Is it ok to recline your seat while flying? A new petition says no

Spilled drinks, crunched laptop screens and crushed knees.

A new video show the reasons why your seat in the plane turned from an acceptable practice in a major irritant for many airline passengers.

The video is part of an advertising campaign launched in late November by furniture company La-Z-Boy, which includes a petition imploring travelers to “Do the right thing. Don’t recline when you fly.”

The petition had more than 186,000 signatures as of Monday, a La-Z-Boy representative said. CNBC Travel.

The tongue-in-cheek campaign from the company, known for its plush oversized reclining chairs, touches on an increasingly hot issue, a stove from increase the size of passengers and decreasing seating areas.

Unlike drunkenness and hygiene problems – such as cutting your nails and taking off your shoes – which are widely despised by his fellow passengersOpinions on seat recline fall mainly into two camps: those who say they don’t, and others who argue that the recline button exists for a reason. (A third, more nuanced position considers reclining acceptable on long-haul or overnight flights).

La-Z-Boy’s campaign places the company firmly in the “never recline” camp, with the petition saying that “just because you can doesn’t mean you should.”

Another video in the campaign shows how a reclining seat can slide through the plane like falling dominoes, eventually ending up in the last row of the plane – a row that didn’t like it because it didn’t have the option to reclined and praised for being one of the few spaces on the floor where you can recline with impunityaccording to the plane.

A 2023 survey of 18 markets by research firm YouGov found that attitudes towards reclining seats vary by region, with Europeans being the least tolerant of the practice. Europe is the home of the the tallest people in the world as well.

Fewer than one in three travelers in the United Arab Emirates were bothered, however.

Overall, flyers from the United Arab Emirates were least bothered by any in-flight behavior — including personal grooming and noisy children — except one, according to the survey. Those in the United Arab Emirates considered public displays of affection to be unacceptable at higher rates than those in Europe, North America and the Asia-Pacific, the survey showed.