Woman refuses to switch places on plane to help families – as she likes specific seat
To move seats, or not to move seats, that is the question, or at least, that is the question most plane passengers have faced at least once in their lifetime. You don’t have to be a seasoned traveller to have experienced the dilemma: all it takes is one couple or family to make the request, after noticing they are not seated together, and you find yourself asked to vacate your comfortable, purposefully-picked seat.
While most people are happy to swap if it is no inconvenience to them, and others will move even if means taking a worse seat, one woman will not, as she made clear in her account for the Daily Mail. Writing for the publication, columnist Jaci Stephen defended passengers, like herself, who refuse to move.
The journalist began by explaining she puts a lot of time and care into selecting her seats. If she’s travelling domestically, she chooses a seat near the loos for practical reasons. She also likes to be near the front of the plane because she doesn’t like crowds.
And as a regular flyer, she has the practice of picking the best seat for her down to a science (it is often 8A, if you are interested). Getting the right seat means so much to her that she will even change planes if her pick is not available.
But if she agreed to all of the seat swaps she has been asked to complete, she would regularly lose out – as she has battled so many requests she can’t remember the number.
“I’ve lost count of the times I’ve been singled out as a single woman on her own and asked to change my seat,” she revealed.
Luckily for her, Jaci is happy to stand up for herself and has always said no on all but one occasion. However, this has not come without its stresses, as she says she has been left fearful following previous encounters.
She recalled one such hostile exchange happening when she refused to move to allow a woman and her two children to sit together in a row.
As the swap would see her move from a forward-facing to a backwards-facing seat, and she liked sitting apart from people because of Covid, she stood her ground – incurring the wrath of the woman’s husband.
He was furious and shouted his ill-wishes toward Jaci, before storming off, according to her account.
Thankfully, crew members intervened and two volunteers came forward, meaning the family solved their problem.
But the interaction left Jaci panicked, and she spent eight hours in fear, worrying the angry father would try to confront her.
Nonetheless, she still sticks to her guns when passengers want her to move, with the only exception being when she claims she was once asked if she would like to swap seats with La Toya Jackson, not long after her brother Michael’s death.
Happy to help the star, she “surrendered it in a rare act of martyrdom to someone not who I thought deserved it more, but who I thought really needed the privacy more.”
