Father’s plan to swap aisle seats with passengers sparks debate over plane etiquette: ‘Never change’

A woman has recounted the “insane airplane behavior” she witnessed on her recent flight, and it has sparked a debate about airplane etiquette.

In a viral video posted to TikTok, user Alex Bennett (@justalexbennett) recalled how a father asked a fellow plane passenger to swap seats with him so he could sit with his two children . However, the father hasn’t been entirely honest about which seat he would trade the man for.

“I witnessed the most insane airplane behavior on the way here,” Bennett began in the video, which has been viewed nearly 300,000 times since it was posted. She said she was sitting behind a man in the aisle seat when a father approached the man with his two children and asked if he could sit down.

“He says, ‘Hey man, my kids have (the) middle and window seats and I have this aisle across the way.’ Do you mind moving me from one corridor to another?’ ” remembers Bennett.

When the man asked the father if he would exchange the aisle seat he had purchased for another aisle seat across from them, the TikToker claimed the father hesitated before giving an answer.

“The father pauses and says: “In the middle or in the aisle? Yeah, come on,” she shared.

The man – who she said was “a taller, older man” – ended up swapping aisle seats with the father so he could sit next to his children, before another woman approaches the man and informs him that he was now sitting inside her. seat. “She says, ‘Hey, I’m here in the hallway.’ And he says, ‘Oh, I traded with this guy.’ He said he was sitting in the hallway,” Bennett said.

However, at that point, the father who had requested to swap seats refused to look up from his phone during the debacle. “The father had the middle seat and I think he knew that,” Bennett said. Nonetheless, the man “couldn’t have been nicer” and got up from his seat again to move to the middle seat in the row.

“I completely understand a father wanting to sit with his children, without a doubt. But I think you need to tell the guy, “I’m in the middle. I need a solid here because I need to sit with my kids. But you can’t say you’re in the aisle and the girl is taking care of it,” Bennett added.

She wrote about the viral clip, “Airplane etiquette swapping seats” and captioned the post: “Airplane etiquette is crazy.” »

In the comments section, many people were appalled that the father “lied” to the man about his ticketed plane seat and refused to clarify the situation.

“Absolutely not. I would have been like, ‘Sorry dude, you need to go back since you lied to me,'” one TikTok user commented under Bennett’s video.

“I would have asked him why he lied in front of his children. The kids will remember the confrontation,” another person wrote.

“Deal breaker,” said a third user. “If he didn’t want to go back, a flight attendant would be called.”

Meanwhile, others admitted they refuse to swap sweats with strangers on a plane, like one person who said: “A plane is the only place you won’t catch me pleasing people.” people. My seat is my seat.

“That’s why my answer is no!” Every time,” someone else said, while another user wrote, “Never change.”

In recent months, there has been debate around the proper etiquette for swapping seats on airplanes. In July, a CEO went viral when she refused to change seats with a mother who wanted to sit next to her two children on a flight. Tammy Nelson, CEO of global jewelry brand CONQUERing, shared on TikTok that she was taking a Delta Air Lines flight from Cincinnati, Ohio to San Jose, California, when she noticed a woman sitting in her window seat .

“I got on the plane and a woman was sitting in my seat and when I asked her about it, she said, ‘Oh, do you want to sit here?’ I thought we could change because these are my kids,” Nelson recalls. “I said, ‘As long as it’s a window seat, I’m happy to change.’ She points to the row behind us and says, “Mine is right there.” » This is the middle seat.

She said the mother would have been “very annoyed” that Nelson had refused to change seats, before returning to his own middle seat.