Airplane Argument

On one of our recent flights, Morey and I had an interesting encounter with a flight attendant. I was sitting in a bulkhead seat and Morey was laying at my feet and also taking up part of the foot space of the seat next to me. My seatmate came and acknowledged us, I gave my spiel about please letting me know if I needed to ask Morey to move and we settled down for the flight. Before we took off the flight attendance came over and told me I needed to move my dog. “Where do you want me to move him? I asked, not sure what the concern was. “He is taking up this passenger’s space and that is not acceptable. You are only entitled to the space at your feet.” The only possible way to make that happen was to have Morey sit for the duration of the flight; something not likely to happen. I looked at the flight attendant and replied (with perhaps a touch of sarcasm-it had been a long day already) “Well, I can’t exactly make him shrink so what am I supposed to do?”

He turned to my seatmate and said “We will try to re-seat you. Just a minute”. My seatmate said it wasn’t a problem but the flight attendance insisted that it wasn’t acceptable. We were delaying the flight at this point while the flight attendant bustled around indignantly trying to find another available seat. He found one on a window and came back to inform my seatmate, who was currently in an aisle seat. To the chagrin of the flight attendant, my seatmate declined the offered seat change, saying he preferred to stay in his aisle seat and that sharing his space with the dog was not a problem. The flight attendant was obviously not happy that his efforts were not appreciated, but I guess he was finally convinced that we were both fine with the current arrangements.

I understand people not wanting to sit next to a dog or not wanting to share their foot space with a large dog. I’ve only ever had one person adamantly protest and ask for a seat change and I was very understanding about that. However, this flight attendant got a bee in his bonnet for no reason, even when both of us were saying it wasn’t a problem. After he had finally left, my seatmate turned to me and said, “Did he not believe me the first time I said it was fine?” I guess not!