Boss who refused to move seat on flight to let mum sit with children is praised

A CEO has been praised online for refusing to give up her aeroplane seat to another passenger after they tried to snag hers so she could sit next to her children.

Tammy Nelson refused to move when another passenger wanted to sit in her reserved seat because she wanted to sit with her children, reports The Independent.

Ms Nelson, the chief executive of jewellery brand CONQUERing, boarded her flight leaving Cincinnati, Ohio, heading to San Jose, California, when she noticed the mother had taken her window seat - which Tammy specifically reserved to avoid motion sickness.

She posted her experience online, which attracted 1.6million views, and attracted mostly supportive comments, despite the children’s mother being “super annoyed” she had to move back to her assigned seat.

She said: “I double-checked my boarding pass thinking I may have had the wrong row.

“When I confirmed I was looking at the correct seat, I thought she must have just mistakenly sat in the wrong seat.

So I said: ‘I’m sorry but it seems you’re in my seat’, thinking she would realise it and move.”

“Oh – you want to sit here?” the other woman reportedly said. “I was pretty surprised at the question but replied simply saying, "Yes, that’s the seat I selected."

The passenger then told the CE) she was with her two children sitting near the window seat and assumed it would be ok to swap seats.

“I get motion sickness during take-off and landing if I can’t see out the window. I also don’t get a lot of sleep. I often try to get a little sleep on planes which is easiest with a window seat,

“On that particular day I only had 90 minutes of sleep the night before, and I was headed into a high-pressure work week where I would be presenting to 500 people and really needed to be at my very best, so getting a little sleep on that flight was extra-important.”

One commenter said: “Nope. If it’s not an upgrade it’s a sacrifice.”

Another wrote: “People should book seats together if they want to sit together.”

A third added: “The amount of families who aren’t paying to select their seats together is mind-blowing! You were 100 percent right to not give up your seat.”

Ms Nelson added: “Clearly the woman just expected that I would make a change to meet her needs, not considering what she had done (or not done) that put her in that situation.

“She just expected me to flex my plans to suit her needs. There seems to be a growing trend of this entitlement in society and I think people are just sick of it.”