouble with this is that it is going to happen more and more. Obesity levels show no sign of reducing, they are increasing. Also increasing is the normalisation of it - the obese passenger used that normalisation to accuse of being fat shamed when the reality is she was so fat (for whatever reason) to allow for normal travel, and made other passengers physically and mentally uncomfortable.

I soon realised that when I put my tray down it was digging into her and every time she moved it was flipping up anyway.

There is no way someone could be that big surely?

There is, and you don't even need to be massively obese for it to happen. A friend of mine was recently on a flight to the US, she is a size 18ish and she knocked the tray of the person next to her whenever she moved. She said she was utterly mortified but she isn't even overweight enough to need a belt extender so airlines obviously expect and cater to people much larger than my friend with no consideration for other passengers.

The weight of the cargo ( passengers and luggage) affects the handling of the plane. On a small plane it used to be ( I have not been on one for nearly 40 years) you had to state your weight so the pilot could make sure he had enough fuel and could fly safely, and seating was allocated to balance the weight. An average weight per passenger is used on commercial flights I think. It strikes me as odd that there is nothing on the booking forms to flag up a particularly over the average weight. Anyway that is an aside. I think it might be helpful to let the airline know what happened in the hope of suitable resolution for future passengers.

I was on a Domestic flight with what seemed to be an entire French Rugby team. Those blokes are BIG!
I was glad they all seemed to be seated together but goodness knows how they all fitted in to their rows. You can't spill over into the next seat if your neighbour is bigger than you are!

I would absolutely complain. Must have been horrendous for you.

And why wouldn't she swap to the aisle seat? She sounds really entitled and selfish tbh.

I would not have sat their full stop.and would have made a massive fuss until.something was sorted. But I have a bad back and being crushed into a seat would.have had me in agony.

breakfast that's exactly why the big people should sit together. They sort of push back against each other so no one is crushed.

you should cmplain-i am overweight and would rather know the seat dimensions when i book rather than when i step on a plane

if i have to buy two seats so be it-they'l never make economy seats bigger if anything theyre trying to squeeze more in

There is, and you don't even need to be massively obese for it to happen. A friend of mine was recently on a flight to the US, she is a size 18ish and she knocked the tray of the person next to her whenever she moved. She said she was utterly mortified but she isn't even overweight enough to need a belt extender so airlines obviously expect and cater to people much larger than my friend with no consideration for other passengers.

And do you think your friend should have paid 2 seats? Or have been asked to leave the plane from security/police? Like some have suggested on this thread.

I think this whole situation could have been totally different depending on the bigger ladies attitude. If she had perhaps been more sympathetic and understanding of OP's needs, I don't think there would have been as big of an issue. I also don't think the thread would have got the same responses if it had been a large build man sitting beside her because they too can take up a lot of room.

DD is Cabin Crew, fairly new to the job but says that colleagues are reporting situations like this becoming more common . They try to deal with it calmly and respectfully but the term “ fat-shaming “ is thrown back at them. She does say that if the arm rest won’t go down and there are no other seats , the captain can remove the large person .

pootle - I thought there were three of them in a bank of fout? So larger lady could have been moved so OP wasn’t squashed up against her. (May have misunderstood though)

@WaddesdonWanderer I know someonewho has ‘Lady’ as a title on her passport - she was no more a Lady than Bet Lynch! It is possible to buy a title. She once tried ringing ahead when she was late for a flight using her title in an attempt to hold the plane - it didn’t work

Op said the flight was full which is why the crew let her sit in the jump seat.

What about an upgrade though? If there are seats going in another cabin then they should be used to alleviate this sort of situation.

Upgrade for OP not the lady as otherwise this would be an incentive not to book two seats where needed.

The trouble is, the captain could offload, but often won't to avoid delay fines. The other issue nowadays is offloading someone like her would probably result in a huge drama that would be filmed by other passengers and sold to media outlets. There are less and less cabin crew onboard nowadays, so they're rushing round or having to stay by doors before pushback, so may not notice until after pushback. Re ground staff, a lot of check in is online or automated, so passengers may not even see the actual airline staff, only general airport and security staff, who won't know seat pitch or size for each airline. Nor will they know which cabin they're sitting in. So it's very tough. At the same time seats are getting smaller while people are getting bigger. On some routes it's desirable to be fat, so you get lots of big people squished in the same rows. I'm always amazed more people don't say something.

I would contact the airline and make them aware of what happened, yes.

Airline seats just aren't fit for purpose these days. You are just as likely to have a tall person encroaching on your space as an overweight person, due to the minuscule amount of leg room. DH always has his knees wedged into the seat in front and he's a very average 5ft 10. I think the airlines need to make seats bigger again rather than expecting their passengers to shrink themselves!

The other thing they should do is put rigid dividers between the seats so that you can't encroach.

My hubby and I are chubby so we book premium economy if we can. Despite being very tall and large my hubby does not have the issues you have mentioned in economy so this woman must have been very large. I think you should say something to the airline - they must have a policy about this or if not they should have one. As someone else said they would have spotted this as being an issue at the checkin desk and came up with an option i.e. like an aisle seat at the very least.

As a self identifying Fat Fuck, that passenger deserved a slap upside the head. She should be ashamed in adopting language of persecution and victimhood to justify her hurting a disabled person.

In reality, though, she'll be the one wailing on SM about how awful you were to her and, thanks to how vocal some activists are, that'll get more publicity than some poor person with a hidden disability.

It won't hurt to tell the airline that the consequence of not enforcing their safety standards re. the trays/armrests meant that you were left in pain and were verbally attacked (whilst stressing how nice the crew were), but the most you'll get is a 'we're sorry', IMO.

Ah, yes, you’re all right. Must learn to read opening post more carefully!

As maggiso said upthread, weight affects the balance of the plane. In the Maldives, transfers to the islands are frequently by small sea plane where balance is critical. If a passenger is considerably over weight, they are weighted publicly on the scales.
Maybe if this practice was instituted here it might deter some of these vastly overweight people from flying.