Diverted Flights due to Fights over Reclining Seats

[MidnightSensi2]

You'll notice all these articles are fairly current. The period my friend referenced was 50 years ago. My travels taught me that our beliefs and system of govt may not be the most effective for every culture, and every system has its good & bad points.

Iran's opium use in the 50s was between 8-9% of the population - an absolute mess. Iran got a bum deal: they're the start of the heroin trail.

Iran has lost over 3,000 soldiers fighting a drug smuggling war since the late 70s when the first trusted records appear, it's estimated before then. The public executions your co-worker was talking about still happen, most of them drug smugglers (over 80%) or rapists, not users.

Iran has taken a lot of steps in treatment, including clinics, detox units and harm reduction methods like Subutex.

I cannot confirm wether or not the executions are a drug deterrent, as they have a violent justice system overall. Most experts agree its a mixture of high availability and poor social conditions.

 

[Irvrobinson]

The easiest way to show lack of respect for another passenger is to lean your seat back. It makes me angry to hear that "no one has the right to prevent another from leaning their seat back". In my opinion, no one has the right to impinge on the limited seating space of the person behind them.

I wish airlines got the message and made their seats so leaning that far back was not possible. Right now they seem to be happy with allowing passengers to blame each other, when the real blame should be on the airlines.

I completely agree. The airlines can disable the recline function; they already do so on at least two rows of every single-aisle plane without telling anyone. (The row before the first emergency exit row, and generally the last row in the plane.)

But lots of people still deserve public shaming for their bad behavior on airplanes. Some deserve public flogging. In a couple of instances recently I would have quickly volunteered to do the lashing myself.

 

[Adam]

I don't think it's disrespectful to lean your chair back. I think it's polite to look back and check if you're about to cause a problem for the person, though. If I look back and the person is asleep and up against their chair, I've got no problem slowly leaning back. I think that I've even asked before, but I can't remember for sure. Contributing to my mentality is that I'm a fairly small guy, so I don't get inconvenienced if the person in front of me leans back.

 

[Swerd]

I don't think it's disrespectful to lean your chair back.

I'm 6'1" – not the tallest and not the shortest guy on the plane. In most coach airline seats, if I sit straight upright (no slouching at all) my knees still hit the seat back in front of me, and that's if I spread my knees apart. And that's with the seat in front of me straight up.

If some one decides to lean his seat back, there's even less leg room, and their seat back is in my face. That's intolerable. People who decide they don't have enough seat room, and lean their seat back, rob space from the people behind them. That's beyond disrespectful – it's downright selfish.

It's nice to imagine someone asking if it was OK to lean their seat back, but I've never witnessed it. I've witnessed the opposite plenty.

Contributing to my mentality is that I'm a fairly small guy, so I don't get inconvenienced if the person in front of me leans back.

And that's the reason for the different opinions. Because I'm not a fairly small guy, I think the Knee Defender is a great idea.

They're not unlike those pocket sized cell phone jammers that used to be available. If you're trapped in a waiting room with a loud and thoughtless cell phone yakker, just reach in your pocket and hit the button. They weren't technically legal, but used with some restraint, they were effective at removing or silencing a nuisance.