She was asked to ‘squeeze into one seat’
An overweight woman has sparked debate after she revealed she refused to give up her extra plane seat for a toddler on a flight.
In a post on the Am I The A**hole subreddit, the 34-year-old explained that she had booked two seats on her cross-country flight because she has been unable to sit comfortably in one seat on flights in the past.
However, there was conflict when a young mum on the flight asked if the woman could “squeeze into one seat” so her toddler could sit in the extra seat.
In the post, the woman wrote: “I am obese. I’m actively working toward losing weight and I’ve made progress – but I booked an extra seat because I’m fat.”
She explained that she was travelling to see family and that she decided to book an extra seat so “everyone can be more comfortable.”
However, after she boarded the flight and sat down, a woman came over “to my row with a boy who appeared to be about a year old.”
The post continued: “She told me to squeeze in to one seat so her son could sit in the other. She told me, not asked. I told her no and that I paid for this seat for the extra space.
“She makes a big fuss over it, which got the flight attendant’s attention. She told the flight attendant I was stealing the seat from her son, then I showed my boarding passes, proving that I had in fact paid for the extra seat.”
When the flight attendant asked if the woman could try and “squeeze in” she once again refused.
Eventually, the flight attendant told the mum to sit with her son on her lap, with the woman saying she got “dirty looks and passive-aggressive remarks from her for the entire flight.”
She admitted that she did “feel a little bad because the boy looked hard to control.”
Plenty of Redditors sided with the woman in the comments, with several suggesting it was the mum who was in the wrong for not booking a seat for her toddle.
One person commented: “She’s TA (the a**hole) for not buying a seat for her son and assuming someone else would give up a seat they paid for. Odds are she was hoping there’d be extra seats on the flight so she didn’t have to pay and used the lap thing as a loophole.”
Someone else agreed: “Apparently fat people have to get another seat to fly, but they also have to give up that extra seat for someone else’s child if they want it.”
And a third wrote: “You paid for that seat, it’s yours. An email to the airline asking them to remind their flight attendants to enforce the seat policy would be warranted, too. You asked the FA for help and she told you to ‘squeeze into one seat’ for the unticketed child.”
But not everyone agreed, with one person saying: “If you are so fat that you have to have more than one seat on an airplane then you are selfish. Flights overbook all the time especially during the holidays – how can you justify having two seats to yourself?”
Another wrote: “How much room does a kid take up, seriously? Yeah the mum should’ve bought a seat but that doesn’t mean you have to be selfish and cause two people discomfort.”
Related links:
Couple refused entry on TUI flight at airport because valid passports were ten years old
Dad books six flights to spend Christmas with flight attendant daughter during her shifts
‘I refused to switch seats with old couple on 12 hour flight after I paid for an upgrade’
