jrl767

exACTly!

BOTH !

imo these (being nice and having reasonable expectations) are entirely self-evident if you're the one asking someone else if they're willing to switch; when someone asks you if you're willing to switch, just take a few seconds to compose yourself, and very calmly say something like "I'm sorry, I chose this seat when I booked this flight because I wanted to sit here < easy to replace "here" with location/reason -- aisle, window, bulkhead, non-bulkhead, this particular row, whatever -- if you feel like it: >

Ghoulish

I was curious about the expectations of the flier being imposed upon.

My expectation is they accept my "No." departing with silent gratitude it wasn't more than that.

jrl767

as has been cussed and discussed in countless other threads, things like civility and silent gratitude are attributes of common courtesy, which has sadly become (and continues to become) far less common

ideally, you're absolutely right ... the title of a 1994 movie sums it up well: Reality Bites

Eastbay1K

I think it best not to engage any further and that telling the usurper anything more than necessary is likely to result in more unpleasantries. You just never know who is going to snap these days.

Eujeanie

You're right, best to keep those thoughts unsaid. Lots of crazies out there.

henry999

Even before that: don't you have to be awake for the safety briefing?

maradori

Nope, not at all. I’ve had plenty of flights where I’m dozing off even during boarding and slept thru the safety briefing

All the flight attendants really seem to care about is if your seat belt is buckled, seat upright, table and footrest stowed, and bags under the seat in front

SeaLuggageLover

I had someone ask me to give up my seat in premium for a seat in the standard main cabin once. I said no. It's an option! That being said, I'm always happy to move to help families with small children sit together.

Ghoulish

Happy enough to move from a premium seat to the center seat in the middle on say, a 6 hour flight?

SeaLuggageLover

It would depend on the situation. If the children were young and it appeared the family was going to struggle, then yes.

Eujeanie

I did it once. It was a tiny waif of a girl, with her boyfriend/husband whatever, as I approached my (taken by her) aisle seat he got up and said please, she doesn't speak English, is afraid to sit alone. I said "where's her seat" - of course it was a middle. I said whiningly, "a MIDDLE??", then stood there for a second, put myself in her shoes. When I travel with my husband (99% of the time) I'm also in the middle, so I figured why not do something nice. Everyone in earshot said it was the nicest thing anyone has done. Well, that day at least

But no good deed goes unpunished. I'm older and need to get up to use the washroom, but the guy in the aisle was a sleeping behemoth. So I waited for the girl in the window to have to get up. She never did. Eventually I had to wake up sleeping giant and he was actually very nice about it.

It was EWR/SEA, so a very long flight.

Like I said before, sometimes you're the asker, and sometimes you're the askee. It didn't work out for me that time, but I didn't stew about it for days.

david55

Are we still talking about this? I chuckle every time I go on to FT and see this is STILL the first thread on the AS forum.......

Ghoulish

And then you enter, and post, bumping it to the top of the list again

david55

Every time I log on to FT it already IS the top of the list. I take no responsibility. But you're right..... I probably didn't help the situation.

notquiteaff

Correct. If you don’t want to switch, you don’t owe anyone an explanation (that just leads to further discussion). “No, thanks” is enough. This rule applies to other situations in life as well.

Says more about the state of FT and the drop-off in activity than anything about this particular topic that I sums we all have come across before in this or other airline forums.