Parents stop doing this on planes because I paid for my seat and you didn't

"Having a baby doesn’t automatically entitle you to whatever you want." 

An anonymous man has been praised for refusing to swap seats with a mum and baby on a flight. 

Taking to the Am I The A**hole forum, he explained that he paid for the seat with extra legroom, so he wasn’t willing to give that up just because the mum didn't have the foresight to plan ahead and pay extra for the seat she wanted.

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"I am tall and needed the leg space"

“My wife and I were travelling on a 10-hour flight from Europe to Asia last week. We booked our tickets well in advance and also managed to book the specific seats we wanted - two seats in the first row in the middle column of seats - the seat configuration was three columns with three seats each,” he began.

“We paid for these seats as it was going to be a long journey and wanted the extra leg space as we’re tall,” he continued. 

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However, when they boarded, they saw a woman and her baby in the middle seat. 

“We had booked the two aisles on the off chance that the middle seat may be empty but with the full intention for me to switch to the middle seat if the passenger wished to sit in one of the aisles and not between us,” the OP wrote. 

"She threw daggers at me"

Before he even got a chance to sit down, the woman asked him, “Can I be really cheeky and ask you to switch seats with my husband?”

She then pointed towards her husband sitting in the row behind them on the left side column of the plane (only the first row has extra leg space and requires additional payment to book the seat). 

He wrote: “She then told me that her husband needs to be next to her to help with the baby.

“My wife stayed quiet while I politely but firmly told her that unfortunately as his seat is in a second row, I wouldn’t be moving there as I had specifically paid for the seat with extra legroom. She then claimed that she and her husband had paid as well but they placed him in the second row, which seemed very suspect.”

The man remained firm, even when the flight attendant came and asked him to switch with the husband. The next part of the flight was super awkward and the woman was apparently “throwing daggers” at him for some time. 

“Thankfully the steward came back and told me that there were two vacant seats in one of the other first rows and offered to move us. We ended up moving there but could hear this lady animatedly make comments about us to her husband from behind for some time after that.”

When the poster recounted this incident to friends and family, they all told him he should have moved to accommodate the mum and her family. 

Image: IStock

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"She was being entitled"

Thousands of commenters assured the man that he wasn’t in the wrong. 

“Why didn’t she offer the extra legroom seat to whoever was sitting next to her husband?” one person pointed out. 

“Having a baby doesn’t automatically entitle you to whatever you want, especially because booking is in advance and they had ample time to do the same amount of planning as you. They tried to spring it on you on the plane hoping to get away with it,” said a second. 

A third agreed: “You paid for them, they're yours. Even if she was telling the truth and they were somehow able to also book those seats, that's the airline's problem, not yours.”

“You were under no obligation to switch. If she wanted to sit with her husband, she should have booked side-by-side seats,” a fourth added.

And this person concluded: “There should be a forum called "AITA: Asshole in the Airplane?" just for all the ‘not switching places’ posts,” and we couldn’t agree more!

This article was originally published in July 2023 and was updated in March 2024. 

Originally published as Parents stop doing this on planes because I paid for my seat and you didn't