Social Issues,Entitled PeopleJUL 24, 2024

Passenger Refuses To Move From Man’s Seat, He Is Forced To Take Last Row Seat, Sparks Outrage Online

Modern air travel can be a pain in the neck. Between being treated like cattle, dealing with the TSA, and the exorbitant flight prices, the most you can hope for is a flight without delays, reasonable passengers around you, and a decent in-flight movie.

For one tallish guy on a Lufthansa flight, his journey got off to a bad start after a man who stole his aisle seat refused to give it up. The guy tried to get the flight attendants involved but they just assigned him the worst seat in the house. After his nightmare flight, he turned to the Reddit community to vent.

More info: Reddit

Flight attendants discussed it, then just reassigned guy to the last row, window seat

OP starts out by saying that he’s 6’2”, so as usual he booked an aisle seat in coach. But he was in for a surprise when he got to his seat, only to find a man already sitting in it. OP told the man he was in his seat, but the man said he was sitting with his family, so it was OP’s problem.

By this stage, the aisle behind OP was backing up, so he again told the seat thief that he was in his seat. This didn’t do much, so OP asked to see the man’s boarding pass. The man promptly flung it in OP’s face, before it fell to the floor.

Having had enough, OP called over a flight attendant, who asked the rude passenger for his boarding pass. The man just pointed to the floor. The flight attendant picked the boarding pass up, examined it, then handed it to OP, simply telling him that he was now assigned to the seat on it - the last row next to the window.

Offended, the tall guy said there was no way that was going to happen, but after the flight attendant and a more senior flight attendant spoke, they agreed that the seat thief had priority because he was with his family.

OP says he had to spend the entire 7-hour flight stuck in the worst seat on the plane and ended his rant on r/StolenSeats by saying that all it came down to was the cabin crew who were just being too lazy to do their jobs.

Image credits: DC Studio (not the actual photo)

He spent the next 7 hours squashed into the worst seat in the plane

This kind of complaint is all too common on travel forums, with plenty of passengers trading tales of woe involving seat thieves. In some instances, flashing a frequent flier card got the issue resolved, but in others, the unlucky passenger had to accept their fate.

Just like most businesses, airlines have plenty of discretion in how they respond to issues. While you do have some rights as a passenger, your request for compensation will probably involve negotiation and the kind of action that gets taken depends on the way you go about complaining.

Of course, OP would be well within his rights to make a formal complaint against the offending airline and cabin crew. Passengers who’ve been through this sort of ordeal before suggest making sure you get the names of the cabin crew, so your complaint has all the necessary details.

On the customer relations section of Lufthansa’s website, there’s a form dedicated to online feedback and an assurance that you’ll hear back from them within two weeks. Perhaps OP could get some sort of reimbursement that way, but the cabin crew’s behavior is still inexcusable, and OP could demand an appropriate personal apology.

There’s always the name and shame game, perhaps perfected by Dave Carroll, who released a now famous trio of protest songs on YouTube and iTunes after United Airlines broke his guitar and didn’t compensate him for 9 months. OP could always take his rant beyond Reddit and onto TikTok, Facebook, and X. Who knows, he might go viral if he gets creative enough.

Whatever his next move is, we hope he gets some sort of payback. What would you have done in his situation? And do you think he should have asked for an upgrade, instead of settling for the bad seat? Let us know your opinion in the comments!