According to the airline worker, seat-swaps happen during eight out of her ten monthly shifts.
Recently, a flight attendant has opened up on the ‘punishment’ she hands out to people who refuse to swap seats with a child.
Mitra Amirzadeh, an Orlando flight attendant, says around 80 percent of her trips are filled with seat-swappers.
More often than not, it’s couples who are not seated together who want to swap.
Though there are different rules for children, Amirzadeh doesn’t think that people who have paid for their seat should move.
“The next time you feel yourself getting angry or getting frustrated that you’re not getting the seat you want,” she told Wall Street Journal.
“You need to remind yourself that you didn’t pay to pick your seat. Otherwise, you’d be in it.”
However, when it comes to kids, Amirzadeh says that a different approach is needed.
When a child is involved, she has needed to get ‘good at reading the room’ when no volunteers step forward.
“I have said before, ‘OK, so you’re going to watch the toddler?'” she explains.
The punishment she gives out is that whoever sits next to the child needs to look after them.
According to Amirzadeh, she will tell the stubborn passenger ‘you’ll want their snacks and their colouring books then, because they’re going to need that’.
When it comes to seat-swapping, not everyone has the same views. One passenger with a medical condition was previously praised after refusing to swap their seat with a pregnant woman.
The passenger took to Reddit forum ‘Am I the A**hole’, explaining,
“I specifically booked and paid extra for an aisle seat in the second-to-last row because I have medical issues that sometimes require quick access to the bathroom.”
A pregnant woman approached the passenger and asked if they would mind swapping.
The Redditor explained that they refused to move because they wanted quick access to the bathroom.
“While I felt for her situation, as someone with a medical condition, I did not feel it was fair to demand I move from the seat I planned for and paid for, especially since she apparently had not booked an aisle seat herself in advance,” they explained.
“There were also no other aisle or close seats available on the full flight that I or flight crew could facilitate swapping.”
The passenger said that they thought the flight crew ‘refused to help meditate when she insisted I should have to move’.
Taking to the comments, one person wrote: “As a frequent flier I see this a lot. Entitled people thinking they can have whatever seat they want.
“Nope. If you paid to select your seat. That’s your seat. End of story. Your lack of planning or decision to be cheap is not my fault nor my obligation to remedy.”
A second replied: “I wouldn’t have traded for a non aisle and I don’t have a medical issue. I picked and paid for an aisle seat so that is what I am getting.”