Spilled drinks, broken laptop screens and crushed knees.
AND new movie shows the reasons why reclining seats on airplanes have gone from being an acceptable practice to most irritating for many airline passengers.
The video is part of an advertising campaign launched in late November by the furniture company La-Z-Boy, which includes: petition imploring travelers to “do what is straight. Don't lean back when you're flying.”
As of Monday, the petition had collected more than 186,000 signatures, a La-Z-Boy representative said. CNBC Travel.
The tongue-in-cheek campaign from the company, known for its plush, oversized reclining chairs, tackles an increasingly pressing issue fueled by increasing passenger sizes and decreasing seat spacing.
As opposed to drunkenness and hygiene problems such as cutting nails and taking off shoes, which are widely despised by his fellow passengersopinions on reclining the seat fall mainly into two camps: those who say don't do it, and others who say the recline button is there for a reason. (A third, more nuanced position considers yaw to be acceptable on long-haul or night flights.)
La-Z-Boy's campaign firmly puts the company in the “never give up” camp, and the petition states that “just because you can, doesn't mean you should.”
Another video in the campaign shows how one reclined seat can ripple through an airplane like falling dominoes and ultimately end up in the last row of the plane – a row disliked for its inability to recline and praised for being one of the several places on the plane where you can rest with impunitydepending on the aircraft.
A 2023 study in 18 markets by research firm YouGov found that attitudes towards reclining seats vary by region, with Europeans being the least tolerant of the practice. Europe is home to tallest people in the world too.
However, less than one in three travelers in the UAE were concerned about this.
Overall, the study found that travelers from the United Arab Emirates were less concerned about all but one behavior on board – including personal hygiene and noisy children. The study found that citizens of the United Arab Emirates were more likely than citizens of Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific to consider public displays of affection unacceptable.