A TikToker has sparked the debate about aeroplane seats once again by refusing to swap seats so that a mother and her son could sit together.
You can see her thoughts on the matter in the video below:
OK, to begin with, you might think that that this is a bit callous right off the bat, but the son in question was apparently about six foot five and if not already an adult, then very nearly an adult.
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Also, she had paid more money to have the seat that she was actually supposed to be sitting in, and – crucially – doesn’t have to move for anyone if she doesn’t want to.
It’s as simple as that – or is it?
Surya Garg says that she was asked if she would mind moving from a window seat on the plane by the woman in the middle next to her, so that she could sit with her son.
Recalling the incident in a TikTok video, she said: “I’m like, ‘Who’s your son?
“And she points to this, like, 6-foot-5 man!”
She went on to claim that the son was ‘a minimum of 16 or 17 years old’ and could pass easily for an adult.
What’s more, she said that whilst they were boarding, he was ‘talking to his girlfriend on the phone’.
Garg continued: “This was not, like, her ‘child.
“This was, like, her kid but, like, he’s an adult.”
Anyway, she didn’t fancy moving from where she was, but admitted that she ‘didn’t know what to do’ when asked about it.
In the clip, she explained: “I don’t want to look like an a-hole, but I don’t think I’m an a-hole in this situation,
“I said, ‘Look, I’m sorry, no. I paid extra for this seat’.”
But that didn’t go down well with the mother, who apparently sat cursing her under her breath during the flight.
“This woman makes the nastiest face at me I’ve ever experienced, sits down next to me in the middle seat that, like, she was assigned to,” she said.
“Her son goes back to the middle seat that he’s assigned to in the back, and then — I kid you not — under her breath for, like, the entirety of the flight, is just, like, muttering profanities at me.
"Was I in the wrong here? I need someone to tell me."
But her followers appear to be on her side.
One commented: “As a mom who travels with kids, I don’t know how people don’t plan for this and buy the seats together. I don’t get it! You did nothing wrong!”
Another said: “You are never in the wrong for sitting in the seat you paid for.”
While a third wrote: “You are not wrong whatsoever, and I worry for her son in every way.”
Anyway, the debate about seat-switching on aeroplanes is far from over, but in this instance, it’s hard to see that she did anything wrong.
Tom Wood