Look before leaning

The crushing noise you heard on your last flight might have been your notebook falling to pieces.

Sonya Calef knows the sound well. On a recent trip from Minneapolis to Atlanta she heard it right in front of her. “My boss and I were sitting next to each other in coach, trying to finalize a presentation to the CIO due as soon as we landed,” she recalls. “We were both working on our laptops. Then the person in front of me reclined, and it tilted my laptop screen so much that my laptop thought I had shut it.”

Calef tried to extract her computer, but it was wedged tightly between the tray table and the reclining seat. By the time she managed to pry the electronic device free it had shut down. “Good thing Windows recovers documents or I would have really been in trouble,” she says.

Traveling with a portable can be downright treacherous.

Try to store it in an overhead bin and it gets pressed between the luggage. Under your seat it gets kicked. On your lap it gets doused in hot coffee or soda or crushed by a reclining seat. Any wonder, then, that accidental damage to laptops is on the rise? “Every time a computer is thrown in a briefcase or pulled from an overhead rack, there is an accident claim waiting to happen,” observes David Johnston, chief executive of Safeware Insurance, which insures laptop computers. In 1997, the most recent year for which figures are available, damaged computer claims surged by 17 percent at Safeware.

At the same time, nearly half of companies in a recent survey by Ernst & Young admitted they run mission-critical applications on their portables. It’s not hard to imagine how much irreplaceable information is being lost in the air.

But I don’t think armor-plated computers are a solution any more than leaving the data in the office is. We’ve got to get our work done while we’re traveling, and few of us can afford the five figures an indestructible laptop might cost. Instead, I think the answer to our hardware woes is a little common courtesy. In particular, passengers ought to look before they lean. Most major airlines claim to offer the cattle in steerage class roughly 30 inches of pitch between seats. But that legroom isn’t really fixed. A standard economy-class seat – excepting the ones in the emergency exit rows, which don’t go back at all – reclines by about 18 degrees. In effect, if you’re sitting in front of a fully reclined seat you could be left with little as 26 inches of wiggle room.

Politeness is an idea that might appeal to Pamela Beall-Vincent. On a Northwest Airlines flight from Baltimore to Minneapolis, she asked the reclining passenger in front of her if he would mind sitting upright, “to allow me to complete a report for which I was on deadline. I already was working on the laptop when he reclined the seat.”

Her request was denied. The flight attendant saw the confrontation but did nothing.

“Bottom line, the report got completed, but I had cramped, sore neck and shoulder muscles for days,” she says.

That’s Scott Inman’s story too. “I frequently fly to the East Coast on United Airlines, specifically from San Francisco to Cincinnati and on to Boston,” he says. “Quite often, the person in front of me reclines, pushing my laptop into my stomach. This requires my screen to be open only enough to see it from my navel.”

Normally if the rude recliner is a business traveler, he or she will straighten up, according to Inman. But if it’s a tourist, with little idea of what it means to work on a plane — well that’s another story. After all, leisure travelers expect their vacation to begin when they board the plane. Anyone who tells them they can’t get comfortable is itching for a fight. But frequent flyers can be inconsiderate, too. Charles Mitchell travels regularly between Austin and San Jose on an American Airlines flight that card-carrying frequent flyers affectionately call the “nerd bird” because of its high proportion of Silicon Valley laptop-luggers.

“If you are not lucky enough to get an upgrade to first class on one of these packed flights, you’ll find yourself wedged in tightly,” he explains. “Struggling with a notebook on your lap or tray table can be ergonomically challenging, at best. My arms end up angled out from the keyboard in a fairly uncomfortable angle.”

Mitchell says the recess in the back of the seat that holds the tray table in its upright position presents a serious problem to notebook users. It can hit the top of an open computer and force the display down violently when someone reclines. “More than once I’ve had to snatch my notebook off the tray table when the person in front of me leaned back to nap. If you aren’t quick in your response your laptop could easily be damaged if not simply knocked off the tray,” he says.

Don’t bother asking the airlines to add more legroom. Unless they can figure out a way to make more money by losing the little seats, they won’t budge. There’s little support for locking the seats in place either. The solution, I think, is to educate our fellow passengers in the fine art of airline etiquette. If someone leans into your spreadsheet, don’t go ballistic.

It’s an understandable reaction, to listen to road warriors like David Jacobson. On a recent Northwest Airlines flight, “the person sitting in front of me thought the seat should recline more than it did. He put all his weight against the seat, rocking back and forth as hard as he could. The display started to distort, I panicked and shouted at the guy in front of me to stop. Fortunately, my computer wasn’t damaged,” he reports.

Maybe a more appropriate response is to calmly explain that up here at 35,000 feet, just because the seat can recline doesn’t mean it should recline? Take it from you – an experienced traveler who is grown-up enough to not succumb to air rage.

Christopher Elliott is the author of Scammed: How to Save Your Money and Find Better Service in a World of Schemes, Swindles, and Shady Deals. Critics have called it “eye-opening” and “inspiring” — it’ll “grab your attention and won’t let go.” Order your copy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or iTunes.

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