I was flying a UA transcon the other day (I'm being vague about airports and dates in case the pax who is the subject of this post is a FT reader), seated in paid-for F, bulkhead window seat. As a lifelong flying phobic, albeit a frequent flyer flying phobic (FFFP?), I _always_ take a window seat. Flying bothers me a lot less than it used to, but I deeply despise turbulence (or the prospect of turbulence), and looking out the window helps me orient myself. Also, for some strange reason, if I can see the ground turbulence doesn't bother me as much.

The seat next to me was occupied by a pleasant person, and we even had a nice chat before takeoff about electronics. Towards the end of the flight, about 1-1/2 hours before touchdown, the pilot announced that we're headed for some bumpiness and turned on the seat belt light. I had been listening to channel 9 and heard other pilots reporting everything from light chop to moderate, sustained turbulence. I, of course, consistent with FFFP good practice ordered another glass of wine and raised my window shade. At that point, I noticed that I'm the only person with a raised shade in the F compartment, so I lowered it half-way. It was still, however, rather bright.

My seatmate asked me if I would lower the shade. I told him I needed to be able to look out -- that's why I chose the window seat. He said, not rudely, that it created a glare on the IFE screen (the plane had those little LCD monitors that swing down from the bottom of the overhead bin). The light from the window was not directly on the screen, i.e. it wasn't as if the sun was shining directly on it, and I had no trouble seeing the entire image on the screen. However, I also could not tell if, from his angle, there was a significant amount of glare or not.


I lowered my shade even more, so that there was just a tiny crack that I could look out of. However, he was clearly unhappy that I wouldn't put the shade down completely. Once we landed, we both disembarked without the usual "nice to chat with you" remark.

I can't say that I think he was wrong for being ticked off, but I'm also not convinced that I was wrong, either. I tried for the best compromise that accomodated both of our needs, albeit imperfectly. My only option would have been to lower the shade completely and spent the last 90 minutes of the flight in pure terror (as it turned out, the turbulence was, for the most part, relatively mild).

I'm really not clear what the etiquette of the situation called for, and would like to hear the opinions of other FTers. Anyone who knows me knows that I believe in not imposing on other passengers, and not accepting imposition. I honestly can't figure out how this situation would resolve against this dynamic.

Was I wrong? Was the pax wrong? Were we both wrong?