Rules for Seat Reclining

The great Mollie Hemingway has heroically set forth some tentative social rules for seat reclining on airplanes. I’m in favor of them all.

Reclining your seat in an airplane isn’t the worst breach of etiquette in the traveling worlds. It’s not talking in the Quiet Car or showing up to dinner in jean shorts on the at-sea night. But it’s pretty bad. Just because airplane seats recline, doesn’t mean they should be reclined any time. And there out to be some generally-shared consensus on when it’s polite to do so.

For my own part, I never mind if the person in front of me reclines and they’re really big. Last week on a cross-country flight the guy in the seat in front of me was probably 6’6″. I kept waiting for him to push his seat back and I wouldn’t have held it against him, but he never did. Ditto for red eye flights, when most people are expecting to sleep.

At the other end of the spectrum are the times when a normal-sized person reclines immediately upon take-off, yet jabbers back and forth with their seat-mate for the whole flight. These folks don’t need the extra room and aren’t using it to aid sleep–they’re just taking it, because they can.

I don’t know where this sort of thing fits in the hierarchy of assaults on civilization, but it probably clocks somewhere around talking in movies. [Cue Santino rant in 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . .]