Would you give up your exit row seat for a pregnant woman?
That’s the question being discussed on Reddit after a passenger spoke up about a recent experience.
It all started with a post on the “AITAH” subreddit on January 13.
In their post, user hahahajump wanted the community to weigh in on his experience, asking “AITAH for not giving up my free upgraded exit gate seat to a couple … wanting [to be] sitting together.”
“AITAH” stands for “Am I the a**hole here,” similar to the famous “Am I the a**hole” subreddit.
The backstory…
In their post, hahahajump detailed their experience on a 14-hour flight from Asia, with an economy ticket they had booked “as normal.”
Before the plane took off, a flight attendant offered the Reddit user a chance to move to an aisle seat in the emergency exit row — which they “happily accepted instantly.”
Once hahahajump moved to the new seat, they saw a young man in his 20s already sitting in the same row.
As they began to get settled in their new seat, the man “suddenly smiled [at] me,” the Redditor wrote.
Once the man spoke up, he asked if his pregnant wife could have the exit-row seat, saying his wife was not comfortable in her seat multiple rows back.
As they explained in their post, hahahajump wondered why the man had only paid for a premium seat for himself, and not for his pregnant wife.
“My brain just instantly responded, ‘Oh, but you have a bigger seat. Why don’t you switch with hers?’” they wrote on Reddit.
Hahahajump went on to say that after they refused to switch seats, the man’s face “instantly” sank.
As the flight was taking off, hahahajump “ended up instantly [falling] asleep with my headphones on.”
But, when he woke up, the man was no longer sitting next to him in the exit row.
“I woke up 3 or 4 hours later” they said, only to find a new seatmate: the man’s wife.
“There was no story after,” hahahajump explained in their post. “We just had zero communication, which was perfect.”
Though the Reddit user did not believe they were out of line for denying to switch seats, their own family and friends all said they should have given up the seat for the person’s wife so that the couple could sit together.
That’s why they took to Reddit, to get some more opinions on whether or not they were the a**hole in this situation.
“But I really feel, Why [didn’t] the husband switch his [seat] as he was already in the better seat?” hahahajump wrote. “Why me?”
The verdict
As for Reddit’s response? People pretty unanimously agreed with the original poster.
“That was a great question for the man,” Reddit user l3ex_G wrote in the top-upvoted comment.
They continued, “Why would he expect a stranger to give up their seat when he wasn’t willing to do it?”
Another commenter assured the poster that they were “NTA” or “not the a**hole.”
“So he bought only one good seat and hoped to manipulate the person (who presumably paid to upgrade his seat, even though it’s not true in your case) into giving up theirs,” said Reddit user LabyrinthianPrincess in another comment.
“They were playing on [your] being sympathetic,” OldNCranky75 wrote.
“It’s the husband’s responsibility to make sure his wife is comfortable.”
Other users were just surprised a pregnant woman was even permitted to sit in the exit row, since passengers who are in the exit row must agree to assist during an emergency.
Regardless, the woman got a roomier seat, and her husband ended up moving to the row further back.
Do you think the passenger should have given up his seat for the pregnant woman?