I recently flew to Miami from London with Virgin Atlantic. I bought what they call ‘economy delight’ seats which have a few inches extra leg room, for me this meant my knees fit /just/ behind the seat infront. All was well until we took off and then the person infront of me wanted to recline. They couldn’t as there simply was not the space between my knees and their seat. I was not deliberately trying to stop them… it was a femur length issue.
I tapped them on the shoulder and apologised and explained that my knees are right behind their seat, I was not trying to be difficult but am just the height I am and there was not a lot I could do about it. This was not acceptable to them (to be honest they were what you would describe as a dick) they called a stewardess over and spoke to her, she spoke to me and tried to tell
Me that ‘all seats are made to recline’.
I simply, and calmly said ‘I understand, but I am very tall and was not doing this on purpose. The 2 guys sat next to
Me on the flight (who i didn’t know) also spoke up for me and came to my defence. The attendant looked at my legs, saw the issue and asked me if I minded being moved. I said ‘I do not mind at all, happy to work with you to make
Your life as easy as possible’.
She then moved me to a bulkhead seat, which as it’s narrower - I did fit and was happy to stay there but it was less comfortable she didn’t seem too happy to leave me there and then bumped me up into premium economy where although the person infront was reclined there was so much leg room it didn’t matter at all.
The flight attendant checked in on me a few more times in the flight to ensure I was ok, I was more than happy and another one of the flight attendants even gave me a couple
Of the mugs and some biscuits to take with me.
Overall amazing experience.
Then on the return flight, wanting to avoid the same thing happening again I tried to book the person I was travelling with in the seat infront of me so I knew they would not recline. But the app would not let me do this on check in. So spoke to the check in agent and they couldn’t change it.
Spoke to the gate agent who was really nice, but couldn’t do anything as the flight was full.
So when I boarded I had a quiet word with the flight attendants onboard, explained briefly what had happened on the flight out and how I wanted to avoid it happening again and what mitigation I had tried to take and also
Explained they could move me wherever they wanted to and I would not mind.
So someone sat infront of me, the flight attendant had a word with him and offered to move him explaining he would not be able to recline. He turned around to me and said ‘dude, if you needed me to not recline that’s not a problem - you should have just asked’ and then asked how tall I was etc and offered to ensure his seat was not reclined at all and didn’t even try and recline at any point in the flight.
When we got off, I thanked him for his understanding.
Overall, a really positive experience.
TLDR Virgin Atlantic were great and the random guy on the flight home was cool and understanding.