On 15 Nov 2005 07:41:01 -0800, "Nolo Contendre"
wrote:

Nice post. Unfortunately you will be getting a lot of grief from the
'full recline' crowd. Although I personally could not agree more with
your thoughts on the unfortunate circumstances of your flight.

You will hear that anyone, anywhere, flying at anytime, has the
complete right to go commando recline into your knees. And you are
expected to live with it. The logic here being that the seats recline,
ergo, any consideration for a passenger seated behind you is of no
consequence.



When someone in front of me tries to recline onto or through my knees,
I simply lean over the seat and (politely) point out that the
resistance they are trying to force their seat past is my knees. For
most grown-ups, this is more than adequate, they usually apologize and
move their seat up off my patellas.

For those that insist on shoving their seat into my lap, I just move
about a lot..since my knees are in forced contact with their seat,
they get jostled rather a lot as I refuse to go into a coma or trance
and cease all movement just to avoid disturbing their slumber...this
usually has the desired effect of them moving their seat off my legs
by an inch or so.

Your rights end where my rights begin, I have the right to scream as
loud as i want but I do not have the right to force you to listern to
me doing so.

I always check behind me before I recline to make sure I am not about
to do the same to someone else and I religiously use the various
seating guides to try and find the seats with the most legroom.

It's not even a matter of Ameerican's getting fat..people have beng
rowing taler since the Renaisance due to improved nutrition and
health, the airlines and most public transit designers simply have
other priorities they use than providing comfort and reasonable space.

On some airlines, there is just no damn room between seats and I have
sat on some where even when the seats were fully upright, my knees
were wedged into the seat back ahead of me (I'm 6'2 and change with
not unusually long legs, so it's the airline, not me.)

Jim P.