A travel blogger has doubled down after refusing to swap her pre-booked aisle seat on a 10-hour Turkish Airlines flight, saying a woman cried her eyes out for three hours
A travel blogger who sparked a massive row online after refusing to swap her aisle seat on a long-haul flight has doubled down – as a flight expert insisted she was well within her rights. Tomiko Harvey went viral this week after explaining how a fellow passenger allegedly sobbed for three hours when she wouldn’t swap her pre-selected aisle seat on a 10-hour Turkish Airlines journey from Istanbul, Turkey, to Washington, D.C in the US.
In her original post, Harvey summed it up bluntly: “I refused to give up my aisle seat because a lady missed her husband.”
She said the woman asked her to switch so she could sit with her husband – but the request would have put Harvey in a dreaded middle seat for the entire flight.
Harvey described the scene as “the ultimate white tears on a long haul flight from Istanbul to DC”, adding: “I said no. She cried for three hours.”
Baffled by the reaction, she wrote: “I finally asked her if someone died, because who cries for three hours?” According to Harvey, the woman replied that “nobody died. She just missed her husband and whose shoulder would she lay her head on”.
And, she claimed, the husband wasn’t exactly miles away: “Her husband was two rows up in a middle seat with his headphones on, sleeping in heavenly peace the entire flight.”
Harvey also revealed she was travelling under heartbreaking circumstances, saying she’d been “flying home from Kazakhstan on @turkishairlines because my dad passed away”.
Now, in a new Instagram Reel titled “Turkish Airlines seat swap, Part 2”, posted on Wednesday (October 21), Harvey said: “I will die on this hill, I am not switching my airline seat, and here is why.
“I was flying home from Kazakhstan after my father passed away, and I purchased an aisle seat so I would not have to keep stepping over someone to get to the bathroom.”
She added: “Turkish Airlines assigns seats. If you want to sit together, purchase your seats. And to the racists in my comments, none of it changes my answer.”
A former flight attendant consequently backed her up. In an interview with Inside Edition, Bobby Lorie said: “Just very politely decline the request. Again, it is a request. It is not an obligation.”
Harvey even claimed she had a final parting shot after landing: “When we landed, I told her, ‘Good job. Look at you surviving without your husband for 10 hours,’” she wrote.