This is from last year actually, but I was just thinking about having read some other threads and wanted to see what you all thought of this situation.

It was spring of 2006 and I was flying from SVO to JFK on Delta. I was in one of the middle rows. Everything was fine until the flight attendant got all antsy in front of me, but as I had my Shures on almost full blast, I couldn't hear what she was saying, only that she was arguing about something with the pax in front of me. Suddenly she turns to me and gives me this pleading look. I took out my ear buds so that I could hear her. Turns out that an American family that just adopted a kid from Russia was on the flight and they were not sitting together (now mind you, this is like 4 or 5 hours into a 10 hours flight). They apparently requested to be moved together. The FA singled out the guy in front of me and asked him if he would move. She was not particularly nice about it, and looked very annoyed when asking him (I'm sure the request in itself was annoying to her, as it should've been).

But the guy seemingly didn't know what she was saying, so she started begging me to tell him to switch seats. I said that I really didn't want to get into the middle of this. She kept on asking me so I tapped him on his shoulder and in Russian told him something along these lines:

Me: Sir, the FA is asking if you would switch seats with another passenger
Him: I know what she is saying. I don't want to move, so I'm just pretending to not know English
Me: .....

At this point I didn't know what to tell the FA...that the guy is pretending? He was sitting in a group that was traveling together and didn't want to be moved and I wasn't about to pester him on her behalf.

I just kind of told her that I told him to move, without saying what his response was, thinking that his actions would speak for themselves (namely, that he was firmly planted in his seat). Thinking that the issue would be left unresolved, I plugged myself back into the iPod only to have the FA pace back and forth between the parents who requested the seat switch and this guy. She then tapped me again and asked me to ask him to move. At this point, I kind of lost my patience and told her that I already told him of the request, and that is as much as I am willing to ask of the guy, because I KNEW that he understood what she was saying and wasn't about to play this game.

He ended up not moving and she found other people to switch with I think. What do you all think of this? How would you have acted?

I personally think that the parents were wrong for asking for a seat switch in the middle of the flight; the FA should've stopped pestering me and found somebody else to plead with; the guy was a douche for pretending not to understand her, but otherwise in his right to not switch.