I just flew back on QF94 - LAX to MEL. The plane was delayed by an hour in LAX - waiting on 34 passengers coming in on QF108 from New York. I was on the lower deck in Business Class. QF94 was a non skybed flight.

While waiting, the passenger in front put his seat back into the full recline position and fell asleep. Once all the connecting passengers arrived, they were getting settled and lots of crew walked past the guy but never said anything. The safety demo was done one row in front of him, but the plane took off with his seat in the full recline position.

The business class seats work best when everyone is in the same position - all sitting up right or all fully reclined. With me sitting upright during take off, their was almost no room between the back of his chair and my knees. In fact with the amenity kit in the seat back pocket, the chair was touching my knees!

In case of emergency, is seat back upright for the safety of the passenger in the seat or the seat behind, so they can get out quickly?

Should I have done the crews job and woke the passenger - and get him upset for the remainder of the 15 hour flight. Or paged the crew and told them to do their job? And pissed them off for the start of the 15 hour flight?

I can't believe how many times they walked past the seat and never said anything (during the 10-15 minutes that it took for the QF108 passengers to get settled and we start to taxi). Let alone the safety demo is done manually one row in front of the person and still nothing was done.