This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/AmItheAsshole by /u/kitsune_chan29 on 2023-08-22 14:48:28.

This was my second 8 hour flight on my way home from Africa via Dubai. I had booked an aisle seat so I could get up without bothering others and a special meal due to health requirements. I boarded the plane, found my seat and settled in.

A family gets on with 3 kids (they don’t speak much English) and asks if I could switch seats with one of their kids so they can be together. The father of the family wasn’t sat anywhere near the mother and kids, so it looked to me like they had left their seats to random assignment. I initially said yes, thinking it was just a move across the aisle, but then realised they wanted me to switch to sit in a middle seat and I said no.

Another passenger then gets up and says he has a seat in the back that I can move to (no idea how) and I said no. I said that I had booked my seat and ordered a dietary meal, and there was no way I was moving to a middle seat. He then starts loudly criticising me and saying he hopes I understand that I’m splitting a family up. This eventually attracts attention from the crew because it’s holding up boarding.

They got a passenger on the other end of the row to switch and sit somewhere else so their kids could sit together. The other passenger from before then starts loudly saying to his kids and the family “Do you understand what happened? She thought her seat was too special so she wouldn’t let you sit together.” I told the guy to mind his own business and he responded that he wasn’t talking to me. I was exhausted and sleep deprived by this point and told him to stop talking about me and just can it.

I didn’t think I was in the wrong here. I organised myself beforehand and booked my seat, and felt it was quite unfair to have a random guy criticising me to half the cabin for not wanting to swap to a middle seat for an 8 hour flight.

AITA?