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The plane didn't even have assigned seats. That didn't stop her calling the teen a 'little b-tch."
By John Sundholm — Written on Feb 26, 2023
There's just no way around it—air travel has become an almost universally miserable experience, and a huge part of it is how uncomfortable planes have become.
Getting one of those seats with extra legroom can be a make-or-break affair when it comes to a flight, so it's no wonder they're such a hot commodity.
But one young woman was left in shock by the lengths to which one of her fellow plane passengers went to nab a coveted exit-row seat.
In a post to the "r/AmITheA--hole" subReddit, where people go to find out if they were in the wrong in a conflict, she detailed what went down.
And she's not the only who thinks her fellow passenger went a bit too far.
An older woman accused a teen girl of stealing her exit-row seat with extra leg room—even though the plane didn't have assigned seating.
The 18-year-old passenger thought she had it made when she nabbed an exit-row seat on her flight back to college after Thanksgiving.
She's a taller young woman, so she checked-in early at the airport to make sure she'd be at the gate and on the plane in to get a seat with extra room.
But just as she got settled, things took quite a turn.
An older woman approached and said the young woman "wasn't old enough" to sit in the exit row.
The young woman wrote that the older woman was "larger-bodied" and had arrived on the plane among the very last few passengers.
“Excuse me. You aren’t old enough to sit in this row, sweetie," she told the young woman. "I need that seat because I need extra room.”
She then insisted that the young girl move, but she refused, protesting that she was plenty old enough and had been there first.
The woman fired back that she was "entitled" to the seat and insisted the teen was too young to perform exit-row duties properly.
But the older woman was having trouble moving around and did not appear able to perform the exit row duties either.
When a flight attendant intervened, the older woman said the teen 'stole' her seat and called her a profane name.
The woman referred to the young woman as a "little girl" as she made her accusation, and claimed she needed an exit-row seat because the others were too small.
The flight attendant was not having any of it, however.
“The flight attendant told the woman she was causing a scene and to go sit in one of the other open seats," the teen writes. But things escalated even more still.
“As she walked away, the woman muttered 'little b-tch' at me." She went on to say that the incident left her "quite shaken" as she'd never had a confrontation in all the times she'd flown.
Still, she wondered if she was the person who had done wrong in the scenario.
Reddit commenters agreed with the flight attendant that the older woman was wrong.
Commenters were nearly unanimous that the young woman had nothing to feel guilty about.
"She forced you to engage," one wrote, "and the fact the flight attendant sided with you shows that you did nothing wrong."
Another user heartily agreed. "You took the seat you were entitled to, and are not [an as-hole] for keeping it."
"The other person is [an as-hole] for trying to bully you out of it, whether it was a man or woman of any age, for any reason."
Many others praised her for sticking up for herself and not accepting the older woman's intimidation, while another person turned this situation into a valuable lesson for the older woman.
"If she wanted an exit row seat, she should have checked in sooner."
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.