The great plane seat debate: To recline or not to recline?

When it comes to inflight etiquette, some things are obvious. Resting your bare feet on the armrest of the passenger in front? Not OK. Screaming at cabin crew because you had one too many shots at the airport bar? Not OK. Draping your long hair over the seatback so the person behind can’t see their entertainment screen? Ewww… and, you guessed it, NOT OK.

But not every inflight issue is so clear cut. There are plenty of instances where opinion is starkly divided, with some passenger habits constantly sparking fierce debate among travellers. Just this week, for example, a Reddit post about a guy “manspreading” on an aircraft and leaving his (female) neighbour with almost no legroom saw social media users at odds. To some, it was a despicable act of callousness; to others, a necessary evil brought about by ever-shrinking seat sizes in the US combined with being a taller than average passenger.

But even this isn’t as divisive as the Great Recline Debate. This age-old conundrum was brought to the fore again recently after a video went viral detailing the offence/totally innocent behaviour (depending on your perspective).

Henry and Mike Budrewicz, known as The Pointer Brothers on Tiktok, shared a clip with their 1.4 million followers that highlighted the issue. In the post, the camera pans around, showing the plane cabin, before coming to rest on one of the brothers ‒ whose space is severely compromised by the passenger in front’s reclined seat.

Text on the video reads: “Five hour flight home. Is this the most reclined seat in the history of aviation?” The caption below says, “easiest red card of all time”, referencing the fact that Budrewicz is holding up a red card in the video.

The comments section that follows is one, long fiery argument about who’s in the right: the poster for being annoyed, or the passenger in front for exercising his God-given right to recline. And, as it turns out, the two sides of the fence were perfectly encapsulated in The Independent’s own travel team: deputy editor Lucy Thackray is firmly Team Recline, while editor Helen Coffey thinks the practice flies in the face of all that is good in this world. Who’s right? You decide…

Pro-recline

Deputy travel editor Lucy Thackray says: If your plane seat reclines, you can tilt it back whenever you please

Airline seats are, most of the time, designed to recline. Often not far ‒ a measly inch or two ‒ but just enough to take you from strapped-to-a-board upright to something marginally more relaxing. My policy is: if your seat has the ability to recline, you can recline it whenever you like. That’s why it’s there, right?

When I said as much on Twitter, I was shocked to hear that fellow frequent travellers routinely have a policy of either not reclining at all (due to sympathy for people behind or back-row folks with no recline function) or checking with the person seated behind them first before doing so.

Taking it to an extremely unscientific poll of my Instagram Stories viewers, I was flabbergasted to find that 58 per cent of people said they would not recline on a flight of under four hours. Just 26 per cent said they would definitely recline, while 16 per cent said they would ask the person behind for permission first.

To me, that is is above-and-beyond levels of concern for strangers ‒ strangers who also have the option to recline. Sure, if I were to slide my headrest back the usual couple of inches and a passenger behind me had a real, tangible issue with it ‒ say they were trying to breastfeed, had a child on their lap, or were working on a laptop on the tray table ‒ I would of course pop it back up.

But in every other case, I reserve the right to recline; and I don’t think I should have to conduct market research with those around me beforehand. To my mind, this seat function has been designed for passenger comfort during cruising time. The “upright position” used for take-off is artificially rigid ‒ you wouldn’t relax on your sofa like that, and that’s essentially what we’re doing during air travel, right? Watching Netflix on our phones, reading or, in my case, mostly trying to get some shuteye.

One major sticking point for all you more compassionate people out there seems to be mealtimes. A commonly-held opinion seems to be: recline at any time ‒ except when people are eating.

But this is an unwieldy time frame. When first mentioning recline etiquette, I envisaged a smaller, short-haul aircraft and tighter seat spacing ‒ it is, perhaps, a given that we’ll recline on longer or overnight flights. In which case, full-on airline meal service is a rarity these days ‒ even on the likes of British Airways short haul, you’ll only get served a tray in business class. So is the rule that we resist reclining for the entire slow crawl of the trolley towards the back of the plane, plus the time it takes everyone onboard to tuck into their toasties?

Perhaps I’m an oddity in finding the perpendicular default plane seat position incredibly uncomfortable ‒ I end up leaning off to the left or the right, which is even comfier in reclined pose (comfiest of all is a reclined window seat with that lovely well of headspace away from the passenger next door). Then again, I feel validated by the two cabin crew members agreeing on Twitter that passengers should be allowed to lean back and enjoy at will - with one caveat, again, about full-cabin mealtimes.

According to one particularly passionate anti-recliner, my position on this issue makes me a “terrible person”. But, what can I say? I’d rather be a terrible, comfy, well-rested person than an awkwardly upright saint in the skies. LT

Anti-recline

Travel editor Helen Coffey says: Who can relax at the expense of someone else?

I haven’t taken a flight for three years due to the climate crisis, so perhaps I should keep my mouth shut when it comes to inflight etiquette. That said, I am still a human being. If you cut me, do I not bleed? And if you show me a viral video of someone reclining a seat on a plane, do I not become needlessly angry?

I, like seemingly many people, have strong feelings about The Recline. I think I can safely say I have never done it when the seat behind me was occupied ‒ not on a plane, back when I used to fly frequently, nor on a bus or a train. I have done it on the couple of occasions I flew business class, the “recline” option there being essentially horizontal to mimic a bed, but only because it impacted zero other passengers.

People often use the argument that, if the seat has been built with reclinability as part of the design, why on earth wouldn’t you do it? If the person behind you wants more space, they are completely at liberty to recline themselves.

My issue with it is this: that’s all well and good... up to a point. You start your reclining dominoes, with each seat pushed back to ensure everyone still gets enough space ‒ until you get to the back row. Unless I have completely forgotten how aircraft work in the last three years, I’m pretty sure the back row doesn’t have the capacity recline. So whatever poor sod is stuck there ‒ and I have been that poor sod myself ‒ has no option but to suffer with less space than everyone else. In most cases they will have paid the same amount for their seat as the person in front; why, then, should they have a less enjoyable experience?

Yes, you may not know this person, and you probably never will. No, you have no allegiance to a total stranger, nor reason to care if they endure a sub-par journey. But in the beautiful melting pot of the economy plane cabin, I like to think we are all equal (albeit with those who paid for extra legroom on the emergency exit row being “more equal than others”). Perhaps I sound like a kill-joy martyr, but I don’t feel good about my comfort coming at the expense of someone else’s. If nothing else, that someone could be me one day.

The only way to ensure true personal-space equity in the skies? No reclining. Either we can all recline, or none of us do. Vive la recline revolution! HC