Is it okay to recline your seat for the length of the flight? Does the person in the middle seat get two armrests? When it comes to courtesy on the plane, some questions have no agreed-upon answer and have been stirring up debates for generations.
The second question is the controversy that a United Airlines (UAL) flight attendant waded into when, according to a passenger who had been on the flight, he made an overhead announcement saying that “no person gets two armrests.”
Related: An American Airlines Captain's Rant on Plane Etiquette Is Going Viral
“This was a first for me on my current flight,” a passenger using the username r/littleike0 wrote on the United forum on Reddit (RDDT) . “FA made an announcement right after boarding to clarify who gets to use which armrest on the flight. To my surprise, he was very emphatic that no person gets two armrests. He explained every person is supposed to use the armrest on their right (and the left for the other side) and keep the armrest on the aisle clear for carts and people walking down the plane.”
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‘No armrest drama will be tolerated’
The take is particularly controversial since many people believe that the small reward for getting stuck in the middle seat should be two armrests. The Reddit poster said that after hearing the announcement (the flight attendant also reportedly said that “no armrest drama would be tolerated”), he explicitly told the traveler to his left that she could have his armrest.
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“Feeling sorry for all the folks in middle seats on this flight, although mentioned to my seat mate she was welcome to both armrests,” he wrote. “Ever hear anything like this before?”
Reddit netizens immediately shot down the flight attendant’s take on who “owns” which armrest.
“That's a ‘no’ for me,” wrote r/keberch in the most upvoted comment on the post. “I'm an aisle seater, and that aisle armrest is mine. The middle seat gets his/her two, I get mine on the aisle.”
Internet isn’t having it: ‘Why do we need rules like this?’
“Why do we need rules like this?” wrote another. “If I’m on the aisle and get bumped it’s my bad.”
After news outlets started picking up on the story, industry insiders also came out to say that the flight attendant did not get this one right.
“Ultimately there is no published rule on use of armrests,” InsideFlying.com Founder Gary Leff wrote for View From The Wing. “Airlines install them to be used. The courteous thing is for the middle seat passenger to get two. However this is ultimately left to the passengers to sort through.”
The announcement was not an official instruction by United but the flight attendant going rogue in order to keep passengers paying attention to the safety instructions — more and more, flight attendants like to make jokes to get those who zone out during this portion of the flight to pay attention to the safety rules that follow.
Last year, an American Airlines (AAL) pilot went viral for an overhead announcement in which he said the “social experiment of listening to videos on speaker mode is over. »
