A viral plane passenger said her boyfriend refused to spend $11 to sit next to her, reigniting outrage that airlines charge for assigned seats

• A TikToker said her partner decided not to pay an additional $11 fee to sit next to her on a flight.

• Seat assignment fees are a big money-maker for some airlines, but have proven controversial.

• TikTokers debated whether the additional charge was totally unnecessary or absolutely worth it.

Countless conversations about flight etiquette have raged on TikTok in recent months, and one passenger has sparked yet another discussion about plane seating, after she said her partner refused to pay an additional fee to sit beside her.

On July 21, a TikToker who goes by Gamze Esen posted a video that showed a queue of passengers boarding a plane, with an on-screen caption that said "all the couples" were sitting together but her partner didn't think it was worth paying an additional 10 euros, or $11.08, for the same perk.

Seat assignment fees, which allow passengers to select a specific space on a flight, have become common in the US and Europe, but have proven controversial. Esen's video received 4.4 million views and over 4,000 comments, many of which said that they too would reject the add-on.

Some said they'd refuse the additional fee on principle, as the flights were expensive enough and they didn't want to spend any more money than they had to. Others suggested things the money could be better spent on, such as refreshments when they'd reached their destination.

One popular comment, which received over 24,000 likes, stressed they'd pay the fee to avoid sitting next to a stranger on the off-chance an accident occurred, while for others the length of the journey played a factor, as some wrote they'd front up the cost if it meant they could avoid being separated from their kids for the duration.

For some, the topic was largely irrelevant and they couldn't see the issue with just accepting the seat they ended up with, even if they were separated from their partner for a few hours.

"We spend the whole time together sometimes it is even good to not be sitting next to each other we have smth new to tell to each other," one viewer wrote in a top comment that received over 1,190 likes.

Selecting a seat on a plane can cost just a few dollars but range up to hundreds, according to a joint press release from airline consulting company IdeaWorks and car rental company CarTrawler, which estimated the revenue from seat selection fees for eight key US airlines could amount to up to $4.2 billion a year.

In February, President Joe Biden commented on this issue during his State of the Union Address and called out airlines for charging families to sit together.

That same month, Frontier Airlines made a commitment that a child under the age of 14 would be automatically seated next to at least one parent at no extra cost, and United Airlines introduced a new seat map that showed families traveling with children aged under 12 options for sitting together, Condé Nast Traveller reported. The administration is also urging Congress to ban these charges altogether when they affect people traveling with children.

While discussions about general flight etiquette such as how to divide the armrest and how to exit the plane after it's landed have continued to spark on TikTok, assigned seating in particular has become a contentious topic. Some users have gone viral after they said they'd been asked to move seats by another passenger, and flight attendants have weighed in on best practice.

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