'Frantic' Parents Asking Plane Passenger to Give Seat to Child Dragged

A post about a plane passenger who gave up his seat after "frantic" parents asked to sit next to their daughter has gone viral on Reddit, where it had over 30,000 upvotes at the time of writing.

In a post shared on Reddit's "mildlyinfuriating" subforum under the username QuabityAsuance, the passenger said he and his wife were on a 14-hour international flight. His wife was in the window seat. The poster said "two parents arrive, one sitting next to me, the other in the adjacent aisle seat. They are FRANTIC, and beg me if I could move so their daughter can sit next to them."

The passenger gave up his seat thinking the daughter was a "little girl." However, she turned out to be a teenager "literally taller than my wife," the poster said. He ended up moving to a seat "next to a toddler who was kicking and screaming the whole flight."

Was it rude of the parents to ask to swap seats in this scenario?

Etiquette expert Lisa Mirza Grotts, the author of A Traveler's Passport to Etiquette, told Newsweek: "It's up to the parents to get a seat assignment for their children ahead of time, and it was a transatlantic flight. The other passengers were very kind to give up their seat. When there's a bump in the road, normally the go-to is the flight staff."

Life coach Tarla Makaeff told Newsweek: "While it's a nice gesture to give up a seat in certain circumstances, as the husband was embarking on a 14-hour international flight with his wife, he had every right to keep his seat..."

Travelers have a lot to say about seat swapping on flights, according to a June 2023 survey, which asked 1,000 plane passengers aged 18 and over in the U.S. and Canada about how to behave when flying.

The survey was conducted on behalf of the travel booking website Kayak, in collaboration with AYTM (Ask Your Target Market) and Brandwatch's Consumer Research Platform.

According to the survey, travelers believe "you are not allowed to ask to switch seats just because you don't like your seat," and 77 percent think "you get what you get" and should not "get upset" over it.

The survey stated travelers say: "You are not allowed to ask to switch seats just because you're a nervous flyer," because 64 percent of those surveyed think "everyone's a little nervous, not just you."

The poster from the latest Reddit post said: "I normally would've stood my ground, but these people were clearly panicked. There were some airline protests going on at the time, so I figured they were in an unfortunate situation with a little girl."

While walking down the aisle to his new seat, the poster said he realized the daughter the parents were panicking about was "a ~16 year old girl playing with her phone in the exit row...in typical teenage fashion, she seemed uninterested in the whole ordeal and just sat down next to my wife."

In a later comment, the passenger said the daughter was "just standing in the exit row waiting for her parents to ask me to move. I just didn't realize she was the daughter-in-question until she moved to sit in my seat. My new seat was near the back next to a screaming toddler."

The poster said the toddler "was kicking and screaming the whole flight, and the teenager kept resting her pillow on my wife's shoulder. It ended up being a very long 14-hour flight."

Makaeff said there seems to have been a communication breakdown in the latest Reddit post. "It would have been ideal for the husband to gain a clearer understanding from the outset on why the parents were frantic and begging him to move."

Despite the daughter seeming unaffected, the life coach said there could have been "something deeper going on" with her that the poster may have not been aware of. "Or perhaps the parents previously had a close call with flying," she said.

However, once the poster realized the daughter was a teen, "he could have calmly approached the parents to better understand the situation and explained it was important for him to be with his wife."

She said: "I would have suggested they call over the flight attendant who may have found other passengers willing to move in order to have the family together."

Several Redditors sided with the original poster and criticized the parents in the latest post.

User BeautifulOutcome_31 noted: "They're just inflicting their problem onto someone else. They don't want to get split up from their teenage daughter, so they want you to get split up from your wife to fix that. Some people are so entitled."

AgentGnome noted: "I mean, if they were that concerned, they could have had one of them switch seats with their own daughter. That way she would be sitting next to one adult, while the other adult sat next to you."

Seven_Hawks said: "Switch seats away from my wife so someone else can sit next to whomever? F*** no."

ModsR4Pussy said: "I would have just told them...I prefer sitting next to my wife for 14 hrs."

Boalsack simply wrote: "'No'. That's all OP [original poster] had to say and then put headphones on."

Newsweek has contacted the original poster for comment via the Reddit messaging system.

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