Drinks are spilled, laptop screens creak, and knees hurt.
one new videos Shows why reclining seats on airplanes went from acceptable practice to a headache for many airline passengers.
The video is part of an advertising campaign launched by furniture company La-Z-Boy in late November, which includes petition Passengers are implored to “do the upright thing. Don’t lean when flying.”
A representative for La-Z-Boy told CNBC Travel that the petition had more than 186,000 signatures as of Monday.
The tongue-in-cheek campaign from the company, known for its luxurious oversized recliners, touches on an increasingly topical issue fueled by rising passenger numbers and shrinking seat spacing.
Unlike other drinking and hygiene issues, such as cutting nails and taking off shoes, which are widely disdained by passengers, opinions on seat recline fall largely into two camps: those who say don’t do it, and others who believe a recline button exists for some reason. (A third, more subtle position considers leaning acceptable on long-haul or night flights.)
La-Z-Boy’s campaign puts the company firmly in the “never tilt” camp, with the petition stating that “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.”
Another video from the event shows how a reclining seat ripples through the plane like falling dominoes, ending up in the last row of the plane – a row that’s both disliked for its lack of reclining options , and was praised for being one of them. There’s almost no place on a plane where you can lie down without feardepending on the aircraft.
A 2023 survey of 18 markets by research firm YouGov found that attitudes towards seat reclining vary by region, with Europeans showing the lowest tolerance for the practice. Europe is tallest man in the world also.
However, in the United Arab Emirates, less than a third of tourists are bothered by this.
The survey showed that, overall, passengers from the UAE were less concerned about a variety of behaviors on flights, including personal grooming and noisy children, with one exception. The survey shows that respondents from the UAE believe that public expressions of love are unacceptable, at a higher rate than those from Europe, North America and the Asia-Pacific region.
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