Traveling to Europe in 2023, the strange phenomenon I encountered on the plane

When flying alone, in order not to disturb the neighbors when I leave my seat, I always pay extra fee to take the aisle seat. Traveling to Europe in 2023, transiting from Singapore to Spain, when I selected the seat, I saw that the Premium Economic Class seemed to be full, and there were only two non-aisle seats and one aisle seat in front of the escape door. Therefore, I paid extra to select the seat inf front of the excape door so that I can have more space for my feet to relieve the discomfort of long-distance flights.

It is strange that a family of four sits in three rows

After boarding, I was seated next to a female passenger. I saw she and her husband were busy in accommodating their two children. At first, I only noticed that it seemed that their family did not sit together. A family of four sat in three rows, she sat next to me, two children sat in the row behind us, and her husband sat in the row behind the children.

I thought to myself, maybe when they made a reservation, they could no longer choose a seat for the whole family to sit together, so the parents and children not older than the first grade of elementary school sit separately. I believe that the mother must have also paid extra fee to get the seat beside me , maybe it was because I chose the seat next to her that she couldn't sit with her child. However, I clearly remember that when I selected my seat, the seat next to me was already reserved, so I assumed that the mother should have booked a seat earlier than me. If she bought my seat, she would have been able to sit with her child. This made me very confused. Besides, I paid nearly NTD 4,000 more to choose this spacious seat. I didn't think I should have offered to switch seat with her child.

The Mother Sitting Next to Me,

she"Turning a blind eye" to others and "doing her own way"

After taking off, the mother sitting next to me watched her two children through the gap between her seat and me from time to time , and kept talking to her two kids. However, the COVID-19 epidemic has not been completely lifted. During the flight, the mother and I both wore masks, she even sanitized her hands with alcohol from time to time. Apparently, she was also worried about the risk of infection. However, she was close to the gap between two seats next to my face, talking to the children behind, doesn’t she know that others are also worried about getting infected? And I can hear her talking , despite I wore earphones and watched a movie. Her behaviour made me uncomfortable , but I still sympathized with the mother's heart to take care of the children, so I kept calm and endured.

I thought it's because the mother paid as much as I did to select a seat , so she was reluctant to give up the comfortable seat and move to sit with her children in the back. After flying for hours, I went to the toilet and found that the seat next to her husband was empty. I thought to myself, since the seat next to the father was empty, why didn’t the parents select that empty seat so that the whole family can sit together? Isn't it more convenient for parents to sit side by side with two children? Why did they have to sit in three rows ?

Interfering with the constant voyage

After flying for several hours, the cabin lights were turned off after meals. I wanted to sleep, but the mother was watching TV . The light of the LCD screen was quite dazzling in the dark and disturbed my sleep. Fortunately, I had an eye mask with me, so I put on the eye mask. However, both my mouth and eyes were covered, which was actually not comfortable. After taking a short nap, I took off the eye mask and found that the mother had stopped watching TV and turned the TV screen towards me instead of turning it off. The glare of the screen light was facing me, I couldn’t help turning her screen away, but she didn’t feel that her screen was disturbing me at all and didn't turn off the screen, either. She even didn't apologize for that.

The rude mother took my tolerance and understanding "for granted"

That mother didn’t realize that she didn’t want to be dazzled by the screen, but she would disturb me by turning the screen towards me, as if she thought I could wear the blindfold if I was afraid of being dazzled. I therefore realized that she took my tolerance and understanding "for granted". It made me dumbfounded, how can there be such a selfish person, seeing that there are only two hours left to reach the destination, I originally thought, just endure another two hours! However, I thought I should at least let her know that she had seriously disturbed me. When the rude mother called her children beside my ear again, I said to her: "Would you stop yeilling besides my ear? You disturbed me all the way!』

Unexpectedly, she did not realize that she interrupted me along the way, she even responsed to me without apologizing : 『Do you have kids? 』

Facing such a rude neighbor, I told her directly: "I would sit beside my kids!" and then very uncultivated mother shut up.

Fortunately, when I just boarded the plane, I didn't give up the seat to the couple, otherwise, when I found out that the seat next to the husband was empty and realized that it was not me and another passenger who broke up their family. The truth is the parents deliberately assigning seats like this.

Frankly speaking, every time I take a flight, if I encounter a family or a couple who are not sitting together and want to change seats, as long as it does not affect my sitting in the aisle seat, I will be willing to change seats, but this couple is clearly deliberately reserved only the seat next to me instead of paying for two seats together. They played tricky and didn’t expect a single passenger to buy that seat beside the mother. If they really wanted to sit with their children, The space next to the father should be marked down so that the parents can sit side by side with the child, and then one adult can take care of one child.

The couple knew that it would be inconvenient to take care of the children, so why did they arrange it this way? Either the mother abandoned the child and only cared about the larger seat for herself, or she didn’t want to pay more for the seat next to her for her child. I am a solo traveler, and the airline is also very smart in setting up a seat allocation system. As a result, I have no choice but paid more to get an aisle seat. So, the couple made good calculations, but they miscalculated. Their bevaiour led to I couldn't watch movies or sleep well all the way, and that rude mother made me look at a certain country differently.

The mother thought it's a matter of course,

because she has to take care of the children

When we plan our itinerary, we inevitably want to save money, but this mother's behavior shows that she didn't care whether she could sit with her children or not, and she acted as if no one else was around. She went her own way and then justifyed her rude behavior by saying she had to take care of her children. What she had planned and beahaved in the plane had opened my eyes.

As a matter of fact, I had encountered babies crying in the cabin several times on flights, but I would not be angry at all because the baby was under cabin pressure and was very uncomfortable. However, the person who disturbed me along the way was a 30 to 40-year-old adult, a mother who has to educate her children. I hope she can reflect on her selfish behavior to avoid showing the worst example to her children.

In-flight etiquette is very important, mutual understanding and tolerance are essential for a pleasant journey

I remember one time I was flying alone, and my neighbour was a couple . I wanted to watch a movie, and the overhead light above my seat was turned on, but they wanted to sleep, so the man stretched his hand directly towards my overhead light, which meant that they were disturbed by me. In fact, the airline offerred a pair of eye masks to every passenger. They can wear eye masks. After all, they cannot ask others not to watch TV or turn on the lights. However, I didn't want to disturb others or conflict with them, so I took the initiative to turn off the lights.

Another time my family and I were traveling with a group. During the flight, there was a male member of the group sitting behind me. He was about 170 centimeters tall. Maybe his legs were very long. There was no room for his long legs in the narrow economy class. So his legs kept hitting the back of my chair, which made me very uncomfortable. At first, I asked the flight attendant to tell him that his actions were bothering me, but he didn't care at all and kept raising his legs to hit my chair back, I understand that it’s uncomfortable for men to fly in economy class because of the narrow space, but I really couldn’t stand being hit by him for more than ten hours. The back of my head felt very uncomfortable, so I told the flight attendant that the behavior of the guy behind made me unable to sleep, the stewardess thefore took me to another empty seat, so I had to leave my family and move to another seat. Seriously, if you think the seat is small and uncomfortable, why not pay more to upgrade? The guy kept stretching his legs and hitting the back of the passenger's seat . There was no apology from the beginning to end. The male groupmate was even very dissatisfied with me. With such qualities, he doesn't even know the etiquette on the plane. Going abroad is really embarrassing to his own country. If the person sitting in front of him was a muscular and powerful man, I wonder if he would have dared to continue banging against the back of the seat.

I hope to share my experience to remind everyone that although there are no explicit rules on in-flight etiquette, the cabin is a small global village with many passengers of different nationalities gathering together. Please do not lose your dignity and leave a mark in the minds of others that the quality of people from a certain country is very low. In short, everyone on the same flight, interact politely, and be considerate to one another, so that we can have a pleasant flight experience. I wish you all a nice flight!

作者Linda的心聲

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