'Obese passenger spilled over into my plane seat - flight attendant blamed me'

A man has taken to social media to ask whether he was in the wrong to complain after being seated next to an overweight passenger who took up part of his plane seat

A man has sparked a debate after complaining about an overweight passenger 'spilling' over into his plane seat.

He explained how he was travelling on a three-hour flight to the Caribbean - and hoped to have a comfortable journey to kickstart his holiday.

As soon as he saw his seatmate, however, he knew that wasn't going to happen. Taking to Reddit, he said: "Sitting with my wife in E and F (wife in F), our row mate joins us in D and he is a large person. Easily 40% into my seat. Luckily for me, I’m not a huge person but the arm rest couldn’t go down and I had to have my right leg in my wife’s seat in order to fit and he and I were body to body the whole flight."

Before take-off, he made an excuse to use the bathroom but instead flagged down a flight attendant to have a quick, private word with them.

He added: "I tell him that I am only asking for the entire seat that I paid for and nothing more. He makes a couple of calls, comes back and aggressively tells me there’s nothing he can do because the flight is 100% full (yeah okay, that’s fair) and then threatens me by saying he is happy to have a red coat escort me and make me take the next flight."

Confused by his reaction, the man claims he never raised his voice to the flight attendant and made sure to avoid vulgar language. He said: "I never once insulted the person sitting next to me. I did sarcastically say that they should make this guy take the next flight, but that was after he became aggressive towards me. He responded by saying 'See, that’s the vibe I don’t need'. I promptly shut myself up.

FA blamed me for another passenger spilling into my seat
byu/DavidPHumes indelta

"Ultimately I just dealt with it for three hours - not the end of the world - but now just unhappy with how the flight attendant reacted (versus what they could or couldn’t do)."

Wanting to know whether he's in the wrong, he has taken to social media to ask users for their thoughts.

One user said: "You’re not being unreasonable unless there’s more to the story, but Delta does really need a better customer-of-size policy. The number of times I’ve flown with someone in half my seat is too many."

While another added: "My wife had the same issue last month but with AA to London. She skipped the Airline and complained directly to AMEX and was refunded the flight cost. This course of action could be an option."

A third user said: "You know how we get the cards to give out when a flight attendant does a great job? They should issue cards to give out to the company when they do a rubbish job. I know we can comment, but it would be even better if there was some kind of formal ding to them."