Passenger Asked a Mom to Quiet Her Daughter’s Reading Lesson on a Night Flight — Mom Called the Attendant to Move the Passenger

A post to r/AmItheAsshole describes a disagreement between a passenger and a mother giving a reading lesson with her daughter roughly 30 minutes into an evening flight with the cabin lights off. The post had gathered over 3,600 upvotes and 2,200 comments as of publication.

The poster asked the mother if she and her daughter could pause the lesson, since the plane was at full capacity, it was 8:30 pm and other passengers also appeared to be trying to rest.

The mother pressed the call button and told the flight attendant "there are probably spots available on the plane to switch", implying she wanted the poster to be moved. The poster noted that it was highly unlikely that a full flight would have two open seats, something the crew had already announced.

When the attendant arrived, she told the mother that she and her daughter would need to change seats, not the poster, since the mother had raised the complaint. That was not possible either on the full flight.

In a later edit added to the post, the Redditor said the lesson involved the child repeating words letter by letter at high volume, writing that it "wasn't at normal speaking level" and that noise-canceling headphones did not block it out. The flight's local time was around 8:30 p.m., though passengers traveling from other time zones may have experienced it as later or earlier depending on where their trip began.

A second edit added that the attendant ultimately asked the mother to be mindful of other passengers, after which the child stopped the exercise for the rest of the flight.

Replies to the post were divided. One commenter argued the poster overstepped by asking the pair to go silent altogether, writing that the situation was no different from "two people just having a normal conversation" and that the poster should have used earplugs instead of asking them to stop.

Another suggested that a reading lesson was a reasonable way to keep a child occupied, and wrote, "Some people just get angry any time a child is involved and out in the public. A reading lesson seems like a nice way to keep a kid occupied on a plane. Would they rather them glued to tablet or kicking the seat in front of them? Then we complain that kids are misbehaved or addicted to tablets."

A third commenter took the opposite stance, arguing that one cannot control volume in a public space, writing, "The mother should be keeping volume down in public regardless of time. This is just being polite and respectful of others in public spaces. A plane is not one’s personal living room so this applies regardless of who is talking (doesn’t matter that it was a kid)."

This article is based on a post shared in r/AmItheAsshole on Reddit. The Daily Dot could not independently verify the events described. The account reflects only the original poster's perspective; the mother's and flight attendant's accounts were not available.