If you can’t afford the legroom that comes with first-class, on a plane, then you probably know how difficult it is to keep your cool when confronted with an inconsiderate fellow passenger, and it usually has something to do with personal space.

Seat-kicking children, people with no spatial awareness, those who partake a little too enthusiastically of the in-flight drinks cart and then fall asleep on your shoulder – you know the sort.

It’s usually pretty obvious who the asshole is, on a flight.

There’s a recent case, however, on an American Eagle (a subsidiary of American Airlines) flight between New Orleans and Charlotte, North Carolina, that has the internet divided.

NewsAU sets the scene:

An American Airlines passenger has called out the carrier and its employees for failing to act when a man behind her allegedly kept punching the top of her seat in what she describes as an “assault”.

But as video footage of the incident hit Twitter, some social media commenters have argued it was actually the woman in the wrong for inconsiderately reclining back and invading the male passenger’s personal space.

Wendi Williams was returning from a conference when the incident occurred. She says that the man initially asked her to put her seat up while he was eating, which she did. She then reclined it again when he was done.

She caught what happened next on video. Here’s the “assault”:

@BravoAndy Here’s a great jackhole! He was angry that I reclined my seat and punched it about 9 times – HARD, at which point I began videoing him, and he resigned to this behavior. The other jackhole is the @AmericanAir flight attendant who reprimanded me and offered him rum! pic.twitter.com/dHeUysrKTu

— wendi (@steelersfanOG) February 9, 2020

Williams says that she complained to a flight attendant and didn’t get the response that she wanted.

More from her Twitter thread:

Okay, now she’s calling the FBI.

“It was scary and very painful,” Ms Williams said, claiming that she lost time at work, had to visit a doctor, receive X-rays and suffered headaches because of the incident.

I feel like there’s more to this story than Karen Wendi is telling us.

Though some Twitter users voiced sympathy for Ms Williams’ plight, others were more sceptical of the woman’s version of events.

Critics countered that it was “unfair” and “mind-boggling” that she would recline her seat against his wishes and invade the man’s space in the first place.

“Move your seat up then,” one offered.

The general consensus seems to be that reclining your seat so that the person behind you has no space is rude. Punching the seat in front of you is also rude.

Neither of these things warrants getting the FBI involved.

American Airlines will be investigating further.

[source:newsau]