A traveler sparked big drama on a recent American Airlines flight after her family let her take a seat that wasn’t theirs — without asking the passenger who paid for it.
Osaac Summer, who booked a $300 aisle seat to fly comfortably, confronted the family after discovering they had moved their young daughter into his spot. A viral TikTok video from July 6 shows the 6-foot-2 Summer putting his backpack in the overhead bin as he firmly told them:
“Stay in your lane and in your seat. I don’t care about your daughter, your child, none of that. I paid for this one.”
Summer later posted a follow-up video on TikTok clarifying that he wasn’t trying to be the “bad guy,” saying he simply didn’t appreciate being blindsided.
“If you know me, you know that wasn’t me going off,” he explained. “I really didn’t want to take the seat from them, but next time just ask before taking somebody’s seat.”
He said the family offered him a middle or window seat instead — options he rejected because he specifically booked the aisle for more space.
The confrontation escalated when, according to Summer, a flight attendant suggested he was causing trouble.
“The flight attendant told me, ‘Well yeah, you is being a problem,’” Summer recalled. “So I said, ‘Look, since you said all that, just come get my seat — because that was rude.’”
He added that the crew shouldn’t have let the family take his seat to begin with.“If that was someone in first class, y’all wouldn’t have even let them sit down,” he pointed out.
Summer eventually got his seat back when another passenger let the child move to theirs.
“Moral of the story: just give people their seats back,” he concluded. “And flight attendants, just do your job.
The saga comes amid growing backlash against parents who try to swap airline seats without asking — often sparking fierce debates online. Last year, a Brazilian woman sued an airline and another passenger for damages after a video went viral showing her refusing to give up her seat to a crying child. In 2023, a woman was widely applauded for declining to trade her first class seat so a kid could sit there.
