Another plane one!

[Imale]

Just wondering what the opinion is here. Not a biggie but thought I'd throw it out here as I'm curious...hopefully won't be as controversial as a reclining thread 😅

We're flying as family (me, dh, 2 teen dc). 3 hour flight. Seats selected, check in online day before, digital boarding passes sent, all good. Booked 3 in a row and one aisle seat across the aisle in same row.

Get to airport (and we are there in good time - 3 hours before), go to desk to check in luggage and the agent hands us printed boarding passes. No mention of any seat change. My fault here that I didn't check the seats on new bps, but I didn't think of it as we'd already checked in online and had preselected seats ages ago.

So go to board plane and I look at seats on boarding passes and I realise they're not the seats we booked. We now have window and middle one behind the other. I'm pretty pissed off as I always book aisle due to a knee issue and needing to stretch my leg out. But cabin crew tell me its a full flight and nothing they can do.

So people come and sit in the 2 aisle seats and we realise they are a couple! We explain what happened and ask if they'd like to swap and sit together and they say no, they intentionally booked 2 aisle seats. So admittedly at this point we're not exactly delighted with our neighbours but their perogative.

Anyway, I have window, dh middle and teen dc both in front. The husband who is a big guy sits next to dh. He starts manspreading and also not giving dh the armrest. I always understood plane etiquette was that whoever gets screwed over with the middle seat at least gets the armrests.

So dh tells the guy to close his legs and let him use the armrest. The guy says that dh can't have it all. At which point dh told him that the rule is that the middle seat gets to use the armrest and is this the first time he has flown? Guy does grumpily concede inner armrest to DH for rest of flight.

Was Dh being unreasonable demanding the use of armrests as middle seat person? Especially given that they knew we had somehow been moved and they had intentionally kept both aisle seats?
Isn't that the plane rule? I know i always give the middle seater first dibs on armrest.

Why were you unimpressed they didn’t swap seats? Would you have swapped from your preferred seats if someone else’s seats had been changed?

But dh could have used the arm rest by his family member on the window seat and kind of "leaned" to that way if he didn't want to share armrest with the stranger? Although I do think 2 arms could fit on an armrest.

I don't think he needed exclusive use of 2 arm rests

You're right. Middle seat gets both armrests. I thought everyone did this.
And the leg spreading - why do some men do this?
Good on your DH for standing his ground.

I know what you said in the OP, but you could have just asked "is it a rule/convention/good manners to claim the armrests if you're sitting in the middle seat in a plane."

It reads like you're making it a 'rule' that they broke to justify your feelings toward them for merely sitting in their seats.

In that case to sit together with one of my party to help someone with a knee problem whose seats had been moved on a short haul flight? Yeah, I would.

I wasn't angry, its their right. Not being impressed is a pretty mild feeling tbh.

Manspreading on the other hand....
And disrespecting the middle seat rule (which i have since googled and, yes, it is a thing), well that's not ok

Hmm, I think it added insult to injury hence the description.

Like, you know your middle seat neighbour was screwed over so at least don't make it worse by manspreading and breaking the middle seat rule

I’ve never heard of this armrest “rule” in all the 50+ years I’ve been flying. I’d have laughed if you’d said it to me.

Your mistake here was not checking the boarding passes before you left check-in.

Maybe they had physical reasons for wanting aisle seats. The point is you wanting their seats and them saying no sounds like it has influenced the feeling on the manspreading and armrest. That is unreasonable.

OP, we’re you not even on the same row as you’d booked earlier?

I can only assume they changed the plane ( maybe for one with more seats ) as this can result in seat bookings needing to be reallocated.

Also if I found I was bounced to row 24 after booking row 8, I’d be looking for a refund of the difference from the airline.

Yay!!! I started questioning all my flight etiquette training with the responses here.
I fly a lot and thought it was common knowledge.

I agree with this.

I think you were already annoyed they wouldn't switch their aisle seats, when they could have a whole host of reasons for booking aisle so this made the arm rest thing a big deal (I have honestly never heard of this!)

Man spreading is not acceptable, no matter what seat you end up with, but it sounds like the man stopped spreading when called out on it.
The man was then willing to share the arm rest, it was your dh with the problem.

there is no rule. If someone said this to me on a plane I’d find it hilarious and think you were clinically insane

I’m disabled.

i never bother booking seats even on the airlines that offer it for free as I always, always get moved regardless.

i assume moving people like me (so the ambilift etc can get to me easier) is why so often seats get juggled at the airport.

obvs you should have double checked but so many airlines etc say choose your seat and then it’s buried six pages in the terms and conditions that they don’t actually guarantee it.

Yeah, exactly.what I think happened.
Lesson learnt to double check bps and not assume because you paid and checked in online that it'll be the same. I usually would if flying solo but with all the family there was too much going on.
At least it was only a short flight.

They so change pre booked seats, usually when it’s a different plane. To be honest, with teen we always sit with them in front of us so we can talk easier than across the aisle.

i do agree that the guy had an armrest on the aisle side so your dh should get the arm rest but that’s not a rule. I’d be more annoyed about manspreading.

Google middle seat rule. It is indeed a rule. I actually just thought it was common courtesy but turns out dh is right

the fact that the airline changed your seats has nothing whatsoever to do with the couple sitting next to you. You were entitled to ask if they wanted to move but they were entitled to say no too. Don’t know why you think that makes them selfish? Maybe they had mobility issues too and wanted aisle seats?
I think you were pissed off with them and your DH made their flight as unpleasant as possible because they refused to swap seats

It is not a rule. Google says that it’s an unwritten rule. That’s not a rule. It’s an etiquette.

Show us the rule.

Thought you were going to be the parents who seated their 3 tween/teen girls together in a row behind us and fucked off the the back of the plane. They spent 4 hours squealing and chatting absolute shit at top volume, not to mention repeated seat swapping and dropping/spilling stuff. No hint of manners between them 😬 Or the arseholes let their little kid play games on a tablet without headphones and with the volume up for 4 hours.
Never heard of your armrest ‘rule’ @Imale but no one has any manners or consideration for others any more (plus most airline seat pitches are so small now it’s impossible to be an adult over 5ft 5 and not touch the person next to you in any way). The Americans call it cattle class for a reason!

It is unwritten etiquette which is very different to a rule.

It is also unwritten etiquette to not demand things from other people but your DH demanded rather than asked his plane neighbour to move his arm.

Ooooooooh I love an aeroplane thread.

Why weren’t you impressed they didn’t move, why are your needs and wants more important than theirs?

As I said, their perogative. And as i said in my op this is not a big deal - it waa a 3 hour flight. I've has so much worse stuff happen!

However, if I knew that the people next to me, who had requested seat due to.a knee problem, had been screwed over, I certainly wouldn't then spread into their space or violate the middle seat rule (which i have now found out is a rule 😀)

widely accepted on what planet?

Google doesn't count...unless you can find any such rule codified by IATA, ICAO or even in the airline T&Cs it's etiquette.

Yeah, airplane threads bring out some total fools who don't read the thread and just lay into the op 😅
As I have repeatedly said 🤣, their perogative.
But manspreading and breaking the middle seat rule after knowing that? Nah, that's totally selfish IMO. I would never.

And I always have respected the middle seat rule. I have sympathy for the middle seaters!