Knee Defender?

[keefe]

When did we become such an uncivil, uncouth, and boorish society?

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/28/upshot/dont-want-me-to-recline-my-airline-seat-you-can-pay-me.html?module=WelcomeBackModal&contentCollection=Opinion&region=FixedCenter&action=click&src=recg&pgtype=article&abt=0002&abg=0


I fly a lot. When I fly, I recline. I don’t feel guilty about it. And I’m going to keep doing it, unless you pay me to stop.

I bring this up because of a dispute you may have heard about: On Sunday, a United Airlines flight from Newark to Denver made an unscheduled stop in Chicago to discharge two passengers who had a dispute over seat reclining. According to The Associated Press, a man in a middle seat installed the Knee Defender, a $21.95 device that keeps a seat upright, on the seatback in front of him.

A flight attendant asked him to remove the device. He refused. The woman seated in front of him turned around and threw water at him. The pilot landed the plane and booted both passengers off the flight.

Obviously, it’s improper to throw water at another passenger on a flight, even if he deserves it. But I’ve seen a distressing amount of sympathy for Mr. Knee Defender, who wasn’t just instigating a fight but usurping his fellow passenger’s property rights. When you buy an airline ticket, one of the things you’re buying is the right to use your seat’s reclining function. If this passenger so badly wanted the passenger in front of him not to recline, he should have paid her to give up that right.


I wrote an article to that effect in 2011, noting that airline seats are an excellent case study for the Coase Theorem. This is an economic theory holding that it doesn’t matter very much who is initially given a property right; so long as you clearly define it and transaction costs are low, people will trade the right so that it ends up in the hands of whoever values it most. That is, I own the right to recline, and if my reclining bothers you, you can pay me to stop. We could (but don’t) have an alternative system in which the passenger sitting behind me owns the reclining rights. In that circumstance, if I really care about being allowed to recline, I could pay him to let me.

Donald Marron, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office, agrees with this analysis, but with a caveat. Recline negotiations do involve some transaction costs — passengers don’t like bargaining over reclining positions with their neighbors, perhaps because that sometimes ends with water being thrown in someone’s face.

Mr. Marron says we ought to allocate the initial property right to the person likely to care most about reclining, in order to reduce the number of transactions that are necessary. He further argues that it’s probably the person sitting behind, as evidenced by the fact people routinely pay for extra-legroom seats.

Mr. Marron is wrong about this last point. I understand people don’t like negotiating with strangers, but in hundreds of flights I have taken, I have rarely had anyone complain to me about my seat recline, and nobody has ever offered me money, or anything else of value, in exchange for sitting upright.

If sitting behind my reclined seat was such misery, if recliners like me are “monsters,” as Mark Hemingway of The Weekly Standard puts it, why is nobody willing to pay me to stop? People talk a big game on social media about the terribleness of reclining, but then people like to complain about all sorts of things; if they really cared that much, someone would have opened his wallet and paid me by now.

A no-recline norm would also have troubling social justice implications — for short people. Complaints about knee room are not spread equally across our society. They are voiced mostly by the tall, a privileged group that already enjoys many advantages. I don’t just mean they can see well at concerts and reach high shelves. Tall people earn more money than short people, an average of $789 per inch per year, according to a 2004 paper in the Journal of Applied Psychology.

The economists Anne Case and Christina Paxson advanced the theory that tall people earn more because they have higher I.Q.s. Taller men on the dating website OkCupid receive more messages from women and have more sex partners than their short counterparts.

Instead of counting their blessings, or buying extra-legroom seats with some of their extra income, the tall have the gall to demand that the rules of flying be reconfigured to their advantage, just as everything else in life already has been. Sometimes — one Upshot editor who shall remain nameless included — they even use the Knee Defender to steal from their fellow passengers.

Now that’s just wrong.

[tower912]

Flying is an inconvenience that I avoid for all but the longest trips.   However, I sympathize with the knee defender.   I rarely recline my seat out of common courtesy for the people behind.   WTH, I can sit upright for a couple of hours.   Rarely does the person in front of me show the same courtesy.     

[Benny B]

Forget about Big Oil and Big Finance and Big Education... it's high time we take on Big People.  For all of us under 6'5", we are the 99%.

[wadesworld]

Flying is an inconvenience that I avoid for all but the longest trips.   However, I sympathize with the knee defender.   I rarely recline my seat out of common courtesy for the people behind.   WTH, I can sit upright for a couple of hours.   Rarely does the person in front of me show the same courtesy.     

Agreed with just about everything.  I do recline my seat while flying because I would consider myself to be about average height (5'10") and when people in front of me recline their chair I still have some space between my knees and their seat, but if I can feel my seat hit something behind me I sit it back up.

Having coached a large number of tall, high school aged volleyball players and flown across the country with them, I don't understand why a 6'10" 16 year old should have to pay a 5'8" 40 year old man in front of him not to recline his seat when the 16 year old already has too little leg room as it is.  That is, plain and simply, stupid.

[mu03eng]

This story is in a nut shell what is wrong with this country.  There is no personal accountability and general selfish that pervades the American thinking.  Both people are in the wrong.  I'm 6'4" and fly a lot, I hate when people recline, but don't make a fuss because they are allowed to.  I also never recline my seat unless someone isn't sitting behind me.  Personally, I think no one should recline because to do so places your comfort above those of your fellow passenger. 

[Benny B]

There is no personal accountability and general selfish that pervades the American thinking.

And thus explained is why Facebook is currently trading over $70/share.

[Freeport Warrior]

Personally, I think no one should recline because to do so places your comfort above those of your fellow passenger. 

I fly a lot as well and agree with this wholeheartedly. I wish seats didn't recline at all for this reason.

[warriorchick]

As a free market capitalist, I think I should have the right to sell the space between my knees and the forward seat to the passenger ahead of me, should I so choose. He should not have the right to invade the space for which I paid for free.

[ATWizJr]

[quote author=mu03eng link=topic=44673.msg645991#msg645991 date=14092529  Personally, I think no one should recline because to do so places your comfort above those of your fellow passenger. 
[/quote]  Yeah, let's not place our comfort above that of our fellow travelers on the planet, whether they are spotted owls, trees, or bugs or reptiles.  They must come first!

[GOO]

If the airlines sell you a reclining seat, I think you have the right to recline.  I think it is ultimately that simple and is up to the airlines to sell non-reclining seats if they so choose.  But if you buy a seat that reclines, you have that right.  That is the default position.  If someone on their own impedes this right, it is on them and they are in the wrong.  The individual is not the airline.  

If the person in front of me reclines, I am going to do so as well.  

I often recline on longer flights, but I usually let the person behind me know that I am about to recline so they know.  If someone really objected, because they were tall or more likely big and tall, I probably wouldn't recline.  I also normally recline half way only.

If the airline doesn't want seats to recline, then fine, make them so they don't recline.  If you don't want the person in front of you to recline, buy the seat in front of you or go up a class or on American pay for that extra couple of inches of leg room.  

[CTWarrior]

This story is in a nut shell what is wrong with this country.  There is no personal accountability and general selfish that pervades the American thinking.  Both people are in the wrong.  I'm 6'4" and fly a lot, I hate when people recline, but don't make a fuss because they are allowed to.  I also never recline my seat unless someone isn't sitting behind me.  Personally, I think no one should recline because to do so places your comfort above those of your fellow passenger. 

I'm a 6'5" regular flyer and agree with everything you wrote.  I never recline and do not feel ill will toward the person in front of me who does.  Reclining doesn't work for me anyway since my head is above the back of the seat and I can't slide down because my knees hit the seat in front of me.  I always get an aisle seat and sort of lean out into the aisle and just read whenever I fly coach, since I have no hope of sleeping.  Also, shorter people don't have to deal with one other thing that we tall folks do.  For me the worst part of every flight is the look of utter disgust on my seatmate's face when they realize they have to sit next to me on a long, full flight.

[brandx]

As a free market capitalist, I think I should have the right to sell the space between my knees and the forward seat to the passenger ahead of me, should I so choose. He should not have the right to invade the space for which I paid for free.

Isn't that another subject?

[Sheriff]

The world's oldest profession.

[keefe]

Isn't that another subject?

Excellent catch!

[GOO]

Isn't that another subject?

LOL

[DegenerateDish]

Recliners in front of me used to bother me, but now it's people in the rows behind me trying to cut in front of me as everyone exits the plane.

If you ask me, and say you may miss a connection, no problem. But as I'm leaving, it's not polite to think you can just go.

Boarding and de-boarding a plane is a maddening experience.

[Henry Sugar]

Talk about a first world problem...

http://www.cc.com/video-clips/1myllo/stand-up-louis-ck--the-miracle-of-flight

[ATWizJr]

I remember flying into JFK 20 years ago and had a big guy behind me that made an issue of my wanting to recline my seat.  In typical obnoxious New York fashion, he made a big deal of it when we landed and were going through customs.  thought it was gonna' get really ugly as he had to make sure his friends saw how tough he was.  blew over after he vented.

[mu03eng]

I'm a 6'5" regular flyer and agree with everything you wrote.  I never recline and do not feel ill will toward the person in front of me who does.  Reclining doesn't work for me anyway since my head is above the back of the seat and I can't slide down because my knees hit the seat in front of me.  I always get an aisle seat and sort of lean out into the aisle and just read whenever I fly coach, since I have no hope of sleeping.  Also, shorter people don't have to deal with one other thing that we tall folks do.  For me the worst part of every flight is the look of utter disgust on my seatmate's face when they realize they have to sit next to me on a long, full flight.

You sure we aren't the same person?  I have the exact same experience/habit

[mu03eng]

If the airlines sell you a reclining seat, I think you have the right to recline.  I think it is ultimately that simple and is up to the airlines to sell non-reclining seats if they so choose.  But if you buy a seat that reclines, you have that right.  That is the default position.  If someone on their own impedes this right, it is on them and they are in the wrong.  The individual is not the airline.  

If the person in front of me reclines, I am going to do so as well.  

I often recline on longer flights, but I usually let the person behind me know that I am about to recline so they know.  If someone really objected, because they were tall or more likely big and tall, I probably wouldn't recline.  I also normally recline half way only.

If the airline doesn't want seats to recline, then fine, make them so they don't recline.  If you don't want the person in front of you to recline, buy the seat in front of you or go up a class or on American pay for that extra couple of inches of leg room.  

I'm fine with someone reclining as it is their right.....just like I'm fine if someone smokes a cigarette outside next to where I'm standing.  I don't like it but it's their right.  However, I also think it is a lost pro forma to take the impact to others' into account before satisfying my personal needs.

Hence the slow death of Pax Americana.

[brandx]

Recliners in front of me used to bother me, but now it's people in the rows behind me trying to cut in front of me as everyone exits the plane.

If you ask me, and say you may miss a connection, no problem. But as I'm leaving, it's not polite to think you can just go.

Boarding and de-boarding a plane is a maddening experience.

Bingo!

[keefe]

I had to fly back to DC for meetings during an A Stan deployment. It was a last minute trip and I knew it could last more than 24 hours so I threw together some survival ration Gorp at the TOC in J Bad - mixed nuts, M&Ms, and dried fruit into one of those large Zip Lock bags.

After grabbing a hop on a Mil Air rotator into Ramstein via Qatar, Kuwait, and Incirlik I transferred to the Frankfurt commercial side for a US Flag carrier into Dulles. After 18 hours I still had not eaten anything other than the crap the airlines call food - even though they bumped me up into Biz Class since I was in a flight suit. A woman from coach passed through Business to use the head and saw that I was eating Gorp which contains nuts.

She began complaining loudly, "Oh my God! That man is eating peanuts!" I looked around to figure out what the problem was realized she was pointing at me. She was actually demanding that the flight attendants confiscate my Gorp.

The FAs got her back to her cabin then asked if I wouldn't mind surrendering my survival rations. I explained that not only had I not eaten at Morton's Steak House in about 5 months but the Safeway and Whole Foods in Jalalabad were closed before I left town so this was my only food for 28 hours. I asked where this woman was seated and it turns out she was about 40 rows aft in a different compartment. 

Given that she was half a football field away I declined to give up my food and the Flight Attendants told me that was fine with them . She continued to bitch and the FO came out of the flight station and stopped by my seat, asking if I would appreciate him telling her to shut the f uck up. Turns out he was an FA 18 driver and was as disgusted as I was with her whinging. He told her to shut her mouth or she would be arrested.

 

[ChicosBailBonds]

Fat people should have to buy two tickets....just saying.


 

[keefe]

Fat people should have to buy two tickets....just saying.


 

God bless Herb Kelleher and SWA

[rocket surgeon]

...mind if i fart?  oh, they used to have a special section for that...