No! You cannot recline your seat!

[Sabian]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/28/upshot/dont-want-me-to-recline-my-airline-seat-you-can-pay-me.html?_r=1&abt=0002&abg=1

 

I fly a lot. When I fly, I recline. I don’t feel guilty about it. And I’m going to keep doing it, unless you pay me to stop.

I bring this up because of a dispute you may have heard about: On Sunday, a United Airlines flight from Newark to Denver made an unscheduled stop in Chicago to discharge two passengers who had a dispute over seat reclining. According to The Associated Press, a man in a middle seat installed the Knee Defender, a $21.95 device that keeps a seat upright, on the seatback in front of him.

A flight attendant asked him to remove the device. He refused. The woman seated in front of him turned around and threw water at him. The pilot landed the plane and booted both passengers off the flight.

Obviously, it’s improper to throw water at another passenger on a flight, even if he deserves it. But I’ve seen a distressing amount of sympathy for Mr. Knee Defender, who wasn’t just instigating a fight but usurping his fellow passenger’s property rights. When you buy an airline ticket, one of the things you’re buying is the right to use your seat’s reclining function. If this passenger so badly wanted the passenger in front of him not to recline, he should have paid her to give up that right.

I wrote an article to that effect in 2011, noting that airline seats are an excellent case study for the Coase Theorem. This is an economic theory holding that it doesn’t matter very much who is initially given a property right; so long as you clearly define it and transaction costs are low, people will trade the right so that it ends up in the hands of whoever values it most. That is, I own the right to recline, and if my reclining bothers you, you can pay me to stop. We could (but don’t) have an alternative system in which the passenger sitting behind me owns the reclining rights. In that circumstance, if I really care about being allowed to recline, I could pay him to let me.

Donald Marron, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office, agrees with this analysis, but with a caveat. Recline negotiations do involve some transaction costs — passengers don’t like bargaining over reclining positions with their neighbors, perhaps because that sometimes ends with water being thrown in someone’s face.

Mr. Marron says we ought to allocate the initial property right to the person likely to care most about reclining, in order to reduce the number of transactions that are necessary. He further argues that it’s probably the person sitting behind, as evidenced by the fact people routinely pay for extra-legroom seats.

Mr. Marron is wrong about this last point. I understand people don’t like negotiating with strangers, but in hundreds of flights I have taken, I have rarely had anyone complain to me about my seat recline, and nobody has ever offered me money, or anything else of value, in exchange for sitting upright.

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.

A no-recline norm would also have troubling social justice implications — for short people. Complaints about knee room are not spread equally across our society. They are voiced mostly by the tall, a privileged group that already enjoys many advantages. I don’t just mean they can see well at concerts and reach high shelves. Tall people earn more money than short people, an average of $789 per inch per year, according to a 2004 paper in the Journal of Applied Psychology.

The economists Anne Case and Christina Paxson advanced the theory that tall people earn more because they have higher I.Q.s. Taller men on the dating website OkCupid receive more messages from women and have more sex partners than their short counterparts.

Instead of counting their blessings, or buying extra-legroom seats with some of their extra income, the tall have the gall to demand that the rules of flying be reconfigured to their advantage, just as everything else in life already has been. Sometimes — one Upshot editor who shall remain nameless included — they even use the Knee Defender to steal from their fellow passengers.

Now that’s just wrong.

 

[BabyBlade]

WHY YOU CAPS LOCK THE TITLE?

[Vid]

Here's what that thing looks like when in use

 

 

Basically just put it in the handle bar of the tray and viola.... person in front cannot recline.

[Kusje]

That's bloody stupid. I always check how much recline the person beside me has. If mine is not at the max, obviously I will check and see what the hell is going on.

[Sabian]

WHY YOU CAPS LOCK THE TITLE?

 

For emphasis (of the article).

No harm intended.

 

Pls don't dock me.

[Ktglfc]

I will recline when I wanna sleep... apart from this, usually I won't recline cos don't want to disturb the ppl behind...

 

Definitely it is wrong to forbid the ppl infront of you not to recline..

If you are so particular, then maybe can just buy a business class seat... no one will disturb you

Edited August 29, 2014 by Ktglfc

[Icedbs]

I have never recline my seat before, because I feel that if I do that, the person behind me will have very little space especially when he needs to bring down his tray.

 

So in order not to inconvenient anyone, I just don't play with the seat.

 

In anycase, i could still sleep with my seat straight so no issue for me.

 

Sometimes I wish the guy in front of me can be equally considerate, but it seldom happens.

[RadX]

I have never recline my seat before, because I feel that if I do that, the person behind me will have very little space especially when he needs to bring down his tray.

 

So in order not to inconvenient anyone, I just don't play with the seat.

 

In anycase, i could still sleep with my seat straight so no issue for me.

 

Sometimes I wish the guy in front of me can be equally considerate, but it seldom happens.

 

 

just make sure that on long flights you move around at least every 4hrs. DVT can kill

 

I had 2 ever come in A/E, breathless and up lorry soon after. Both caucasians. One was cardiac arrest, probable dislodged thrombus, adn the other pulmonary embolism

[Thaiyotakamli]

i see the flight if a jetstar flight then i wont recline cos behind space quite limited. moreover if short distance i also wont recline.

 

 

 

I will only recline if there is no one in behind OR when i want to sleep i will recline half.

 

There is one time I fly to Sydney and this lady in front of me from the moment takeoff till reach there recline the seat fully until my leg (1.83m) cannot move or stretch. I just simply let my aircon blow full to her for 7 hours and the moment she reached sydney, she tio headache hahaha

 

 

just make sure that on long flights you move around at least every 4hrs. DVT can kill

 

I had 2 ever come in A/E, breathless and up lorry soon after. Both caucasians. One was cardiac arrest, probable dislodged thrombus, adn the other pulmonary embolism

yah go toilet is the best thing to do in long flight and drink more water

I have never recline my seat before, because I feel that if I do that, the person behind me will have very little space especially when he needs to bring down his tray.

 

So in order not to inconvenient anyone, I just don't play with the seat.

 

In anycase, i could still sleep with my seat straight so no issue for me.

 

Sometimes I wish the guy in front of me can be equally considerate, but it seldom happens.

dun worry i very considerate one haha

[Eighttales]

i usually just recline a little but will put it back upright during meal times.

 

there was once while i was flying to brisbane, this lady in front of me fully reclined her seat during meal time. then each time she brought the spoon to her mouth, she would half sit-up so she won't drop the food on her lap.

 

i wanted to eat my food but the tray table was already touching my tummy so i told the stewardess to ask if she could recline her chair.

 

she did, but she was damn buay song. she and her son kept turning around to look at me throughout the flight.

 

knn, wanna eat properly also wrong meh :(

Edited August 29, 2014 by Eighttales

[Thaiyotakamli]

i usually just recline a little but will put it back upright during meal times.

 

there was once while i was flying to brisbane, this lady in front of me fully reclined her seat during meal time. then each time she brought the spoon to her mouth, she would half sit-up so she won't drop the food on her lap.

 

i wanted to eat my food but the tray table was already touching my tummy so i told the stewardess to ask if she could recline her chair.

 

she did, but she was damn buay song. she and her son kept turning around to look at me throughout the flight.

 

knn, wanna eat properly also wrong meh :(

normally if infront of me recline his seat, i will ask the stewardess to inform him during meal

 

 

but most of times the stewardess auto remind one

[Sabian]

Isn't it standard courtesy to put your seat upright during meal times?

 

Stare simi lj?

[Wt_know]

for once i pity the angmoh taking plane

they are either tall or fat (ahem ... big size)

air plane economy seat is a torture to them

asian size best fit eco seat ... lol

[RadX]

Isn't it standard courtesy to put your seat upright during meal times?

 

Stare simi lj?

Common sense not that common bro

[Kangadrool]

simple, just pay double and have double seats. Or airlines should standardize airfare by charging basis per kg.

 

Leg room can't help. Anyway, not all ang mob are tall.

 

for once i pity the angmoh taking plane

they are either tall or fat (ahem ... big size)

air plane economy seat is a torture to them

asian size best fit eco seat ... lol

 

99% of the people needs to be reminded. That's why you need flight stewards/stewardess. Otherwise, they can always make you go to galley area to self-collect your meals.

 

Isn't it standard courtesy to put your seat upright during meal times?

Stare simi lj?

 

[Icedbs]

Isn't it standard courtesy to put your seat upright during meal times?

 

Stare simi lj?

 

You will be surprised many people not so "automatic" to upright their seat during meal times.

 

Most of the time has to be told by the crew.

 

 

 

 

[Macrosszero]

To deal with anti-social passive aggressive behaviour, airliners will now have to pack this:

 

 

Its also SOP for the flight service crew to ask all passengers to return seats to their upright position during mealtimes. I find it equally counter-productive to have to lower your tray table in order to prevent the seat in front of you from reclining. It still cuts into your tiny bit of personal space even if it saves your knees a couple of inches.

 

The nicest thing the captain of that flight could have done would have been to upgrade the passenger who couldn't recline her seat to business class or some other seat with better room, assuming there was vacant seats on the plane.

[Nolicense]

aiyah.. wait till you kenna the front recline seat when its not even time to sleep and recline even during meal times coupled with someone kicking the back of your seat... and the passengers beside you are fat and take all the arm rest and has BO, you are really in the special kind of airplane hell reserved for the air rage travelers... LOL