In exchange for a few hundred dollars, airlines give you a few cubic feet that are yours while they whisk you across the country or across the world.
Airlines also give you a special little button with which you can increase your cubic footage by a tiny bit and gain some comfort. It doesn’t cost you anything to press the button, but your additional square footage comes at the expense of the person behind you — and if he or she is working on a laptop, it might make typing hard.
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The debate over reclining is fraught because it is tied up with many questions our culture too often leaves unasked and values we have forgotten. The New Yorker waded into this tricky question with a lengthy article.
“Seat reclination raised issues of responsibility, complicity, and determinism,” the author, Joshua Rothman, states. “It exposed the gap between what’s permitted and what’s good; it suggested the inevitable challenges created by the exercise of individual rights.”
“I NEVER recline my seat. You shouldn’t either,” orders political commentator Chris Cillizza.
“If the airline gives me the ability to recline, it’s my right to do so,” retorts political scientist Adam Ramey.
Of course, just because something is a right doesn’t mean you should do it, everyone on X replies.
A core problem here is our tendency to speak in absolutes. We speak in absolutes too much in part because we think like lawyers — that clear and universal rules ought to govern our interactions.
The right answer to the question, “Ought you feel free to recline?” is “It depends.”
It depends mostly on the nature of the flight. If you are flying across the Atlantic overnight, there is a point where the airline turns off the lights. This is sleepy time. Reclining now is normal. You should feel free to recline, and you should expect the person in front of you to recline.
If you are flying from New York to Chicago at 8 a.m. on a Monday, this is a businessman’s special. Napping is not terribly normal, and working on your laptop is normal. Ordinarily, reclining on this flight is a bit rude.
If you really want to recline on this flight, then there’s an option almost totally ignored by that New Yorker piece and the online discussion: checking with the person behind you.
And some situations are ambiguous. I was once on a three-hour flight that took off at 7 p.m. Central, flying home to D.C. Halfway through the flight, it was 8:30 Central, but 9:30 Eastern, which is my normal bedtime because I go to bed early.
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I checked behind me. If I saw a lady with her laptop on the tray, or some really massive dude, I just wouldn’t have reclined. If I saw someone already reclining or some little kid curled up with an iPad in his lap, I would recline. If I saw an adult with his tray up, reading, I would ask if he minded if I reclined. (Imagine talking to a stranger!)
If you want a general rule, it’s this: Avoiding the recline is always polite, but often reclining is normal and fine — depending on the circumstance.
