The space between the seats is a commons, just like the audio spectrum.
You chose a seat expecting that it would recline, I chose a seat expecting I could actually sit down without dislocating my kneecaps. These expectations overlap, and might require grown-up negotiation to resolve.
Maybe you should take your own needs into account when buying your ticket, and choose seats without reclining seats in front of them then. Such as those in the exit row, or those in the front row.
I won't book a ticket if I have to sit in front of the exit row, or in the last row on an aircraft. The idea that you should not have to factor in similar preferences when booking your flights strikes me as nothing more than entitlement.
And when I do exactly that, but the airline moves me and sticks me somewhere I don't want to be? Or I try, and all the extra legroom seats are taken already? Maybe you should be aware that your fellow passengers have almost certainly already done all they could to avoid making an unpleasant experience worse.
Then they should take it up with the airline and not make my experience worse when I am dealing with the airline screwing me also.
By trying to tell the person in front of them not to recline they are effectively saying "I didn't get what I wanted so I am going to take it out on a person who may have"
> Then they should take it up with the airline and not make my experience worse when I am dealing with the airline screwing me also.
How do you propose that both of these should happen? "Take it up with the airline" - when? The cabin crew can't (or won't) do anything about it, creating a fuss on the plane is a recipe for getting thrown off. That means it's got to happen after the flight. That means we both have to get through the flight somehow.
> By trying to tell the person in front of them not to recline they are effectively saying "I didn't get what I wanted so I am going to take it out on a person who may have"
If you believe that there is some sort of implied right to recline, then the airline has screwed both passengers over by double-selling the space. If the passenger in front can assume a right to recline, it's certainly the case that the person behind can assume the more fundamental right to actually sit down. If you say that the person behind must allow the person in front to recline, you're saying that all the downside of the airline's action must fall on only one of the two people affected.
The people who actually own the airplane you're in will tell you to stop doing that, and will deny you use of their property if you refuse to comply.
Those same people intentionally paid for a seat reclining function with the intention that passengers use it.
This is constantly framed as an issue between passengers, but it's not. It's an issue between passengers and the airline. Their equipment, their (and the government's) rules.
> Those same people intentionally paid for a seat reclining function with the intention that passengers use it.
Not quite. They paid for a seat reclining function hoping to lure punters into paying for a ticket. I'm not sure they care whether anybody can actually use the seat functions further than that.
> This is constantly framed as an issue between passengers, but it's not. It's an issue between passengers and the airline.
Absolutely this. Getting customers arguing over the details of property rights they almost certainly don't have is a truly wonderful reframe.
There is a homeless fellow dressed up as a space alien on the L train in NYC that does exactly this. He rolls on with a saxophone, plays as loud as possible, and tells passengers 'I'll stop if you pay me!'
Flawed logic. You have the "right" to recline since that feature is built into the seat you are paying for. You don't have the "right" to play annoying music because that is socially unacceptable and not built into the cost.
Because when every person reclines, as usually happens whenever meals are not being served, there is the same amount of space between each seat, but all the seats are in a more comfortable position.
>> "Because when every person reclines, as usually happens whenever meals are not being served"
I have never seen this happen on short of long haul flights. Unless is it night time the vast majority of people tend to have their seats upright. From what I've seen the reason is simple - in flight entertainment in on the back of the seat and most people want to watch a movie.
"Comfortable" is subjective, though. While there may be the same distance between seats when they're all reclined, the change in the shape of the space is enough to make a previously workable arrangement impossible because, and here's the remarkable bit, people are different shapes.
not just socially unacceptable (which may vary by person) but more important against the rules of the airline. In buying a ticket you agree to abide by the rules, which means not being loud and playing music, and means allowing others to recline.
Or we could both behave like adult human beings.