The past week in Atlanta brought great successes and no shortage of failures.  It was a long week, filled with stress.  The time to board the flight home brought enormous relief.  It was over.

The barely comprehensible announcement was that we had to board the Delta flight quickly or we would miss the “curfew” at LaGuardia airport and be forced to land elsewhere.  This was a scheduled flight, making the announcement inexplicable.  Did Delta schedule a flight to an airport that wouldn’t let its plane land?  Whatever, we all boarded quickly, no time to get an explanation.

Aboard, we made our way to our row to find a gentleman in my seat.  He was a gentleman, quite pleasant and cooperative.  He was also monumentally large.  When he realized that he had the window seat, he reluctantly moved inward.  He had to life up the arm rests to slide across.  When he arrived in his designated seat, he tried to lower the armrest.  He couldn’t.  Not a chance in the world was his body going to squeeze into the allotted space.

He tried, and I appreciated that.  The flight attendant announced that we had two minutes to depart or we wouldn’t make the curfew window.  There was no time for discussion, as we all wanted to land in the city and state of New York.  Cleveland would not have been helpful.

The passenger in seat A tried his best to remain in seat A.  His physique would not allow it.  He had seat A and half of seat B, and that was be sheer force of will.  Had he breathed out and relaxed, seat B would have disappeared from view.

It’s not that I’m unsympathetic about this issue. It’s not that our fellow passenger was difficult about it.  It’s that one person, having taken up more than his share, meant one person got less than his share.

Could the airlines do better?  Of course.  But in light of the fact that they refuse to accommodate the fact that their ever-decreasing seat size is in direct conflict with the ever-increasing girth of Americans, the burden shifts elsewhere.  The larger person suffers both the discomfort and humiliation of being unable to travel without suffering.  The person in seat B, who has nothing to do with the problem, suffers too.

The law often addresses relative priorities.  It’s not that one is unimportant, but that one must prevail over another or conflicting choices would produce disaster.  It’s as if we got to pick which side of the road to drive on, rather than keeping to the right.  The right isn’t necessarily better than the left, but without a determination, we would all crash.

We can all agree that airlines should provide seats capable of fitting its passengers.  We can similarly agree that large people aren’t necessarily at fault for their size, and less worthy of respectful treatment.  But the person in seat B bears no responsibility for anything other than to pay for the ticket.  Having done so, he’s entitled to seat B, unencumbered by a portion of the passenger in seat A.

Delta owes me a seat on a flight.  And to the passenger in seat A, thank you for being a gentleman, and I’m terribly sorry that you were put through this ordeal.