Passenger refuses to let mother and child sit in her plane seat by providing controversial reason

A woman has refused to give up her assigned seat on an airplane for a mother and child to sit together.

In a recent Reddit post shared to the popular “Entitled People” subreddit , she and her husband travel often for work and have assumed that they would end up with someone stealing their plane seat at some point.

“People stealing plane seats and getting told off for it are some of my favorite stories on Reddit. With the increase of plane seat bandits, most likely due to airlines almost making it a requirement to pay for seats if you want to sit next to your plane partner, I have been half expecting to run into one,” the poster explained before adding that it did happen.

The passenger noted that after waking up at 3am to arrive at the airport on time, she “wasn’t in the mood” to deal with a mother and son sitting in the seats that she and her husband had paid for.

The mother told her that a flight attendant had seated them there because their booked seats weren’t together, but the passenger didn’t believe her.

“I smile back and say we paid for these seats so we would like to sit there. She keeps smiling her stiff smile and points to other empty seats behind us and asks if we wouldn’t mind sitting in one of them since they are already settled and comfortable, would it even matter?” the Reddit post continued.

“Well, I said, yes since the plane is still boarding so these might all be reserved and it really messes with the system if people sit in random seats. She is starting to lose her smile and says if there aren’t seats available after the plane is finished boarding they would move then.”

She refused to stand in the aisle and pleaded her case for why she should get the seats. “I would like the police to be able to identify our bodies by seat number in case the plane crashes and our families want to bury our remains,” she said.

Shortly after the mother and child got up and moved with no further interaction between them.

After posting, many people turned to the comments to open up about their own plane seat stories, explaining that there is always a reason for why people book specific seats whether that be to accommodate their height or bad knees.

“As a very tall and big man, I have had this happen more than a few times. And what gets me, is it’s always some 5’ woman with her 5’8 husband wanting to sit in the exit row when I can’t fit in any other seat on the plane except first class,” one comment began.

“The most delicious example I had was when the flight attend[ant] got so tired of arguing with the couple to move that she looked at me and said, ‘there’s a First Class upgrade if you want it, I was going to offer it to these people to move from your seat, but they clearly want these seats...’ and then she winked at me and I just laughed at their anger over it while I went up to first class.”

“A similar thing happened to me. My son was 3 and my daughter was about 1. She was a lap baby on the plane. I paid for 3 seats sitting together so I could hold my daughter and have my son sit in the middle. We were late boarding as I was taking my 3 yr to the bathroom. We get on the plane and there are two people sitting in our seats,” another story read in the comments.

“The first guy says I just sat here to get out of the aisle and am moving back to our seats. But the lady sitting in the window goes did you pay for all 3 seats? I looked at her and said yes, there are 4 of us in total. Is there an issue?? She responds no I guess I have to go sit in my middle seat. If you wanted a better seat, you should have paid for it..”