If you want to start a major debate online, sharing your travel hacks is a great place to start.
Although most people are simply trying to be kind by sharing their tips for how to bag the ‘best seat’ on a flight or how to earn a free upgrade, a lot of holidaymakers aren’t keen on others using so-called cheat codes.
So when this mum revealed her secret to securing an entire row on a flight, you better believe that social media users had a lot to say about it.
Jess Darrington, who runs the travel advice site ‘Where is Briggs?’, regularly shares pointers online for parents who are heading abroad with their young children.
She claims to be the ‘number one source for family travel with babies and toddlers’ and boasts 371,000 followers on Instagram, so she’s certainly got a large audience.
Which might be why a host of people had a problem with a video which she shared to the platform back in July, where she demonstrated a ‘airplane seating hack which sometimes works’.
Jess Darrington offers advice to parents travelling with young children (Instagram/@whereisbriggs)
To be fair, it does have the potential to cause some chaos if everyone tries it – but like Jess explicitly stated in the caption of her post, the ‘key word is sometimes’.
The mum, who has flown across the world with her one-year-old daughter and three-year-old son, explained that you can try a certain sneaky hack when booking your seats.
She showed how she selected an aisle and window seat in one single row for her and her baby, while she did the same on the row behind for her husband and son.
The idea is that, hopefully, no one books the middle seat in between them – and if successful, you can end up with three seats between the pair of you.
And luckily for Jess and her brood, who were heading on an 11-hour flight, it worked.
She explained: “On our way home from Amsterdam to Salt Lake City, we tried this hack and it worked beautifully!
“We booked four seats (even baby got a seat because she’s not a fun lap infant for that long) and no one selected the middle seats, leaving us two whole rows to ourselves. It was amazing!”
But her airplane seating hack didn’t go down well with a lot of social media users (Instagram/@whereisbriggs)
The mum said she has tried the plane trick out a handful of times while taking her kids on holiday and admitted it hasn’t worked for every flight.
“It was so nice because we had a little bit of wiggle room,” Jess continued, before warning parents to be wary.
“Families need to understand this is not a guarantee,” she said as per the New York Post. “If you want a for-sure seat for your baby on the flight, you’ve got to purchase them one.”
But Jess did point out you could always try and barter with the passenger who is sat in between you and your loved one, adding: “I have yet to meet anybody who’s frustrated that they no longer have a middle seat.”
However, social media users weren’t so sure – as a few people slammed the mum for her so-called travel hack.
The hack left people divided (TikTok/@where.is.briggs)
One said: “I honestly can’t stand when people do this and then expect me to move or switch seats,” while another wrote: “Yeah and then you beg and bother the person in the middle to switch seats. Book the seats you want.”
And a third called it a ‘cheap move’.
But not everyone was unimpressed with Jess’ post, as others explained they have tried the seating trick too – while some just don’t see why people would have a problem with it.
One said: “How many creeps are commenting on this post…people would separate a baby and a parent? WTF.”
A second chimed in: “We do this too! When it works, great! When it doesn’t, the person in the middle gets their choice of a window or aisle. Win-win!”
And a third remarked: “I will be the person in the middle because I never pay for the seat! No problem with kids, they are usually easy going.”
What do you think?