This story really struck a chord with me. On the very slim chance that anyone who doesn't know me is reading this, I'm 5'11" with most of my height concentrated in my legs. Legroom is always an issue for me on flights. Personally, I seldom recline my seat because I don't want the person behind me to feel as violently cranky as I do from being practically pinned in their seat.
Also, I didn't even know about this Knee Defender gadget! I certainly could have used one on the (completely miserable) Washington to Istanbul leg of our trip to Kazakhstan. I notice from reading some of the coverage that the inventor of this device is even taller than I am. I applaud his ingenuity--obviously, the airlines don't care about our plight, so someone had to do something. In case it's not obvious, for this particular news story, I am much more sympathetic to the passenger who was using Knee Defender than I am to the other passenger who threw water in his face. But in the end, I really blame the airlines. I truly believe that if they are going to pack us all in like sardines, then they should install non-reclining seats. I think everyone who has been forced into any situation with random strangers knows that we cannot depend on people just using common courtesy.
Any thoughts? How can we collectively solve the problem of legroom vs. reclining?
Agreed - let's just not have any of the seats recline! We flew Wizz Air recently and their seats don't recline. I confess it was a relief to know that nobody was going to invade my personal space suddenly. The small amount of "comfort" it gives one person to recline is not worth the DIScomfort it causes for the person behind.
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