Plane act we should stop whining about

A frequent flyer has revealed how a fellow passenger was in a ‘tizz’ over a common plane act – and why we need to stop whining about it.

On a recent flight from Dallas Fort Worth to Sydney – in the relatively roomy Qantas Premium Economy Class – I watched a man repeatedly admonish the woman in front of him for reclining her seat.

Here we go again, I thought. Sound the sirens, we have a serving member of the Recline Police on board.

I wasn’t sitting close enough to catch the exact conversation but he was clearly in a tizz over something. And for the life of me I couldn’t work out what.

It can’t have been a problem with his seat-back TV screen, as Qantas has found a nifty way to angle them in Premium Economy so you can move them around to suit your view, whatever the incline of your seat or the person’s in front of you.

The button that causes a divide on each plane.

It may have been something to do with the tray table, but again, the seats are designed so the tables are still perfectly functional wherever the seat in front is positioned.

Yes, the lady’s seat had encroached – slightly – on this man’s personal space, but newsflash to all. We are on a plane. An overnight flight, no less. This lady has paid for a seat that is designed to recline so she can have a sleep. She did not pay to sit in front of a Recliner Whiner.

The Great Recline Debate is one that has vexed regular travellers forever – probably since Orville and Wilbur Wright flung the first wooden biplane into the air (or perhaps not – most of the photos I’ve seen of the famous aviation brothers have them sitting on their invention side-by-side, possibly to avoid any squabbles over this precise issue).

Survey after survey shows passengers think reclining your seat on a plane is some sort of grave etiquette error. A fivethirtyeight poll showed that four in ten people think it’s ‘rude’.

A woman opts to keep her seat upright and lean sideways on a pillow to snooze instead of reclining her seat. Picture: iStock

This woman was shocked when she was ordered to put her seat back into upright position so the person behind her could use their laptop (surely that’s what you have a ‘lap’ for – the clue’s in the name?)

And this tweet, documenting two passengers locked in a sky-high seatback death battle over whether or not a seat should be reclined, divided the internet back when it was released in February 2020 (perhaps if these two had known at the time that none of us would even be lucky enough to get in an aeroplane again for about two years, they might’ve sweated less on the small stuff).

As recently as April this year, the editors at travel site Matador came down hard in favour of #TeamNoRecline. They published a piece titled ‘Airlines Should Get Rid of The Recline Button On Seats’.

Four in 10 people think reclining is ‘rude’.

Their argument – a flimsy one – is that ‘planes aren’t meant to be comfortable’. Their primary purpose is to get us from A to B, and we should be grateful for that service. Then – contrarily – they urged us to think of the greater good when it came to our fellow passengers’ comfort by leaving the recline button alone. And finished by blaming airlines for having the buttons at all, and urged them to banish them altogether.

Please.

I travel around once a month for work and I have never, ever been seriously affronted by someone reclining their seat in front of me. At worst, if you’re on a clunky older plane, the recline can happen with a jarring thud that can give you a small fright as it pops into your personal space. Startling, but not something to speak to the manager about.

Best of all, if you really feel that you’ve been violated by someone else’s seat back, you have a really obvious solution right there at your fingertips. Redress the balance of the universe and reclineyour seat too.

You gain back every inch of space you lost. Easy.

We’re so fortunate to be travelling again. This time two years ago, it felt like air travel was a distant memory, one that we mightn’t experience for years, decades even. How fabulous to be back in the sky once more.

It’s time to stop whining about reclining – or any other Karen-y cabin niggle – and remember how lucky we are.