Armrest: Who Gets It In-Flight?

An online newspaper recently surveyed readers about who has the right to the middle-seat armrests on airline flights. They provided different answers, so I asked etiquette expert Thomas Farley to settle the matter.

Farley, a speaker and TV commentator known as Mister Manners, says the middle-seat passenger should get both armrests in a three-seat configuration. Adjacent passengers in the window and aisle seats will still each have one armrest.

“Middle-seat plane journeys tend to be miserable,” Farley says. “The aisle seat gets easy access to the bathroom and a bit of extra legroom in the aisle, and the window-seat passenger gets a view and a wall on which to lean. The middle seat has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. It’s torture.”

For that reason, he says, “outer passengers should count their blessings they are not in the middle seat and not compound the discomfort of their fellow passenger by nabbing the middle-seat armrests.”

If the seating configuration on an aircraft is 2-4-2, there are two middle-seat passengers in a four-seat section. Both middle passengers, Farley says, should get their outer armrest, and they should share the middle armrest.

“If a middle-seat passenger’s armrests are being used by aisle-seat or window-seat passengers, the middle-seat passenger should graciously ask the armrest takers if they wouldn’t mind relinquishing the armrest. Should one or both be unwilling to do so, they should at least be willing to share it with you. Forfeiting both armrests in silence makes a middle-seat passenger even more uncomfortable and, typically, resentful.”

Various readers of the online newspaper Patch also said that midde-seat passengers deserve the shared armrests.

One reader in California said window- and aisle-seat passengers should offer the shared armrests to the middle-seat passenger. If there is no such offer, the reader suggested asking seatmates if they would each take turns using the shared armrests for 30 minutes.

A reader in Illinois said that no passenger automatically gets the shared armrest. Proper etiquette, the reader said, is to leave the shared armrest unused and “keep to yourself.”

Another Illinois reader said “airlines are derelict in their duty,” because they don’t give “clear guidance” on personal space on a flight.

In a two-seat row in the coach/economy cabin, it’s “a simpler and more genteel armrest experience for passengers,” Farley says. With no middle-seat passenger, the window and aisle passengers have their own outer armrest.

“Each should anticipate an unspoken 50-50 split of the armrest between them,” Farley says. “Neither passenger should feel entitled to the shared armrest, and neither should encroach up and over the armrest into the space of the other passenger.”

If one passenger has “a larger frame” than the other passenger, it’s “a considerate gesture for the smaller passenger to forego the armrest,” he says.

If a passenger is being “an armrest hog” in either the two or three-seat configuration, the aggrieved passenger “should speak up gently, requesting some real estate on the armrest, too,” Farley advises.