Put that seat all the way back

The skies are anything but friendly today. Last month, the Federal Aviation Administration doubled fines for refusing to mask up. But bad behavior aloft is nothing new. Turbulence arises because the airlines keep squeezing us closer together.

Last year, Wendi Williams was on a flight from New Orleans to Charlotte and reclined her seat. The man behind was in the last row, so he could not recline. Instead, he tapped the back of Williams’s seat repeatedly, like an irritating metronome. Her video of this high-altitude fracas quickly went viral, likely because most of us have had frustrating experiences with those in front or behind us on flights. The most recent such incident was a fistfight over a reclining seat on another New Orleans flight, this time to Austin.

When we ask audiences who’s the jerk, who’s in the right, the audience always splits 50⁄50 — right to recline versus right to knee defense. And everyone looks at each other with incredulity. How can anyone possibly disagree?

The answer lies in our ownership stories: Whose wedge of space is it? In our recent book, we show that everyone uses just a handful of simple stories to claim everything in the world, including that wedge.

Williams’s view is simple: Her armrest button reclines her seat, so the space belongs to her. Attachment is the most important ownership principle you’ve never heard of. It’s why landowners in Texas can extract underground oil and why homeowners sometimes shotgun-blast drones hovering above their backyards. Attachment translates two-dimensional boarding passes and land deeds into three-dimensional control of valuable resources.

But attachment is not our only ownership story. At takeoff, all seats are in the “full, upright, and locked position.” At that moment, the passenger behind Williams controlled the space in front of him. He had possession. That’s nine-tenths of the law: It’s mine because I’m holding onto it. Possession means I get to defend my knees and my workspace.

When conflicts over ownership arise, each side picks the story that gives it the moral high ground; each side wants ownership bent toward its view. But there is no natural, correct answer. Ownership is always up for grabs.

The airlines know this. And they take advantage of our competing stories.

Rage around reclining is relatively new. That’s because, until recently, airline seats had greater pitch, or space, between seats, both for reclining and for lowering the tray table. No one thought to ask who controlled the space because it didn’t much matter. But airlines have been shrinking the pitch in economy class, down from 35 inches to just 28 inches on some planes today.

There’s a lot at stake for the airlines: One inch of pitch saved per row can add up to six extra seats per flight to sell. The stakes are high for passengers as well: Tray tables have become precious computer stands. And in the COVID-19 era, each inch of personal space can feel like a life-or-death matter.

So, we get angry at each other. But why aren’t we angrier at the airlines?

It turns out we don’t really own the wedges of reclining space. The airlines do. And they are selling the same wedge twice, to me for reclining and to you for tray table use, even though we can’t both really recline and use the tray table at the same time.

Can they do that? Yes. The FAA leaves seat design up to the airlines. In turn, the airlines use a secret weapon to sell the same space twice on every flight. The weapon is strategic ambiguity. Most airlines do have a rule — the passenger with the button can lean back. But they keep it quiet. Flight attendants don’t announce it.

Ambiguity works to the airlines’ advantage. When ownership is unclear, and it’s unclear far more often than you might imagine, most people fall back on politeness and good manners. For decades, airlines have counted on high-altitude etiquette to defuse conflict. We negotiate among ourselves as we nudge elbows over shared armrests and jostle for overhead bins.

But now, those unspoken rules are breaking down. Everyone ends up looking unreasonable.

So what’s to be done? For starters, here’s news you can use: One study suggests about three-quarters of passengers will agree not to recline if the person behind offers to buy them a drink or snack.

But this should be the airlines’ problem to fix, not our private dilemma. In 2018, the bipartisan FAA reauthorization bill mandated the agency to set regulations for minimum distance between seats within a year. The deadline passed two years ago. More space means we can recline and use the tray tables, but we remain pinned in our seats. It’s time for the FAA to act.

Heller, a professor at Columbia Law School, and Salzman, a professor at the UCLA School of Law, are coauthors of ”Mine!: How the Hidden Rules of Ownership Control Our Lives.”