Reclining seat? There is an even more annoying thing people do on planes

The back seat pocket on planes is no less controversial than the recline button.

May 14, 2024 - 02:30

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Reclining seat? There is an even more annoying thing people do on planes

Rarely a week goes by without a new social media debate around whether those who take advantage of their plane seat's reclining function are "rude" or "inconsiderate."

Those who complain about this (and one travel study recently found that 77% of travelers believe it is rude to recline the seat for the entire length of the flight) say that it significantly reduces the space of the person behind them while others insist that the blame for any discomfort should lie squarely with airlines — travelers should not be shamed for using features of their seat in the way they have been designed.

But while seat-reclining is a constant source of debate and controversy, I recently experienced a situation that inconvenienced me far more: a passenger who kept rifling through the back seat pocket.

This is what happens when you rifle through your seat pocket on a plane

On most standard passenger planes, the pocket holding safety procedures, in-flight menu options and any additional small items the traveler wants to have within easy reach is placed on the back of the seat in front of you.

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While they can vary from the kind of rope holder that will fit little other than a few papers you will find on Spirit Airlines (SAVE) flights to a full-on pocket, rifling through it will inevitably be felt by the person sitting in the other seat.

On a recent three-hour flight, I had a particularly extreme case of a young man who would reach into his pocket every ten minutes. On top of taking his headphones in and out, he would regularly reread the menu card and put his phone into the pocket before taking it back out again.

Each of his movements was a shove in my back that continued throughout the length of the flight. I alternated between grinning and bearing it (I don't like confrontation in any form and kept thinking that the flight was almost over) or speaking up. In the end, I turned around and met his eyes disapprovingly after he took something in and out of the pocket five times in as many minutes.

There is another (and more gross) reason you shouldn't rifle through your back pocket

The same debate can be had for pocket-rifling as for seat reclining. The young college student was technically not doing anything particularly "wrong" since the pocket is there to be used. The problem lies in that those who designed the plane had the airline's interest of space (and fitting more travelers in) rather than the passenger's comfort in mind.

Should we start lobbying for better back seat pocket design on top of the myriad other issues currently plaguing the airline industry? Or put up with it until we can't anymore and then escalate, like I did, to a disapproving look that works with more socially intuitive passengers but will be completely ignored by others?

But if you're not convinced, there is another reason you should use the back seat pocket sparingly — when the cleaning crew goes in and out quickly, they are often the first thing that gets accidentally missed.

"I always recommend you never, ever, ever, EVER use or put anything in the seat pocket," one long-haul flight attendant once wrote on Reddit (RDDT) . "They are cleared of rubbish but are never 'cleaned.'"