After TikTok users debated whether or not they should swap seats on a plane, a flight attendant chimed in with what could only be considered an expert opinion.
Though travel etiquette usually starts once you’ve landed at your destination, it’s also easy to argue that you should be on your best behavior while traveling on the plane. Thankfully, flight attendants and former captains are on hand to offer advice, as seen recently with the revelation that you should be buying hot drinks.
Should you swap seats on the plane, according to a flight attendant
Flight attendant Mariah (@hashtagmariah) offered her two cents after stitching a video where the creator refused to swap seats on a plane. Her post has since accumulated over 1.3 million likes with the caption, “Ahhhhhh yes. My favorite conflict lol.”
“We see this all the time. Where people just don’t want to pay for seat selection or they wait until the last minute and wait until all the seats are gone. Nine times out of ten, the person who wants to switch a seat will involve a flight attendant,” Mariah explained. “I always say I will put the inquiry out there, but I always make it very clear the answer can be a no. You are allowed to say no.”
Mariah continued to explain that it’s not anyone else responsibility to get you checked in on time. In blunter terms, if you snooze, you lose.
“The reality is if you’re not booking with a travel agent, and you don’t check in on time or pay for seat selection, you’re not going to get selected together,” she added. “That’s just the way it is. The whole system is a computer, it’s smart but it’s dumb.”
Looks like Mariah is the best of a bad bunch
Of course, everyone is just trying to do their jobs to the best of their abilities, however, Mariah is seemingly one of the nicest flight attendants out there as many social media users reported horrible experiences in similar situations.
One person who did swap seats on a plane confessed: “I had the flight attendant ask me to switch so a son could sit with his mom, I said yes and got moved to the very back on a 9-hour flight. He was like 30.”
“When I said no to moving seats, the flight attendant stood there with her arms crossed and said ‘well we won’t be taking off until somebody moves’….it was for a family of 4, all of whom were adults,” another person revealed.
A third rightly pointed out: “I’m old enough to remember not having to pay extra for seat selection. The airlines are profiting off this chaos.”
