<p>I usually fly internationally, so I am not that familiar with US domestic flights. Generally, the stewardesses make everyone bring their seat upright for the meal service. After the trays are cleared, it is 100% your right to recline the seat as much as you want. If the seat in front of me is reclined, why on earth would I accede to a request not to recline mine? (I will anyway if the person behind is in physical pain, but then I also ask the crew to find a better solution).</p>
<p>If you check your particular flight on seat guru dot com, you can see which seats don’t recline. Typically, airlines charge you more for the roomier rows, but they don’t give you a discount if you’re in a non-reclining seat or any other kind of bad seat. The rows that back up to the exit rows don’t recline for safety purposes. I wouldn’t want to be stuck there for a really long flight.</p>
<p>Texting-yes. Voice calls-please no. </p>
<p>Because of back problems, I always recline but just a tad, not all the way back.</p>
<p>People can use wifi and data in flight as they have been doing for what now seems ages (we have subscribed to Alaska Gogo service on and off for at least 4 years now). There is really no need to enable voice calling. A person with a laptop (or any other wifi device), Skype or Google or Lync, and an Internet connection can accomplish everything what a voice call does. The push is clearly from the big 3 so they can nickel and dime their customers (“flight roaming” charges).</p>
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<p>Assuming all are speaking in a normal conversational voice and not screaming, what’s the difference between Joe behind you calling someone on the cell, and Joe and Mary seatmates behind you who strike up a conversation? After all, Joe and Mary’s in-person conversation might be “inane” too. I agree it seems harder to tune out when you hear just one side vs a steady hum of two people, but let’s not pretend cell phone conversations are any more or less inane than in-person conversations.</p>
<p>Joe on the cell talks louder. Also half conversations are more distracting and irritating than entire conversations.
[Why</a> Overheard Cell Phone Conversations Are So Annoying | TIME.com](<a href=“http://healthland.time.com/2013/03/14/why-overheard-cell-phone-conversations-are-so-annoying/]Why”>Why Overheard Cell Phone Conversations Are So Annoying | TIME.com)</p>
<p>Yes, I agree there should be no voice calls. Only texting should be allowed as long as the person wears a headphone or her sound alerts are off. Vibrate is ok. I agree with CF that person on a cell phone talks louder. Have you tried talking with someone on a cell in hushed tones? You can’t. Hello, can you hear me? Can you hear me now?</p>
<p>I have no problem with people reclining a couple of inches. I do the same thing and put it back up when meals and drinks are served. For people who truly feel their personal space is encroached upon by recliners, perhaps you can wear a pregnancy pillow so the passenger in front of you will think twice before reclining at the max position. This isn’t going to work for males though.</p>
<p>I think it will be a non-issue, but I think it’s terrific that they announced this so everyone has something new to ***** about! </p>
<p>I used the old Airphones quite a bit ($$$$) because I had a job that frequently required it. It was definitely obnoxious and I kept the calls VERY short.</p>
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<p>From what I’ve seen that wouldn’t work for women very often either. Most of the time the seat recliners apparently do not know and/or do not care who is sitting behind them or what their physical condition might be. By golly they paid for that ticket and that seat is going to come slamming back whenever they darn well feel like it. And it’s entirely up to the person sitting behind to just deal with it.</p>
<p>Well, and really, you’re going to schlep a pregnancy pillow? Give me a break!</p>
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<p>Are you all bothered by the voice calls that people make during the 15-20 minutes when people are getting settled on the plane (before they are told to turn the phone off), or when the plane has landed but it’s not yet at the gate? Assuming normal voices and prompt shutting-off when instructed, of course.</p>
<p>Realistically speaking, when we’re on a plane and a baby is screaming the entire time at a red-eye flight or the passenger in front of you reclines more than a couple of inches than we are comfortable with or you get squished in the middle by huge passengers, we just keep quiet and bite our tongues. I think the only time I would speak up is if a kid keeps kicking the back of my seat or I spied a loose snake in the plane.</p>
<p>I can live with the loose snake, it’s the out of control kids and oblivious parents that put me over the edge!</p>
<p>The “difficult to sleep” aspect of reclining, I think, isn’t really a suitable excuse for reclining all the way back on my flights. Apart from the one from Seattle, every flight I’ve ever been on is two hours in the middle of the day. If it were a red eye or international flight where everybody obviously needs to sleep, I’d be less irritated. But I think I paid to use my tray table just as much as the person in front of me paid to recline, and reclining my seat doesn’t change the angle of the table. If the unopened table is literally DIGGING into my knees, reclining myself is not going to help and will only serve to irritate the person behind me-- which I don’t do.</p>
<p>The flights I take are generally 5-12 hours long, so it is a good idea to be as comfortable as possible and settle in because you are generally going to sit there for an extended period of time. In shorter flights of 2 hours or less, I tend not to care so much, but 5-6 or more hours can really be LONG if the folks around are rude and unpleasant. I’ve mostly been quite fortunate and had mostly pleasant experiences in my travels. </p>
<p>Flying is one time where is helpful to be shorter and slimmer. I’m sure things are much more uncomfortable for folks who are taller and heavier–when they ooze over the seats into the seats beside them, it makes the row uncomfortable too. </p>
<p>If folks just speak in normal voices, I can’t imagine being allowed to speak on planes will be too much of a problem, especially if they make the rate to do so extremely high. The few minutes before people are told to shut off their electronics and after the plane touches down has never bothered me much to date.</p>
<p>I do put down my seat (after looking behind me to ensure the person’s laptop isn’t about to go crunch), but I realized as I was thinking through this that I’m almost always in Economy Plus where there’s some room to do so. I might think twice if I were in Economy, esp on a crowded flight.</p>
<p>With seats as close as they are these days, it is REALLY nice to be in economy plus rather than “regular economy.” In economy plus, if you drop something on the floor, you can actually see it and reach down and pick it up instead of waiting until the flight has ended and or the other people in the row get up to go to the bathroom or something. Feel SO grateful that we have been flying a lot of economy plus, which REALLY is a boon for these long flights of 5-12 hours.</p>
<p>I will just note that we were on Amtrak yesterday and were annoyed both by a recliner AND cell-phone yakkers. The yakkers stopped before we felt we had to move to the quiet car–it was a pretty full train, so there probably weren’t seats there anyway. The recliner was within his rights-but he kept his seat fully reclined whether he was eating, reading, talking on the phone, or sleeping. I would just never do that.</p>
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<p>The problem is that most people DON’T speak in normal voices when they are talking on cells. They speak loudly. Right before takeoff or right after takeoff is fine because you know it is very short lived. But having to listen to that all during the flight would be a different story. If people can communicate via text or computer, that really should satisfy them. But of course, the worst of them won’t be satisfied with that because they have never cared if they are disturbing others as long as they are getting theirs.</p>
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<p>That is not the recliner’s problem.</p>