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.

What a lot of silly nonsense over a 3 hour flight

Another one that's never heard of any etiquette or rule around the arm rest, and I used to fly twice weekly for work.

Oh right. I fly at least twice a week and always book an aisle seat. I wouldn't swap to a middle seat for any reason. You'd always booked a middle seat.

An unwritten rule is not a rule, hence "unwritten". It's an established norm, sure.

Oh, and it generally pays to be less abrasive. Asking politely rather than "educating people" will always yield better results.

OP you sound very stressed over a three hour flight.

If no one else has ever heard of it it’s not a rule.

I've interrogated my ChatGPT and it says it’s something that some people in the US follow but it’s fairly unheard of in the UK

OP - you posts make it sound as though you’ve taken advantage of your duty free booze allowance 🤣🤣

I flew out to Lanzarote mid Jan.

Rysnair so digital boarding passes but they changed everyone’s seats twice and both times I got an email telling me to check the app because they’d changed.

apparently both times it was because of a change of aircraft.

Person in the aisle gets the armrest to their aisle side
Person at the window gets that side

So , yes the middle aisle has the dibs on the two either side of them.

The ManSpeading is not on though , he needed to keep his legs in his own space , not encroach.

Glad I don't fly !

Never heard of the arm rest rule.

Your mistake for not reading the New Zealand Herald. That’s where OP had her rule confirmed. 👍

Prerogative - sorry you've misspelled it twice now so I thought you might want to know.

I don't think the couple were selfish - they probably checked their boarding passes to ensure their reservation preferences were upheld.

There is no arm rest rule and being abrasive to strangers about it isn't exactly the way to go about having a peaceful (very short) flight. Anyone spreading over the boundaries of their seat is annoying, regardless of who they are.

I've never heard the arm rests rule.
I do think if someone is on the larger side and they have the aisle seat they should spread into the alise and not into your space.

Same here. The OP has made up that 'rule'.

OP is just winding us up .. have you seen her next rule near the end of the thread? 🤷‍♀️

I work in the industry, this really is on you OP for not clocking it at the desk, something may have been able to be done for you at that point. I understood how frustrating it is for you that they wouldn’t swap but if you had had your original seats would you have swapped with them if they’d asked you to so they could have 2 aisle seats? Unlikely 🤷🏼‍♀️
And there is definitely no ‘middle seat get the armrest’ rule or etiquette!!

I’ve never heard of a middle seat armrest rule! 🤣 never considered the middle seat as bad luck either though!

Lol there’s no such rule, maybe a loose convention. I’d love to have seen your DH square up to some chubby fella over his overspreading. I just nudge my elbow in under their arm and share.

Ha ha! There’s no rule about the armrests! Certainly not that the middle sitter gets two.

He obviously shouldn’t have been manspreading of course - maybe his wife has got sick of it so won’t sit next to him!

They were entitled to keep their two seats, but shitty of the airline to erase your booking. However it’s very weird that happened and that the other couple were able to book the two aisle seats in your rows - are you sure you didn’t make a mistake when booking?

I think with the armrests the rule, if you can call it that, is that both people get a bit of the armrest.

The window seat does come with a bit more room that the other two seats as there’s that bit more by the window. So it’s really the best seat if someone needs to stretch a bit as you shouldn’t really be putting limbs into the aisle - booking extra leg room would be better.

Good point made by PP that you shouldn’t put your leg in the aisle, as someone will come by and whack it and your DH will have to square up to them too.

I do think it was very right that your DH gave you the window and took the less desirable middle, bearing in mind your bad knee.

I do get fed up of seeing dynamics where it seems that the man thinks he should have the best of whatever is going.

I’ve not heard of that armrest etiquette but I’ve heard of sharing it.

Did you pay extra to pre-book the seat numbers you wanted. If not, you will get nowhere fast. If yes, complain to the appropriate company and ask for a refund.

As for the other matter. Believe me this is nothing is the scheme of the way people behave on planes.

Ex UK cabin crew here and there is no such thing as middle seat rule, etiquette maybe but not a rule..