Photo: TikTok
She should have sat in the seat she paid for.
By Isaac Serna-Diez — Written on Feb 23, 2023
Ever since reserving your seat on a plane became commonplace, your right to your assigned seat has become sacred — if threatened, you would likely not back down and the entire plane and even the internet would stand behind you.
However, this wasn’t always the case, and many people were perfectly content with seat swapping and accommodating other folks who were traveling with family, loved ones, or certain conditions that made it hard for them to fly.
One woman on TikTok named Leah Lynette claims that she used to have this mindset, but one woman ruined it for everyone else in her future of seat-swapping opportunities.
Lynette claims that she has regretted giving up her plane seat ever since.
The video starts as a “stitch,” meaning that Lynette has used someone else’s prompt to tell her story — they ask “Do you think it’s a big deal if somebody is sitting in your seat on an airplane?”
“Absolutely,” Lynette begins her story. “I used to be— you know, have a different mindset, but this one lady ruined everything for everybody in my future.”
She talks about how one time, she was preparing to get on a flight from Miami, Florida, all the way to California — “y’all know that’s a long flight, five and a half good hours, easy.”
“So I get the window seat because I like to sleep. I like to lay my head on the window,” she claims. “I don’t like the middle seat cause I don’t have any arm room and I don’t like the aisle cause it’s just butts passing by you for five hours.”
She admits that the butts are only right next to her because she’s shorter than most people, so others may not have the same issue, but she digresses.
Upon arriving at her gate and getting ready to board the flight, the airline says it’s overbooked.
They ask the people waiting at the gate if there were any volunteers willing to give up their seats (for compensation, of course) so that there wouldn’t be any problems.
Not wanting to miss out on an opportunity to spend one more day with her family in Miami, she volunteers to give up her seat.
As it would turn out, they made a mistake and the flight wasn’t oversold, so she was told she could return to her assigned seat — there was just one problem.
“When I get on the plane to go to my seat, there is a man sitting in my seat and there is a woman sitting in the middle seat next to him,” she claims.
She says how they appeared to be holding hands and acting like the “world’s about to come to an end” — that’s because the man’s wife is terrified of flying, especially alone.
The man in her seat asks her to sit somewhere else so he can sit next to her.
“Do you know what he says to me?” Lynette asks the more than 2.5 million people that have viewed her clip. “‘Oh, why don’t you go sit over there?’ Uh— What!? So I look over there and over there is a middle seat. I was like ‘No, I’m not going to do that.’”
The woman begins to cry and shake uncontrollably, and by this point, Lynette is the last one needing to be seated so everyone on the plane is watching the mess unfold — making her look like the bad person for trying to unseat a man comforting his distressed wife.
Despite hearing the man’s explanation, she says “It sounds like y’all should have bought seats together, but you didn’t so I’m going to need you to move.”
The couple goes back and forth for a little, and by this point, a flight attendant starts to rush her, so she decides that, in everybody’s best interest, she goes over to the middle seat that’s open and sits there for the flight.
“If I ask him to move, she’s going to be crying next to me the whole flight, I’m going to be mad, she’s going to be mad, and it’s not going to end well,” she explains. “I regretted it ever since. I really should have turned up on them. They didn’t even say thank you.”
TikTokers in her comments were critical of the couple and the flight attendant.
“Yeah, people are just entitled. The flight attendants should have made him move,” read one of the top comments.
“People have nerve! I bet they do that crying act every flight they take,” said one of the more skeptical commenters.
A third claimed “other people's poor planning is not your responsibility. you're so much nicer to have tolerated that. I'm with you on the never again,” and they’re right.
If they knew that she had this problem before getting onto the flight, they should have paid to get their seats together beforehand.
Not only that, but the flight attendant should have directed the man to his gate-assigned seat in order to allow Lynette into the seat she purchased for herself.
Fortunately, Lynette claims to have had a "redemption" moment in the future where she was given a free upgrade to first class, but this nightmare remains forever in her mind.
If you choose to give up your seat out of the kindness of your heart, then that’s good for you, but forcing others out of the seat that they wanted makes you the bad person here.
Isaac Serna-Diez is an Assistant Editor who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics. Keep up with his rants about current events on his Twitter.