How To: Prevent Airplane Seats From Reclining

By on Sep 3, 2008 · 3 Comments 

Picture this: you’re sitting in coach on a discount airline (you know us bloggers are starving artists) when you decide to pull out your laptop to get some work done only to have the person in front of you decide to recline their seat and smash your screen into your hands. If this has ever happened to you then Evan from F.A.T. has figured our this hack to keep the person in front of you from doing just that.

By placing a big zip tie between two tray table supports you can prevent the seats from reclining. The only downside I can see to this is if both people recline their seats at the same time, that would cause some issues. What you should really be worried about is what the TSA will say to you when you try to bring big zip ties onto the plane with you.

Frank's the editor in chief of tech.nocr.at. He can be found surfing the internet and playing with gadgets. Follow him on twitter @franklinhares

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  • Andy Freeman

    Congrats – you’ve probably made the situation worse.

    They’ll look over their seat, see what you’ve done, and escalate the situation. You’ve lost the opportunity to say “how about you only recline half-way?”. All that you’ve done with your “trick” is put the airline staff on their side by screaming “I’m a self-centered bastard who doesn’t care about anyone else.”

    It’s usually better to talk to the other person before implementing a technical “fix”.

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  • http://tjic.com TJIC

    What a real jack-ass, anti-social move!

    With very minor exceptions, everyone on a plane has someone in front of them potentially leaning back, but they can restore their amount of personal space by, in turn, leaning back.

    …except for the poor SOB who’s sitting in front of any jerk who uses this technique to – effectively – steal space from someone.

    If I was sitting on a plane flight after a long day and wanted to recline my seat – a seat with reclining abilities that I paid good money for – and some d_____ b__ had done this, I’d be pretty damned irate.

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  • bob

    I’m 6’3″ and my legs don’t fit in coach. People don’t give a shit when they recline and smash my knees… Even when I say politely something to them about it. Fuck you two cry babies, this shit is a fantastic idea.

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