Social media is weighing in on in-flight etiquette after an Indian American techie refused outright to swap seats with a co-passenger on an international flight. Saran Shanmugam, the Director of IT at Biophysical Society in the US, was traveling to India. He had booked a paid aisle seat in advance to fly comfortably in the coach. His peace of mind was disturbed when the co-passenger next to him approached him with a request to swap the aisle seat for his brother’s middle seat in another row.
The US-based techie gently turned down the request. The co-passenger was an Indian and he wanted his brother to sit with him in the same row. He insisted on switching seats, but the techie stood his ground and turned a deaf ear to him. Then the Indian co-passenger approached a flight attendant, and his request became a bold demand. Unsurprisingly, his adamant behavior did not work either.
The flight attendant removed the man from the Economy cabin and let him return to his seat a few minutes later. Thereafter, he did not bother the techie for the rest of the flight, as Saran Shanmugam shared on social media. It is assumed that the cabin crew taught him a lesson and got an undertaking from him for the seat-switching demand – which is unjust for several reasons.
The Indian American techie’s social media post drew mixed reactions. Some netizens sided with him, while some others criticized his outright refusal. One of the comments to his post read, “I always pre-book my seat as I prefer aisle. Once I switched with a mother who wanted to sit with her young kids. I sincerely feel, people need to learn to pre-book their seats to avoid any hassle on board.”
“Whether you should switch seats on a plane – is a bone of contention in the field of civil aviation where the cabin crew is accountable for passenger safety and service. A seat-swapping request sounds humble and seems harmless on the surface, but it has downsides, according to aviation veterans,” said Sourav Agarwal, Senior Editor of Travel Beats, a leading travel news portal for Indian Diaspora.
Switching your seat to let a couple to be seated together or a parent to sit with his/her child on a flight does apparently more harm than good. If you happen to swap your aisle or window seat, it happens unofficially outside the airline’s system. Neither your PNR nor the PNR of the person, who you switch with, gets updated in the airline’s system. Aviation veterans warn if that passenger creates a nuisance on board or gets into a scuffle with the cabin crew, you’re likely to be held accountable since your flight PNR features that seat in the airline’s system.
Seat swapping is a barrier for flight attendants in serving you and the passenger who you switch your seat for on a plane. In the airline’s system, your information like special meal requirement and/or specific inflight service is associated with the seat number assigned to you on a flight. Let’s assume you pre-booked a vegan meal and the other passenger ordered a non-veg meal. Just imagine what would happen if you swap your seat for his. Precisely, switching seats creates confusion for flight attendants.
“Advance seat selection for a fee is a passenger’s investment in the comfort of flying on a long-haul route. The passenger has every right to get the best of that investment, especially in the Economy Class where extra legroom, extra recline, extra seat width… come at a price. Saying ‘No’ to seat-swapping requests is neither rude nor unfriendly; it is a fundamental act of securing your rights to the service or facility that you pay extra dollars for, unless the cabin crew moves your seat for valid reasons like security,” said Dheeraj Duvvuru, CEO of Indian Eagle.
