To think it's actually OK to recline your seat on a long haul flight?

[winterwonder1]

I always thought it was just one of those things, but this poll seems to make out it's anti-social behaviour. And that hack is just batshit.

Best life hack to stop air passengers reclining their seat | Chester and District Standard

I also don’t feel any different reclined or not so i suppose it doesn’t really matter to me

I don’t fly economy anymore for long haul but when I did I always reclined after the main meal and before the mini meal.

Everyone should recline! That way they all have equal amount of space! You need to recline to get any sleep!

But not at meal times.

Well I never knew there was recline etiquette. If the seat can be reclined, recline it whenever you like. That’s what it’s there for

It’s a very recent thing for people to even consider reclining their seat during waking hours. It’s been possible to recline seats for many decades now. But people always used to have enough respect for others to keep reclining for night flights. It really squashes the people behind you, for very little gain for yourself. If you don’t want to be upright in daytime, save up for business class!

I honestly find the whole “reclining your airplane seat is rude” quite hilarious. In my experience it’s only Brits that find it oddly offensive. Maybe it’s because they are used to travelling with the shitty cheapo airlines (e.g. Ryanair and Easyjet) whose seats don’t recline?

No. It’s there to be reclined during night flights. Which everyone understood until about minutes ago, when ‘me me me me’ became the only thing that mattered in any situation

Is this really true? I’ve been flying since the ‘80s fairly regularly and can’t say I’ve noticed an uptick or downward trend on recliners. Maybe I’m wrong but this seems like one of those nebulous statements with no way to prove or disprove.

Ok see this is totally made up… so I’m going with it’s a rule you made up in your own head and expect everyone else to follow.

It brings out the worst in me. If you recline on top of me, I’ll give the seat a good push every so often, when I stand up to walk around, go to the loo, have a regular movement break.

Not as I recall. People reclined a lot in the 70s and early 80s. Les so through the 90s. But articles lamenting people who put their seats back outside of "sleep" hours have been vilified in aviation media for decades.

There also use to be way more space between seats, even in economy- so maybe it impinged less. The real issue is the ever decreasing row spacing. Now our daughter is older we have booked our first long haul in a while. So glad we aren’t in economy as the 2 flights are 16hrs combined.

I'm really not convinced there's been that much change over the decades, certainly on some airlines. That opinion is based on > 30 years of being legitimately able to walk the length of Long Haul aircraft as part of the day job and so actually seeing what passengers get up to.

Certainly where I was we carried a high number (maybe >25% of total on board) of passengers off connecting flights and once the first meal service was done you'd expect to see a high percentage of seats reclined, day or night,.even in the '80s and certainly through to the 2020s..and frankly be it 1995 or 2025 if you told passengers on most breakfast time London to JFK/BOS/IAD etc etc flights they couldn't recline because "it's morning and it's daylight" you'd have a riot..

What has changed is seat pitch (point made by @Poppins21 ) but also there seem to be more leisure long haulers, some quite vocal, who pitch up at the airport fresh as a daisy, don't understand why anyone should recline and are completely unwilling to try Chairman Mao's idea of contemplating walking any distance in other passenger's shoes...so.the grumbles start about "it's morning,.how can anyone be tired"..etc etc.

It's a recipe for conflict....

I think the seats have got smaller since then which means less space

I've been flying long haul regularly since I was 7 - almost 60 years. That's not my observation. People recline or not, as they wish.

The only "rule" - in that it will be enforced by long-suffering cabin staff - is that you raise your set to upright during meal service, and for take off and landing.

This is so passag. Do you really refuse to recline your own seat?

Not true.
People reclined all the time when I flew in the 90s!

I always ask the person in front to put their seat up during meals. Most people do it without being asked. If you have this again and the person refuses to put their seat up during meals, ask the cabin crew to intervene (they did for me once and the idiot in front of me complied when they asked).

If you don’t want to be reclined on , save up for business class!

.

I’d turn around and say stop pushing my seat. If you did it again, it I’d report you to air stewards. Once more and you’d have a drink accidentally poured over you 😉

Only if your feet, socks and shoes are clean and odourless. Some people's feet smell like the stinkiest kind of cheese.....🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮

I’d turn around and say stop pushing my seat. If you did it again, it I’d report you to air stewards. Once more and you’d have a drink accidentally poured over you

the stewards won’t do anything about someone pushing/grabbing the chair to get up, its very hard not do that when the seat in front is reclined…

they will do something about you ‘accidentally’ pouring drinks over people

Yes, definitely much less space now, so losing a few more centimetres- particularly in front of your face - feels much more of an intrusion.