A post about a passenger's "weird" seat experience on a recent flight with Delta Air Lines has gone viral on Reddit.
The image was shared by Nick, a 41-year-old food blogger at DudeFoods.com who did not share his last name with Newsweek, in a post on Reddit under the username DudeFoods. The post has received 17,000 upvotes since it was shared on Tuesday.
The picture shows Nick seated in an exit row with a neck pillow on his lap, directly facing a cabin crew member seated opposite him. The caption accompanying the post notes: "I was psyched to get an exit row until I found out that means I have to awkwardly sit directly facing the flight attendant."
Nick told Newsweek that the image was taken on a Delta flight from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to Atlanta, Georgia, a few months ago. He was journeying to Atlanta for work to visit an Arby's test kitchen located there.
Nick explained: "I booked the seat deliberately, hoping that I'd have extra leg room since it was an exit row, but I've never had an exit row where a flight attendant sits directly facing you. I usually fly Southwest and barely ever fly Delta, so maybe it depends on the type of plane, but it seems like a really weird way for a plane to be laid out."
The viral post comes as air travel continues to see strong growth in the post COVID-19 pandemic era. According to an October report from the International Air Transport Association (IATA), total passenger demand in August was reported to have increased by 8.6 percent, compared with the same month last year. The August load factor, the percentage of available seats an airline sells on its flights, was at 86.2 percent, which is a new record high.
Travel is forecast to reach "record highs" this year, with global tourism spending expected to hit $2 trillion, as per a December 2023 survey by Euromonitor International, the market research firm.
'Never Seen Anything Like This'
Nick from the viral Reddit post told Newsweek: "I've never seen anything like this on any other flight I've been on, but maybe it's a normal thing with Delta flights. It's just weird to me why they wouldn't just have all the seats facing forward."
On every other flight he'd been on, flight attendants were typically seated in front of a wall between the cockpit and the first row, "which I'm sure everyone prefers," he noted.
The poster added: "It was a little awkward just because when you book a flight you don't expect to be directly facing someone and usually I like to just get on the plane and immediately try to fall asleep, which for some reason is a little difficult when a random person is just kind of staring at you."
Luckily for Nick, the awkwardness was short-lived, as the journey was only about a two-hour flight. "The flight attendant was only sitting there during take-off and landing so maybe 30 minutes total—15 minutes during take-off and 15 minutes during landing," he recalled.
The Reddit community found humor in Nick's situation, with many users expressing amusement at the unconventional seating arrangement.
Redditor LeaningFaithward commented: "I don't want to sit this close to my own family." Another user, FritoConnaisseur, suggested: "You need a comically short curtain, that only goes past the eyes."
Reddit user printergumlight empathized with the flight attendants, saying: "The flight attendant has to do that every time he works. That sounds like an awkward person's nightmare."
Another flight attendant, somecanadianslut, confirmed the mutual awkwardness, stating: "As a flight attendant ITS AWKWARD FOR US TOO."
User pedantryvampire added: "I mean, if they're [the flight attendant] in that seat, they're also trying to ignore you."
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