Originally Posted by
johnden
Be a bit careful before you play a recoding for law enforcement or share it with others. In 12 states (including SFO, ORD and other places), 2-party consent is required to record a conversation. It may not help your case.
I totally understand your warning but sometimes you just have to protect yourself when the "law" is not around and be prepared to take the consequences. That said, there is not a chance I would remember to record the conversation in the slightest. Having had an incident in the past of a power tripping FA I would like to have been recording that. If nothing else I would have transcribed it and presented it as my "perfect recall" of the conversation.
As for the backpack thing, I fly SOU (Southampton) - MAN (Manchester) on a Flybe twin prop and overhead space is at a premium. I usually board first to get overhead space - until one day I had an epiphany and stuck the backpack under the seat in front of me (having thought it would never fit and would severely cramp my legroom for possibly the entire 55 minute flight (!) but lo and behold it all worked well with moving it behind my legs during the flight and it was quite nice to rest my legs on it too. Sometimes the bleedin' obvious is staring you in the face. And the relief of not having to worry about overhead space was incredible, I always had a feeling that I was more stressed about it than I should be and this proved it. It really was such a relief that I am actually not stressing about any aspect of my flights there now. Well apart from MAN airport that is.