Sweet Seat Swap

There are lots of horror stories about entitled people wanting to swap seats on a plane. This is not one of those stories.

When Mark and I fly, I always try to book seats together. I avoid basic fares, so we can bring a carry-on and choose seats next to each other. Most of the time this works according to plan. There have been a few times when my timing has been off and I’ve discovered that I can’t get 2 seats together, or even 2 seats across the aisle from one another. Our return flight from Iceland happened to be one such flight.

When this happens, I try to increase our odds of getting to sit together. I will always book seats in the same class. I will never ask someone to swap a seat to a lower class. I will never ask someone to swap an aisle or window seat for a middle seat. In other words, I will only ask someone to swap a seat with a comparable seat. I might even offer up my window or aisle for a middle seat. Thankfully, that has never been an option so far.

On our last day in Iceland, I pulled Mark into a grocery store to scan the array of Icelandic chocolate bars. Mark and I are not big chocolate connoisseurs, so he was puzzled.

“Why are you looking at chocolate?”

“Bribable material.”

“Huh?”

I reminded Mark that we did not have seats together on the return flight, and I wanted to have a little something to offer up to our seatmates.

As our boarding group was called, I pulled the chocolate bars out of my backpack and walked onto the plane. Luckily, our seatmates were already sitting in their assigned seats when I asked, “Is either one of you willing to swap seats with one of us for some chocolate?”

A nice lady smiled widely, stood up and said, “You speak my language.”

Mark waited until we had stored our carry-ons and sat down next to each other. Then he laughed, shook his head, and started talking about my bribable material.