I was sitting in J on AA 10 LAX-JFK (the 9:30 PM departure) a couple of months ago. I really wanted to sleep during the flight and popped an Ambien just after boarding. We unfortunately had a bit of a delay, and after dozing off, I woke up in a slight haze and made the mistake of reclining my seat to get more comfortable. It turns out that we were still on the ground, and my recline was met by a swift kick to the back of my seat from the passenger behind me who shouted, "It's meant to be up!" in a British or possibly Australian accent (I can usually tell, but was a bit out of it ) that was loud enough for the entire cabin to hear.

I was shocked and have never directly experienced that type of aggressive behavior from a fellow passenger before. I likely would have responded somehow under normal circumstances, but really wasn't in the mood, so I just kept my seat upright and eventually reclined for the rest of the flight once we were finally in the air (without any further issues).

I can't imagine ever just shoving the back of someone's seat like this guy did, regardless of who was right or wrong. I would always attempt to ask politely and then speak to an FA if there were truly an issue.

Yeah. I can't imagine kicking or shoving the seat in front of me but I have pointed to it as a FA walked by before, to get them to tell the jerk to raise it. Of course, I assume that somebody that has their seat reclined during take off or landing is a jerk but I suppose it could be somebody like metallo, just in an ambien fog. I've had to get waked up before to put my seatback up for landing, even without ambien. I'm an incurable airline sleeper. I sometimes fall asleep before pushback and wake up to the sound of tires chirping on the runway. If the taxi in is long, I sometimes fall back asleep. I don't know why. It's some kind of escape mechanism. I spend way too many hours of my life in an airline seat and sleeping is preferable to staring at the seatback in front of me or the tops of clouds below me. I try to read or work sometimes but the drone of the engines and the immobility usually wins out.