Woman Praised For Declining To Give Up Her Window Seat So Mom Could Sit Next To Her Two Kids

Jul 19, 2023

Since the golden age of air travel until the present day, swapping or trading seats on an airplane has been a thing and will continue to be so as long as air travel exists. People swap seats for several reasons: to escape the middle seat, which many view as purgatory, to sit with family and loved ones on a long flight, or to occupy the treasured window seat. 

For frequent air travelers, it is common for co-travelers to ask to swap seats. And as frequent as the request is, so is the hot debate on if and how one should ask to swap seats. Regular flight users come to social media with tales of other passengers showing plane seat entitlement, bad passenger etiquette, seat theft and even outright lying. With the frequency of these debates, there have been several unwritten rules based on constituents of fair trade that a person asking to swap seats must follow.

An essential unspoken rule in swapping seats is that only better or equivalent changes are applicable. So if your deal involves offering a bulkhead seat with more legroom to a passenger on an aisle seat or trading a middle seat at the front of the main cabin to a passenger with a window seat next to the lavatory, that could be classified as a fair exchange. 

Regardless of the swapping deal, outrightly occupying a preferred seat before the owner boards is not ideal. In one such case, TikTok user Tammy Nelson shared a video on July 10, 2023, detailing her encounter with a mom who initially took her window seat on a Delta Airlines flight from Cincinnati, Ohio, to San Jose, California.

Nelson, the CEO of global jewelry brand CONQUERing, got more than she bargained for when she boarded a flight and saw a woman in her seat. She took to TikTok to share a video describing her encounter with the woman.

"What would you do?" Nelson wrote in the video. "I got on the plane and a woman was sitting in my seat and when I mentioned it to her, she said, 'Oh, you want to sit here? I thought we could switch because these are my kids' (she points to the two seats next to mine).'"

Empathetic with the woman, Nelson agreed to switch on the sole condition that the exchange seat be equally a window seat. However, it wasn't so, as the woman offered her a middle seat in exchange.

"She points to the row behind us and says, 'Mine is right there.' (It's the middle seat.)," Nelson wrote.

In her caption for the video, Nelson explained her insistence on keeping her seat. She revealed that she had barely slept the night before and had to get some sleep since she was to give a presentation to 500 people. She further revealed that the kids were about 11 and 15 years old, and the woman was within reach as her seat was directly behind theirs.

The video, which has been viewed over 2.8 million times, garnered thousands of comments, most of which supported Nelson keeping her seat.

"Nope. If it's not an upgrade it's a sacrifice," one person wrote.

"The amount of families who aren't paying to select their seats together is mind blowing! You were 100% right to not give up your seat," another commented.

"That was ballsy of the mom to offer a middle seat 😳 don't feel guilty!," a third person concluded.

What do you think of Tammy Nelson refusing to give up her seat for the woman? Would you swap your window seat for a middle seat? Under what circumstances would you agree to swap seats on a plane? Let us know — and be sure to pass this article on to friends and family members.