Arguments over seats on a plane are pretty common, even if you’ve booked a specific seat in advance.
Travelling by plane is exhausting at the best of times, especially if your flight is early in the morning and you really just want to use your time in the air to relax. But the experience can be made even more challenging when you’re asked to switch seats with someone.
People can want to switch seats for a variety of reasons, but most commonly it’s because it involves a family who have been unable to book seats that are next to each other, and they’d like you to move so they can sit with their kids.
Whether you say yes to this or not is entirely up to you, especially if you’re sat in a seat that you’ve booked, but one man has urged people to think carefully about how they respond to the request.
The man, named Nick, explained that he made the wrong decision when he was asked to switch seats recently, as instead of simply saying “No thank you” he asked for more information – which kicked off a huge argument.
In a video on his @nickfromohio account on TikTok, Nick said: “If somebody ever wants to switch seats with you on an aeroplane, please just say ‘no thank you’ and save yourself the trouble. These people don’t have good intentions, and this happened to me and the person ended up getting escorted off the plane by security.”
He went on to explain he was on a 5am flight and was “exhausted”, so boarded the plane as early as possible so that he could relax and sleep for as long as possible before the plane landed after two hours in the sky.
But a few minutes after he boarded, he was tapped on the shoulder by a man who asked if he would be willing to swap seats. And instead of taking his own advice and saying no, Nick instead decided to ask the man: “Why?”
He was told the man wanted to sit with his two children who had been given the seats beside Nick, while the dad was sitting further up front. While he felt bad for the dad, Nick said he was confused because his kids weren’t with him at the time, so he wasn’t sure if the man was even telling the truth.
Nick told the man he didn’t want to change seats, but the dad refused to budge, telling him it “wasn’t a big deal” and he should move to allow a family to sit together. But then the man’s children arrived – and it turned out they were both in their 20s and more than capable of sitting by themselves on a plane without parental supervision.
In his video, Nick explained: “This kid is my age trying to get me to switch seats just so he can sit next to his dad. I’m like, ‘These kids aren’t young. These kids aren’t little. You don’t need to sit next to these people’.”
Sticking to his guns, Nick continued to refuse to move. Eventually, a flight attendant got involved which only left the dad more irate – and he began getting so agitated that his sons had to hold him back from getting violent toward Nick.
And it was then that the man got the ultimate karma, as he was kicked from the flight while Nick was upgraded to a first-class seat for the inconvenience and the man’s sons had to sit by themselves anyway.
Concluding the story, Nick said: “This dude loses his mind. He starts screaming at me, calling me all the names in the book, the flight attendant is trying to calm him down, his son is trying to calm him down saying ‘Don’t blow your cap, don’t punch anyone’.
“His dad then breaks free from the flight attendant and comes storming over to us, the one son stands up, grabs the dad and holds him back. He is like, red and fuming and people are starting to panic because they don’t know what this whole interaction is about. This ends with him getting taken off the flight and I get moved to a first-class seat.”
Commenters on the video fully backed Nick’s decision, as even some flight attendants commented that they wouldn’t recommend switching seats with anyone – no matter what the reason was.
One person said: “Flight attendant here – don’t switch seats!” While another added: “Perfectly reasonable to ask to switch seats in that situation. Not taking ‘no’ for an answer is crazy.”