Surviving the Middle Seat on airplanes

Surviving the Middle Seat

 What's worse: sitting in a middle seat on a long flight or having a hole drilled in your head?

A majority of Americans would rather get stuck in traffic (56 percent) or go on a blind date (also 56 percent) than sit in the middle seat on a full flight.
People dislike the middle seat so much that they go to great lengths to avoid it altogether. Fifty percent of people say they would be likely to take an aisle seat being offered on the next available flight, while one in five Americans (20 percent) say they would actually stay overnight at an airport hotel for an aisle seat on the first flight the next morning.
Nine percent of Americans report that they would refuse to sit in the middle seat on a full flight if it was more than one to two hours.

The top five middle seat annoyances as follows (the survey allowed multiple answers, so the stats below reflect the percentage of people who chose each option):

• Having a nosy seatmate peering over your shoulderCrawling over someone to get to the bathroom Not being able to stretch out
• Having an overweight seatmate on either side of you
• Not having a place to rest your head

As airlines reduce capacity, continue in the old practice of overbooking, and reduce and eliminate (or charge for) opportunities to make changes to our airline reservations, frequent travelers are almost doomed to a middle seat experience at some point. Here are my tips for avoiding and, if need be, surviving the dreaded middle seat on your next flight.