Woman praised after refusing to switch plane seats with teenage boy

A dilemma travellers face is whether they should switch seats with another passenger on a plane so they can be near their parents.

Usually the person looking for a switch is quite young, which leads to the question – how old is too old to make a switcheroo.

A debate about this exact situation has erupted on social media after a plane passenger claims she was asked by the woman sat next to her to swap her window seat so her son could have it.

However, the son in question wasn’t a 10-year-old, he was a ‘6-foot-5 man’ apparently.

Surya Garg shared her video on TikTok in January, which has since attracted 457,000 views, and she claims she was asked to by a woman who was in the middle seat next to her if her son could have Surya’s window seat.

“I’m like, ‘Who’s your son?’” she recalled from her conversation with the other passenger. “And she points to this, like, 6-foot-5 man!”

Surya believes the woman’s son was ‘a minimum of 16 or 17 years old’ and looked like an adult.

He apparently spent time ‘talking on the phone to his girlfriend the entire time we were boarding’.

“This was not, like, her ‘child'," Garg recalled, in shock. “This was, like, her kid but, like, he’s an adult.”

@surya_garg/TikTok

Surya admitted she ‘didn’t know what to do’ as she had already settled into her seat and didn’t want to move to where the son was sitting – a middle seat in a row further back.

After deciding to remain in her seat, she reflected: “I don’t want to look like an a-hole, but I don’t think I’m an a-hole in this situation.

“I said, ‘Look, I’m sorry, no. I paid extra for this seat',” she recalled.

But the mum was not impressed and after refusing to switch seats, the woman hurled swear words under her breath throughout the flight.

“This woman makes the nastiest face at me I’ve ever experienced, sits down next to me in the middle seat that, like, she was assigned to.

"Her son goes back to the middle seat that he’s assigned to in the back, and then — I kid you not — under her breath for, like, the entirety of the flight."

Rocklights / Alamy Stock Photo

TikTok users were mostly on Surya’s side, with one person writing: “The way she reacted is precisely why you should not give up your seat. Good job for sticking up for yourself.”

While someone else joked: “That kid was def thrilled u said no and he didn’t have to sit next to her.”

A mum in the comments wrote: “No you weren’t [in the wrong]. I’m a mom. I have 11 & 14 [year old] daughters. When we flight I pay extra for us to sit together. Every time. [Because] it’s my responsibility to make.

And someone else quipped: “No I’m glad u said no.”

“I will ONLY ever switch for an upgrade (closer to the front, middle to window), etc.”