A video on TikTok has gone viral of a woman getting “comfortable” on what appears to be a Southwest Airlines flight with her own footrest. Are portable footrests, bare feet, and a massive inflatable travel pillow off-limits or reasonable onboard a longer flight in economy class?
Woman Travels In Comfort On Southwest Airlines With Portable Footrest And Massive Pillow
In a video entitled, Come prepared when you travel on long flights. Makes a difference! a woman displays her bare feet rocking gently in a portable foot rest that she attached to her tray table. She then proceeds to inflate a massive travel pillow which she leans on (sans masks) to take a nap.
@wendygonewild Come prepared when you travel on long flights. Makes a difference! #LinkBudsNeverOff #OREOBdayStack #WendyKarina075 #foryoupage❤️❤️ #flights #plane
That’s a lot of pressure on the tray table!
Looking at the comments, it seems that most people were not in favor of her travel style:
- “Tell me you don’t fly often without telling me. Bet she takes the skymall magazine”
- “Um no Karen. Put your shoes on this is not your house”
- “I would pay extra not to be next to her”
- “Person in front of you probably loves the constant movement on the back of their chair. SMH”
- “Should be a war crime for taking your shoes off on public transport”
Interested in the portable foot rest? It’s only $10.99 on Amazon (yea, it’s an affiliate link). The pillow is $21.99 and probably better than spending about that much for those neck pillows at Relay or Hudson News when you don’t come prepared.
I don’t begrudge the woman for getting comfortable. While I am not at all a barefoot person (unlike my wife and kids, the only time I take my socks off is when I shower), I’m less troubled by this because she’s not actually touching furniture with her bare feet. However, I have to imagine that using the tray table and rocking her feet like a swing or hammock must have disturbed her neighbor sitting in front of her. That’s not cool.
CONCLUSION
A video has gone viral of a woman getting comfortable on a Southwest Airlines flight. I don’t begrudge anyone for wanting to get comfortable when seated in economy class, but this is probably taking it a little far…
(H/T: C Boarding Group)
Are you ever getting out of Twitter jail?
I’ve appealed six times and have yet to receive a response. I’m getting very annoyed.
Wow, and its “potable” as well? Handy! 🙂
Ugh.
Yuck. I’d pay good money to steer clear of Karen too.
Are only slurs against women to be tolerated?
Or are all open season in this blog
“Tell me you don’t fly often without telling me. Bet she takes the skymall magazine”
SELF OWN!!!
As an aircraft mechanic this is a bad idea, Tray tables are not designed to hold this amount of weight. If these devices are allowed they will break the structure of the tray table assembly and render the seat inop. When the seat is inop no one can use the seat for revenue.
Agreed. Thanks for your comment.
It’s enough to make me want to fly in First Class … not that I ever could afford to, but still.
As someone who maintains Southwests’ airplanes, I can tell you the tray tables are not designed to support that weight. This will ultimately lead to degraded/damaged tray tables.
My wife used a foot sling, ONCE, on a trans-Atlantic flight.
She discovered, by being berated by the passenger in front of her, that the constant motion does in fact impact the seated person.
I would wait till she got all comfy and then tell her I had to use the bathroom. Don’t even get me started on what would happen if she was behind me.
Damage the tray table and the next passenger won’t have one. Damage it bad enough it’s possible the seat it’s attached too gets locked out and can’t be used. At an extreme possibility, the whole row of seats could be deemed unsafe and not to be sold. So, I’d bill her for stress damage on the tray table arms since there’s picture proof of at least 50 plus pounds of moving stress on the assembly.
As a petite person I can sit with my back against the back of the seat with my feet dangling until numb, or with my feet on the floor until my back cries. I’ve considered this but never barefooted.
Bare feet on a plane? Gross. You know you’re going to be taking your shoes off at the TSA line, so wearing anything without socks is also gross.
This person should not be allowed on a plane.
This woman is obnoxious. Put her, and her kind, on the list of people I’ve never met yet I strongly dislike. Southwest doesn’t have routes long enough, in my opinion, to merit even considering this type of behavior, Hawaii routes included. Just another attention seeking TikTok toad.
Aside from any discussion about whether this is appropriate or not, this is against Southwest policy which states very clearly
“Cabin components, furnishings, and fixtures may not be altered or operated in any manner inconsistent with their original design and performance specifications. Personal devices (e.g., Knee Defenders, infant slings) may not be attached to any part of the aircraft.” But, as we’ve seen, people have been more than willing to literally physically attack flight attendants over federal rules, so it’s likely that the FAs on this flight didn’t want to have unplanned oral surgery for asking this beast to act decent and follow rules.
https://www.southwest.com/html/customer-service/inflight-experience/
If the plane seats were comfortable enough in the first place she wouldn’t need all of that. Doesn’t make sense that all seats on a plane are not lie flat.