Plane passenger praised for declining to swap seats with ‘entitled’ woman

A man has been praised after he explained why he refused to swap seats on a flight so that an "entitled" woman didn't have to sit in the middle seat that she booked.

In the post on Reddit's "Am I the A**hole?" forum, the 45-year-old guy explained he had a window seat on the flight and a couple was sat next to him, with the wife in the middle seat and the husband sat in the aisle seat.

“I was seated at the window seat in the plane. A couple boarded and the wife sat down in the middle seat with the husband at the aisle," he wrote.

But it didn't take long for the man to receive a request from the wife.

"After settling in, the wife leans over towards me with a sweet smile and says, ‘Would you be a darling and switch seats with me? I really can't fly well in a middle seat.'

“So I leaned towards her and asked if that was her partner, to which she said, ‘Yes it’s my husband’.”

If the guy did swap with the wife this would mean he would awkwardly be sat in between the couple, not exactly ideal which he expressed to her.

“I told her that I would never want to come between a husband and wife but I was more than happy to help accommodate by switching with him so I would sit in the aisle and the two if they could figure it out amongst themselves," the man explained.

However, the wife immediately shot down this suggestion.

"Oh my husband would never sit in the middle or at a window... so maybe you can do a woman a favour and switch?" she said, the which the guy told her that he "really apologize[s] but [he] won't do it."

Drama then ensued as the guy recalled how "moments later I hear her yelling at her husband in another language (which I am fluent in) that 'the jerk won't switch seats so you got to switch with me'.

Then the husband ends up switching with his wife and then "leans over with a smile and says that his wife switched with him because she has diarrhoea and needs the aisle in case she must run".

(Which doesn't make sense why the wife would want the window seat...)

Since sharing the awkward flight story, Reddit users have made their opinions on the scenario pretty clear, with the majority saying that the guy is not the a**hole but that the wife and husband are the ones in the wrong.

One person said: "NTA. jerks do this on purpose thinking they can strong-arm you. Sit where you paid and don’t trade unless it’s better for you AND you want to."

"NTA and this makes no sense. If she needed to use the restroom more, then the window seat would make it more difficult for her, not less," another person wrote.

Someone else added: "NTA - you’re under no obligation to switch seats on a plane. You bought the ticket that you presumably wanted, and they could have done the same."

"NTA - switching seat requests are never appropriate anymore. Buy the seat you want. End of story, unless you are offered something better, but it seems that is never the case," a fourth person commented.

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