The Middle-Seat Curse
I jinxed myself.
Last week, while still abroad, I blogged about my good seats on my various flights between Tampa and Warsaw. So of course, I had the opposite experience on my way back.
I had a coach ticket, so I can’t complain that I didn’t get to upgrade on the transatlantic leg; I’d paid on the way over to get a good night’s sleep and wouldn’t have paid on the way back anyway. But on the Atlanta-Tampa leg, I thought I was once again in luck. This time, I even had a bulkhead window seat, and there was again a nice young businessman in the aisle seat.
However, at the last minute the middle seat was filled (and I do mean filled) by a very sweet but VERY large gentleman who had to be at least 400 pounds. Let me put it this way: if he put on a little more weight he could have passed for a Samoan sumo wrestler.
He was a gentle giant who’d clearly been in this position before. He manually compressed his bottom to fit between the armrests, which couldn’t have been very comfortable. And he spent a lot of the flight with his arms wrapped around himself trying to contain himself into his seat. There was no way around, however, the fact that his shoulders were almost the width of two seats, extending halfway into mine and halfway into the aisle seat.
I spent the flight hugging the window- because if I tried to sit up straight, I was unavoidably “hugging” him. I joked with the flight attendants (in the kitchen, not in front of him!) about wanting a half-seat discount and they smiled empathetically and gave me a free drink.
It was a pretty short flight, only a little over an hour in the air. I hope that for his own sake the large man either upgrades or buys two coach seats for longer flights. But I had forgotten to knock wood when I wrote last week about having an empty middle seat, so I have no one but myself to blame.
- Mary Hunt, editor, eFlyer
July 14th, 2008 at 9:51 am
I had an similar unfortunate experience on a flight to Las Vegas years ago. While flying with a friend, I had the middle seat. A very large woman had the window seat and asked my friend to switch, which would give her more room. He declined, but suggested she raise the armrest to ease her confinement. Of course, that armrest was what kept her and I separated. With it lifted, the rest of the flight became a sweaty, uncomfortable experience. I still owe my friend for that one.
July 16th, 2008 at 11:33 pm
You have to negotiate if you can…and it might mean giving up your aisle or window seat. Take what happened to me…
I had a window seat, in comes a rather large man and his petite girlfriend. She was in the middle seat in the opposite row, he was in the middle seat in my row.
Then came in a rather slim girl who had the window seat in the opposite row…the couple tried to negotiate that she switch with the large man (who had my center row seat) with the girl with the opposite window…she of course said no.
I spoke up…gave her my window seat, I took the large man’s center and the couple got the other window and center. The end result…I was more comfortable and now I had the slim girl to my left and an average man to my right…had I not made the change, I would have the large man all over me…get it??? And I was the hero!