The dangerous reason you should never change your seat on a plane

Food for flight

A flight attendant has revealed the dangerous reason you should never change seats on a plane without first checking with a member of the cabin crew. Serenity Haley, who works for American Airlines, produces flight attendant-related content for her 10,ooo+ followers on TikTok and often provides valuable insights into the profession. This one is certainly something we wish we'd known sooner:

@serenityhaley1i was surprised to learn this during training♬ original sound - Serenity

Serenity explains that before an aircraft takes off, the pilots have numerous pre-flight procedures that they have to carry out - one of which is a "weight and balance check". This is exactly what it sounds like and while planes are designed to account for people's weights and leave an allowance for baggage and fuel, etc, they also have a series of systems designed to displace the weight as best they can. So while you may think running down the aisle to grab the seat next to your mate on the way to Ibiza isn't going to cause anyone any harm, the left/right or even front/back half of the plane might be carrying more weight than another. Pilot Magnar Nordal - who answers air travel-related questions regularly on Quora - remarks that “If the [systems are] set wrong, then the aircraft may crash at take-off", citing a story where his first officer experienced problems after four passengers swapped seats, making the plane feel "very heavy" when rotating in the air. So, while we're not trying to scaremonger you here and the professionals in charge of flying the thing obviously know better than us, you've pretty much heard it from the horse's mouth and, as Serenity advises, it's always worth checking first. More than 70k people have now watched the video and it's been shared thousands of times on social media, with many - including the young flight attendant herself - surprised to learn how much of an impact this can make.