Aircraft reclining seats can send you into orbit

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

There are many reasons to love Michael O’Leary – the main one is that, without him, we’d still be paying a small mortgage to Aer Lingus to fly us to London and back.

But equally laudable is his apparent disdain for reclining seats on his aircraft.

Now his motivation might be to make more money by having more seats – but either way, the end result that a flight where the person in front of you doesn’t come dangerously close to sitting on your lap is always a more enjoyable experience.

Quite frankly all airline seats should be as inflexible as a Troika delegation looking at Ireland’s bank debt – there should be more movement in fox after taxidermy and more give in the DUP on the question of a United Ireland.

Ryanair’s reasoning for banning the recliners was that the airline estimated that it had to replace around 40 reclining seats on each of its planes each year due to breakage.

In other words, some jack ass who thinks he should be able to turn his seat into a bed irrespective of the intrusion into the space of the poor unfortunate behind him.

I had full interaction with one of these jokers, returning from our summer holiday. Clearly he’d abandoned all sleep during his week away because no sooner had he arrived in his seat than he opted for horizontal approach to flying, donning eye shades and ear plugs for good measure.

That necessitated a gentle shove from the air hostess to get him into the upright position, at least until the plane was off the ground and she had gone through the complex rigmarole of showing us how to fasten a seat belt.

But five minutes later he was flat out again and I was soon experiencing the joys of not having to lift my hand to drink my coffee – because it was effectively locked into positive within inches of my face.

Even the not-so-gentle digging of knees into his back failed to bother our sleeping friend, so in the end it was easier to give up and trying and sit at a slant which might otherwise have suggested I’d been the victim of a serious accident.

And the truth is that despite the fact I never put my own seat back in deference to whoever is sitting behind me, the person in front pushes back on every single flight.

Worse still is the odd occasion when you arrive to a half-empty plane – now brimming with confidence that you’ll have you own space – when someone jumps into the empty seats in front of you…..and puts all three seat backs in full reclining position!

The fact that there’s actually no benefit in this seems lost on them; it’s just like another expansion of your kingdom in the clouds, like taking free sweets just because you can.

The downside is that the other person can no longer open a laptop, read a newspaper, balance their food tray or avoid deep vein thrombosis by stretching their legs.

For  more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.