A man was left stunned when a woman requested to swap seats with him on a plane so she could ‘sit by her daughter’. After declining the request, he was relieved upon realising her true intentions.
While there’s no obligation to exchange your pre-booked plane seat with someone who asks, we might sometimes do it out of kindness. However, one man stood his ground and refused to relinquish his chosen seat on a recent flight – and he was glad he did after discovering the reason behind the plot.
Mark Roberts took to TikTok recently to caution others after a woman asked him to switch seats, claiming she wanted to sit closer to her daughter – but he suspects she had an entirely different motive. “If someone asks you to switch seats with them on a commercial flight be cautious, because they don’t always have the best intentions,” warned the content creator.
After refusing to swap seats with a woman on a recent flight, Mark is “so glad” he declined in hindsight. Describing the situation, Mark said he was among the first to board the flight, and was the “only one” in his row.
He added: “As soon as I sit down this random lady taps me on the shoulder and she’s just like ‘my seat is right here’, pointing to the seat next to me, ‘but my daughter is a couple of aisles up, would you mind switching with her so we can sit next to each other?’.”
Mark detailed that alarm bells began to ring as he was seated in Premium Economy, and the only passengers in front of him were in First Class – implying the daughter was there too. The content creator found it odd that the woman hadn’t shared this detail initially, such as offering: “Do you want my First Class seat?”
When Mark requested to see the ticket, the woman claimed her daughter had it, describing her as an eight-year-old with “brown hair and pig tails”. Mark responded by saying: “I’d be more than happy to switch with you if you just show me that ticket.”
Suddenly, Mark described the woman becoming “super lethargic”, casually placing her bag into the overhead bin before collapsing into the seat next to him, lamenting: “Being a mother is so hard, I’ve been walking around all day, I’m sorry, I’m just so tired.”
Eventually, she informed him her daughter was in seat 7A if he wished to swap seats, but Mark felt she had simply plucked the number from thin air, so he politely declined, preferring to remain in his seat. “After I said that she became visibly upset and was like, ‘you wouldn’t understand what it takes to be a mother’.”
However, the situation took a turn when an unexpected passenger approached the woman, tapped her on the shoulder and claimed that she was occupying his seat – he even presented his ticket as evidence. The woman’s reaction was one of visible annoyance as she hastily gathered her belongings from the overhead compartment and made her way towards the rear of the aircraft.
Mark then realised the woman’s actual seat was located at the far end of the plane. This left him pondering whether if he had vacated his seat, would she have simply ‘claimed’ it and refused to relinquish it?
In the comments section, users speculated about what might have transpired. One individual suggested: “She refuses to give the seat back ‘because you gave it to her’ and then you get sat in the back of the plane so they stay on schedule.”
Another echoed this sentiment, stating: “I assume she would’ve just taken it and refused to give it back.”
Despite the incident, Mark cautioned against assuming that every request to switch seats is a scam, noting “because I feel there are genuine families that just want to sit together”.