Woman refuses to switch seats on plane as stranger demands to sit next to husband

A woman – who paid for an aisle seat – refused to move spaces on a 15-hour flight for a stranger wanting to sit next to her husband and it caused a tiff between passengers

Sitting on an airplane seat for hours at a time is never a comfortable experience, but paying for a seat that has breath-taking views or additional legroom by the aisle will make it more worthwhile. It’s understandable, therefore, that a woman refused to move from an aisle seat on a 15-hour flight despite a frustrated woman’s request.

The passenger bravely stayed in their seat for the long-haul flight from LAX to Sydney even when the stranger demanded she wanted to sit beside her husband. Describing the ordeal in a clip on popular video-streaming service TikTok, the passenger explained how she was expected to give up her seat for one at the back of the plane.

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She said: “In 2012, I’m flying on an overnighter from LAX to Sydney. I’m sitting on an aisle seat somewhere towards the front of the plane, which was purposefully chosen.

“One because I was flying by myself – super anxious. And two, that anxiety turns into a bubbling bowel situation.

“I’m getting myself set up in the aisle seat, so I can sleep for most of the flight, and then a lady in her 50s comes up to me and – I didn’t know she was talking to me – she practically had to shout ‘excuse me’ for me to open my eyes and look up.

“I was having none of it because I had just had such a s****y time connecting from LaGuardia to LAX in the first place, so I was in no mood – and it was really late at night by this point.

“She goes on to ask if I would swap seats with her at the back of the plane because she and her husband were pushed from a previous flight and they wanted to sit together.”

Whilst the TikToker admitted that she struggles to say no to people, she bravely summoned the courage to state that her seat was specifically chosen, so she wasn’t swapping.

She continues: “[The woman] then goes onto lecture me about how inconsiderate it is that I don’t swap with her when it wasn’t their fault to begin with and they were bumped from a previous flight.

“At this point, I stare at her as she’s berating me like she’s my mum, and I basically just turn away and go back to sleep.

“A few minutes passed and her husband huffily pushes past me to leave because his wife has convinced somebody else from the back of the plane next to her to swap with him at the front next to me.”

In a turn of events, the couple had convinced another man to switch seats, but this wasn’t the last she’d hear of the ordeal.

The woman continued: “She really loudly exclaims, ‘Thank you so much! You know what? If it was me, I would have swapped, but thank you being so kind’.

“The lesson here is you can ask people if they can swap with you, but they don’t have to say yes. It doesn’t make them a bad person because it has somehow inconvenienced you.”

In the video, which has now surpassed a whopping 429,000 views to date, fellow TikTokers flooded the comment section with responses.

“The husband was probably secretly happy to be sitting by himself,” one person joked.

A a second user said: “People need to start picking the seats they want and quit asking others to move.”

A different user wrote: “My partner and I lost our seats due to a plane change … middle seats, separated, 13 hour flight to Japan. It sucked but not a crisis.”

A fourth added: “You can ask, but can’t control the outcome. Proud of you for staying strong in your no when it was hard at that stage.”

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