Some viewers were at hand with some drastic advice to keep passengers off of their blinds:
“I’m not proud of this moment, but this has happened to me before. I had to sneeze and I let it rip all over her hand. It worked,” wrote one.
Others said they carry a blanket or coat to barricade the gap between seats for just such an occasion.
While the comments section was full of suggestions to solve the tussle over the window, nobody was the wiser as to whose window was whose.
Although most viewers sided with Eric over the “audacious” woman, it appeared that both rows shared a portion of the misaligned window.
“I get so confused when the window is 50/50 between seats. Who owns it?” asked one comment.
According to One Mile at a Time writer Ben Schlappig, there’s a simple solution to the window impasse: Airplane Window Shade Etiquette.
“While I absolutely think the person in the window seat should control the window shades, I also think it’s important to be considerate of others,” he says.
On long haul or early flights, light in the cabin can be extremely unpleasant for passengers. Its why cabin crew will often ask passengers to close their shades when flying.
According to Schlappig, the unwritten rules of airline etiquette are that the passenger who wishes for the shade to be closed has preference over those who want to take in the views.
The windowless window: how to avoid it
As budget and low-cost carriers have attempted to fit even more rows of seats into a cabin its a fact that sometimes there’s not a window on every aisle.
The most common passenger aircraft, the A320, is designed for 140 to 170 passengers, but has a maximum capacity of up to 180 travellers. Or 186 in the case of Easyjet’s no WC configuration.
Squeezing in an extra row of passengers can mean that rows and windows are misaligned, and not everyone gets a view.
This can lead to seat configurations where either rows are between portholes - causing confusion as to whose window is whose - or the phenomenon of the ‘windowless window’.
Ryanair’s fleet of 737-800s are regular offenders, with the infamously “cursed” row 11 missing a window entirely.
After paying for seat allocation next for a seat with a view - many passengers have been rightly miffed to discover nothing but opaque cabin plastic next to their seat.
Exact seat and window positioning will vary by airline but most configurations will have rows with reduced window. For exact maps website SeatGuru is a useful resource for seat layout and passenger reviews.
If you’re the sort of passenger who loves views of clouds, here’s your guide to avoiding the ‘windowless window’ seat:
Boeing B737
Row 11 and 12 are the seats to avoid if you plan to take pictures of wingtips. In Boeing narrow-body planes there tends to be a section midway in the cabin that can lead to an unsightly misalignment of window to plane row.
Airbus A320
With Airbus’ most popular planes it is at the back of the cabin, row 31, that is most likely to be missing a window.
Airbus A380
The jumbo ‘queen of the skies’ is not without its window problems. Emirates’ rows 41 and 21, at the front of the economy cabin, are a no-window experience.
