Weird behaviour on planes

[opusman]

On a recent BA flight from LGW-PMI. I was in 2C in BA's "business class" (lol). Chap in front in 1C was behaving quite oddly pretty much from takeoff. Kept sort of bouncing up and down in his seat every few minutes. I assumed he had some sort of condition and thought no more about it.

After take-off chummy decided having row 1 wasn't enough and he needed to recline to be truly comfortable on the long 2 hour flight. Now I have very long thigh bones, my knees touch the back of the seat in front on BA even when not reclined. I tried to adjust my position as best I could and kept reading my book. 1C keeps on with his regular bouncing thing every few minutes.

Towards the end of the flight my partner had to go to the loo, so I got up to let her out. When sitting back down my knees dug right into the back of the seat. Well this triggered the biggest jump yet from 1C. It was kind of like he'd sat down on a nail. He bounced up a good 6 inches off the seat and did a kind of half turn to the left, before settling back down again.

I was intrigued. Was it not some sort of involuntary spasm after all, but in fact a weird passive-agressive response to the indignity of having someones knees nudge the back of his seat? I decided to test the theory, and indeed discovered I could get him to bounce on demand. I have to say the last 30 minutes or so of the flight were a lot more entertaining, as I had chummy bouncing and spinning every 30 seconds or so at times. Luckily being English he was unable to bring himself to actually say anything to me, so his pass-ag bouncing was as far as it went until I finally got bored and decided to let him enjoy the landing in relative peace.

Really could not understand his issue. Does he not realise how much space there is between the rows? Does he really think he's reclining his seat into an empty void behind him? Very very odd.

 

[lovestotravel]

Drugs are bad

 

[Denali]

By the body language, it could have been as simple as someone who is neurodivergent and is doing their best to deal with the flight/situation. Worked with a man that would say he could feel the aircon on his skin and it felt different from outside air and it wasnt pleasant for him so he wore a jumper even in summer. Edit, he also had an issue with certain lights and would wear ear plugs in the office because of them

 

[Forg]

It wasn’t weird … just bogan angry-man stuff.
Qantaslink 717’s didn’t have the bestest pitch, but this bint had to recline her seat into my face on the mid-afternoon HBA-SYD flight.
This made it basically impossible for me to get out of the seat without jostling hers … now unfortunately we’d been booked on the midday flight, this meant (obviously) we’d had to kill a couple of hours in HBA because (obviously) the midday flight was cancelled. This admittedly involved a few pints of Coke No Sugar (I mention “No Sugar” ‘cos it triggers the bladder somewhat more effectively) which hadn’t managed to urgently push their way put before we got onboard; meaning I had to go twice.
Now I admit I didn’t AT ALL feel bad about it, because she was a Recliner & hence if she fell out a door the gene-pool would’ve been embiggened.

I was not, however, prepared for her balding 50-ish beetroot-faced little partner (think sunburned George Costanza in a Bali singlet) to start screaming at me after getting back from the toilet the second time. What’s worse is that due to embarrassment (was sure the entire flight was staring at me as he screamed & ranted) I uncontrollably started smiling, which made him even worse. You just know he drives a Dodge Ram or Chev Silverado … one of those people. I can’t actually remember what he even said, just that he was very angry about me daring to jostle his Recliner bint.

The FA calmed him down, and offered he & his bint another seat, which he didn’t want so I very happily took it just to get away from them! Was pretty wary after getting off the ‘plane though, he’d behaved like someone who’d want to punch-on outside.