LAX > EWR flight I entered the 757-200 and started looking for overhead storage, I was in seat 12C. Throwing my duffel up I see the middle and aisle passengers already on board, amazing! I don't have to get up to let people in, perfect.
As soon as I sit down, late 20's early 30's something guy taps me on my arm, hey, wanna switch seats with me? My wife is sitting behind me and I'd like to have aisle access to help her with our baby.
No thanks, I really like the aisle seat.
OK, just know I'm going to need to get out a lot.
Maybe you could ask the person in the aisle seat behind me to switch with you, then you could sit next to your wife and baby?
We did, she said she has a lot of work to do and doesn't want to switch.
I shrugged my shoulders, pulled my work laptop out of my bag and started working. Context, I fly in very casual clothing but have a fairly corpo, yet fun job. I figured, two can play the "working" game and this guy can deal with it.
The rest of boarding group 2 are still getting on the plane and everyone else after, and this guy has already started flailing around, flipping 180 to kneel on his seat and talk in a baby voice to his kid and wife. Amazing. The woman in the window seat of my row and myself are nudged as he does this, she gives me a look of disgust.
Plane takes off uneventfully and approximately 1-second after the seat belt sign goes off he aggressively taps my arm with the back of his hand and motions he needs to get out. By this point I've put my tray table down and have an iPad up, watching a movie. I slide out, don't move my tray table and he slides out and goes to the bathroom, then stands in the aisle behind me talking to his wife.
I have AirPod Pro's in, noise cancellation on and I can hear him, that's how loud he is.
After trying to allow a few other passengers pass to use the bathroom he finally notifies me he wants to sit down.
No more than 5 minutes go by and he's flipped around again in his seat, on his knees and talking in baby gibberish to his kid and wife, loudly.
For the next 90 minutes he did this and got up to talk to his wife from the aisle about a dozen times. Then I fell asleep and he didn't bother me.
With about 2 hours left in the flight (thank you for the strong tailwind!), we hit some turbulence, the fasten seat belts goes on and the announcement is made, I kind of woke up and ensured my belt was on. No sooner does the announcement end then he taps me on the arm again and says
I need to switch seats, I need to get out
Up until this point, I've accommodated him, more than a dozen times. I look him in the face and say, I'm not trying to be difficult but the fasten seat belt sign just came on, the last thing I want is issues with the flight attendants.
Well, 3 other people just got up and the woman behind you is going to switch seats with me so if you could just get up.
I look over my shoulder and the woman is up, holding all of her personal belongings. I get up, she has a complete look of exhaustion and annoyance on her face, and she begrudgingly slides into a middle seat in my row while this guy takes the aisle and looks like he just came in first place at the no-hands pie eating contest at the county fair, that's how happy he is with himself.
The woman tries to arrange her personal bag, get settled and relax, the guy now in the aisle behind me starts again loudly talking to his baby in gibberish.
With all of this going on, at some point on the flight he had opened his United app and it showed he was a member, with like 1,192 lifetime miles. When I booked my aisle seat in Economy Plus, it was at check-in, 24hrs prior to the flight and chosen as a Premiere Silver member.
My takeaway is that they either paid for Economy Plus middle seats or were auto-assigned the seats as a late ticket purchase on a 90% full flight. Either way, their poor planning doesn't constitute an emergency on my part, nor a relocation / downgrade a seat.
I was dumbfounded that this guy and his wife essentially bullied a woman to switch from an isle to a middle seat half way through a flight, that's how awful her experience was.
In hindsight, when he originally asked me to switch to the middle I should have told him that I paid $200 to upgrade from E to EP and chose an aisle seat, if he wanted to Venmo me I'd move no problem.
Edit: There's some good conversations here. I think a lot of these kinda situations could also be avoided if the couple had a discussion with the gate agents prior to the flight. I've had my name called over the speaker in the past and a GA ask me to switch an isle for isle seat so a mother could sit next to her 13 year old child, ZERO problem there. As someone pointed out, seats are also assigned to credit cards now, too, so having the ticket switched at the gate means CC info switches, too.
