Couple days ago, I'm getting on a plane. I usually fly with just a backpack, so I get on the plane last so I don't have to sit in that crummy seat for an hour before takeoff. I find my aisle seat, and there's a dude with 5' wide shoulders sitting next to me in the center seat. I immediately see that there's gonna be a problem, since I am 6'1" myself. I'm very polite by nature, so I sit down and figure out how to make the best of the situation. Ain't gonna happen. I'm leaning fully half way into the aisle to avoid the guy. The arm rest is digging into my side and I'm all contorted. There's no way anyone's going to walk down the aisle without taking my head and shoulder off. The guy is just sitting there, making no attempt to make himself smaller, with a stupid grin on his face.
I shoot him a few dirty looks, trying to let him know that the situation is not working for me. After we get to 10K feet, I get up and track down a crew member. She's very helpful and says she'll try to find me a different seat. I go back to my seat and tell the guy that he needs to buy 2 tickets next time, for 2 seats. He gets a confrontational look on his face and refuses to answer.
I ultimately got moved to an Economy Plus seat, so it was all good. I fly quite a bit, and guess I have been lucky so far. Anyone with any experience on how to handle this and what the crew are obligated to do to help? My situation worked out only because there were a few open seats on the plane. Seems like most flights I'm on, the plane is pretty much full.
I think the airlines need to get out of the 50s and start taking new realities into consideration, like obese people, or people like myself who fly light. Maybe they should stick all the families with kids in the back, then fat people in front of them, then normal-sized people in the front? I would also say that seating needs to be male-female-male, so us guys aren't always in an armrest war
