Woman praised for refusing to switch seats with child during eight-hour flight

A woman has been praised for refusing to swap seats with a child on a plane during an eight-hour flight.

In a recent post shared to the popular “Am I The A**hole?” Reddit forum, the plane passenger – who goes by Reddit username u/kitsune_chan29 – asked if she was in the wrong for not making the seat change. She started off by explaining that when she initially booked her flight home from an African country, she chose the aisle seat, so she “could  get up without bothering others” and get a “special meal due to health requirements”.

However, according to the traveller, a family, who she said didn’t “speak much English” had asked if she could switch seats with one of their three children, so they could be together. She explained how the family was separated on the plane, before describing why she chose not to make the seat change.

“The father of the family wasn’t sitting anywhere near the mother and kids, so it looked to me like they had left their seats for a random assignment,” she wrote. “I initially said yes, thinking it was just a move across the aisle, but then realised they wanted me to switch to sit in a middle seat and I said no.”

She noted that when another different passenger got up and told her that he had “a seat in the back” that she could move to, she still declined that offer. However, according to the Reddit poster, the passenger went on to criticise her for not taking the seat he offered.

“I said that I had booked my seat and ordered a dietary meal, and there was no way I was moving to a middle seat,” she continued. “He then starts loudly criticising me and saying he hopes I understand that I’m splitting a family up. This eventually attracts attention from the crew because it’s holding up boarding.”

The women added that the family ultimately got “a passenger on the other end of the row to switch and sit somewhere else, so their kids could sit together”. However, she said that the passenger – who’d initially encouraged her to make the switch – then went up to the family, and continued to criticise her to them.

“[He goes up to them and says:] ‘Do you understand what happened? She thought her seat was too special so she wouldn’t let you sit together,’” the woman recalled. “I told the guy to mind his own business and he responded that he wasn’t talking to me. I…