We often talk about families demanding seat swaps or premium rows without paying for them. But this case was different: a traveler paid extra for an exit row seat, only to spend four hours with children hovering in his space, blocking the window and leaning over him as if the emergency exit door was a lounge.

Paid For Extra Legroom, Got Kids Blocking The Exit Window For Four Hours

A passenger flying with his sister and niece recounted the ordeal on Facebook. They each paid €30 for extra legroom, hoping for a more comfortable ride. Instead, they found themselves constantly intruded upon by a father and his two children who became fixated on the emergency exit window. The kids stood in the row almost the entire flight, pointing, chatting, and leaning over into the space the family had paid extra to enjoy.

“We had to call the flight attendant three times to get them to move, but they just kept coming back after a few minutes,” the man wrote. By the third intervention, the flight attendant was visibly frustrated and warned the father this would be the last time she told them to sit down. The passenger concluded by noting, “Sometimes I wish Europe was as strict as the US with the no-fly lists.”

This looks like Lufthansa to me…?

My Take

This is a different type of entitlement, but no less frustrating. If you pay for a seat, especially an extra legroom seat, you have the right to use the space you paid for without being invaded by other passengers. It’s not a playground or a lounge. Parents need to exercise control over their kids, and crew should do a better job of enforcing boundaries when they’re repeatedly ignored.

I’ve flown enough to know that exit row windows are fascinating to children, including to mine. But fascination doesn’t justify disrupting another passenger’s experience. If the father wanted his kids to gawk out the window for four hours, he should have booked those seats himself instead of letting them commandeer space that belonged to someone else.

CONCLUSION

Paying extra for legroom should not mean paying extra to babysit other people’s children. This was not only inconsiderate but a safety issue…exit rows must remain clear (yeah, maybe that’s a stretch, but it is still rude). Airlines need to be stricter about preventing passengers from loitering in premium seats they did not pay for, even within economy class. Parents need to be stricter too. Flying is stressful, but spending four hours with kids leaning over you after you paid specifically to avoid such an experience adds a magnitude of stress that should never have happened in the first place.

image: Dull Men’s Fun Club / Facebook