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Sky Blu, of LMFAO, doesn’t like to be told not to recline his seat. Just ask Mitt Romney. Photograph: Timothy Hiatt/Getty Images Photograph: Timothy Hiatt/Getty Images
Sky Blu, of LMFAO, doesn’t like to be told not to recline his seat. Just ask Mitt Romney. Photograph: Timothy Hiatt/Getty Images Photograph: Timothy Hiatt/Getty Images

To recline or not to recline: which side are you on?

This article is more than 9 years old

From LMFAO to regular Joes, passengers frequently fight over their right to recline. But isn’t that what the ticket price covers?

We are used to the oddities of buying airline tickets, but when we talk about buying “a seat,” what does that mean?

After United airlines booted off two passengers for getting into a fight over a reclining seat, this is worth asking. Who bought the space between two plane seats? The person who reclines into it or the person whose leg-room shrinks when the seat in front reclines?

The most recent argument about whom the space between the two seats belongs to is only the latest in a series of similar conflicts. In 2011, another United Airlines plane returned to Dulles airport after two passengers engaged in a fist-fight over a reclined seat. The shrinking leg-room is not just the plight of the working class. Remember Mitt Romney? Probably the most famous reclining-seat snafu took place between the Republican presidential nominee and Sky Blu of LMFAO.

The incident apparently inspired LMFAO’s We are here to party song, according to the New Republic.

Airlines have long sought to provide passengers who desire more legroom with options. United offers Economy Plus, a section where the above mentioned pair of passengers was seated. Virgin’s extra legroom seats come with an additional three inches of space, and Jet Blue describes its “Even More Space” seats as going “from roomy to roomier”. Yet, all of these come at an additional costs. With knee defender, which costs a mere $21.95 and can be reused, passengers can ensure that their leg room doesn’t shrink without additional fees.

Josh Barro, of the New York Times, argues that in order to keep their leg room as is, passenger should pay those in front of them not to recline their seats.

If sitting behind my reclined seat was such misery, if recliners like me are “monsters,” as Mark Hemingway of The Weekly Standard puts it, why is nobody willing to pay me to stop? People talk a big game on social media about the terribleness of reclining, but then people like to complain about all sorts of things; if they really cared that much, someone would have opened his wallet and paid me by now.

That may not satisfy everyone, particularly those who believe that their ticket price implies they don’t have to pay a fellow passenger for their own comfort more than they already paid the airline.

So who is in the wrong here?

There’s one group that has largely avoided blame: the airlines. After all, they are the ones who squeeze us into planes like sardines, allow seats to recline with insufficient space between people and charge us for additional legroom.

What do you think? How do we solve the reclining-seat problem? Leave your comments below.

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