Reclined Airplane Seat Causes Another Fight, Another Diverted Flight

An American Airlines flight was diverted to Boston due to an altercation over a reclined seat, the Associated Press reported. It’s the second such incident this week. Seat rows on airplanes are more and more tightly packed, and tempers are increasingly frayed.

Paris resident Edmund Alexandre became upset after the woman in front of him pushed her seat back during their trip from Miami to Paris on Wednesday. When a flight attendant tried to calm him down, Alexandre, 61, followed him down the aisle and grabbed him by the arm, CBS Boston reported.

A federal air marshal subdued Alexandre, and he was arrested when American Airlines Flight 62 was diverted to Boston’s Logan International Airport around 10 p.m., the news site wrote. Alexandre was charged with interfering with a flight crew.

Earlier this week, two passengers got into an altercation because a woman could not recline her seat. The traveler behind her used a Knee Defender, which prevents the person in front seat from sitting back. When he refused to remove the gadget and allow her to recline, she threw water in his face. The plane was diverted to Chicago and both passengers were escorted off.

A Knee Defender is $22 plastic contraption that attaches to the seat tray. It even comes with its own courtesy card. It reads, according to The Mirror: “I realize that this may be an inconvenience. If so, I hope you will complain to the airline. Maybe working together we can convince the airlines to provide enough space between rows so that people can recline their seats without banging into other passengers.”

The Federal Aviation Administration has not banned Knee Defenders from airplanes, but occasionally crew will ask passengers to remove them, the Mirror wrote.

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