Knee defenders…do you own one……..

There’s appears to be a very small plastic device taking air travel by storm at the moment, it is known as the knee defender. These devices are highly dangerous and so far up to this week have managed to cause heated arguments on board, and even divert and ground aircrafts. I think this whole situation is absolutely hilarious.

Basically the knee defender was designed by 6’4 inch Ira Goldman in Washington who got fed up of being squashed on-board due to the passenger in front reclining their seat. By attaching two small pieces of plastic to the arms of your fold down table disables the passenger in front of you from reclining their seat. I think this invention is genius and applaud the creator for taking this situation into their own hands and coming up with a suitable if not sneaky resolution.

This device only cost £13 and this is my favourite part ‘To keep tempers from fraying, the gadget comes with a ‘courtesy card’, which you hand to the passenger in front explaining why you are using the clips, and how many inches you are willing to allow him to recline.’ I could not stop laughing when I read this part as I’m sure you are conjuring up an image in your head as did I of how this situation will now pan out after reading this very courteous explanation card. I wonder how many languages it has been translated into…still laughing…………..

However it seems that when the passenger travelling in the now un-reclining seat realises their throne has been tampered with, temperatures are rising, full blown scraps are breaking out on-board and aircrafts are being forced to divert and even ground to remove the offending passengers. It would seem the courteous explanation card is not having the desired effect or is maybe not in the correct language.

I cannot believe a small piece of plastic could cause all this fuss.  

My simple resolution airlines is this…………

1. Ban all knee defenders on aircrafts. Not too difficult I feel, put up a sign on check-in to hand them in or they are removed through scanning automatically. After all they are carried on with the passenger and surely if these magnificent scanners these days can detect my small bottle of Chanel Chance that got confiscated last year a highly dangerous plastic knee defender should be no problem.

2. Split the economy cabin into two. Front 25 can recline, the back 25 seats cannot. Charge people who want to recline their seats by pre-booking on-line. Again not hard really, airlines are always looking for new ways to rip off the hard working traveller; this will just be one more to add to their list. Since the paying to have a wee charge with Ryan air never really took off, I would have though Michael O’Leary would be rubbing his hands together right now using this situation to his advantage.

If anybody is lucky enough to own the soon to be abolished by the sounds of it knee defender please forward it on to me, I have a 6 foot 3 inch boyfriend who will be happy to make use of it and try his luck…………. 

PS…..this is not my boyfriend……………