FlyerTalk Forums - Awesome Examples of Humanity on flights

It figures that one of the very first messages I post on FT is a bi**hfest about people yanking on my headrest. I'd like to balance that off with an example of Most Excellent Humanity that I witnessed on a flight.

OK, so full flight, several years ago, YVR-YYZ. That's a 4.5 to 5 hour flight. The Vancouver to Toronto runs are often packed. Y Class is almost always a sardine can. About an hour in I walked back to the wings to use the loo as the first class cabin lav was out of order for whatever reason.

I'm waiting in a line of three or four people. One of them was an older lady, I'm guessing in her late 70s or early 80s. She was leaning heavily on the wall to steady herself. She was chatting with a passenger I recognized from the J cabin, a guy in his 50s.

As it turns out, she's in the very back of the airplane, where the seats don't recline worth a squat, and her legs and back were cramping up. She was on this flight because she wanted to see her first and only grandchild who was just born. Her son and daughter-in-law obviously couldn't travel with a newborn, and I got the uncomfortable impression that the lady wasn't in great health and feared that she wasn't going to last all that long.

Well holy hell if the passenger in first didn't offer his seat to her. He waited until she came out of the lav and walked her up to his seat in first class. She put up a bit of a fuss, but in the end thanked him with tears in her eyes. He picked up his briefcase and shuffled into the tail end of the airplane to work through the next few hours. I felt ashamed that I didn't think of it. What an outstanding human being.

Anyone else with spirit-lifting anecdotes on planes?