I hate to get too political in my little corner of the Internet, but something happened during our vacation that violated my rights and which forces me to speak up.

It’s time for all airlines to protect our rights as passengers to be able to put a piece of carry-on luggage over our own seats.

Yes, I know it’s a pretty strong statement, but here’s what happened. Our little five person travel group took up five of the six seats on a row of our Iceland Air flight back home to Seattle. By the time we were allowed to board, we walked down the aisle only to find that both sides of the overhead space above row 13 was already full. I mean jammed packed!  The other person that completed our row hadn’t even shown up yet! But the greedy passengers surrounding us had already grabbed our space.

That’s just wrong. We ended up having to wedge in our packages and coats into the space behind us, which made exiting the jet that much more challenging when the flight was over.

C’mon! At today’s prices, you should be guaranteed at least a little of the space over your own aisle.  I didn’t pay a discounted price. Oh, sure, I could have tossed out the bags over our aisle, but I didn’t to cause an International incident. We’ve got enough people doing that these days.

Am I asking too much? Am I over-reacting due to jet lag? Probably. I’m tired.

Tim Hunter