It was an inflight face-off.
A star couple who thought that they had the “best” seats on the plane were mortified after realizing their seating arrangement was anything but that.
A clip of the mile-high mishap currently boasts nearly 20 million views on TikTok.
The couple in query were Real Madrid star Sergio Carrallo and his wife Caroline Stanbury, who stars on the “Real Housewives of Dubai.”
Carrallo explained within the caption that their assistant “booked 1A and 1B” on the undisclosed flight, leading them to imagine that they had “the most effective seats on the plane.”
The pair quickly realized that wasn’t the case after they arrived and noticed there was nobody behind them. As an alternative, the soulmates’ seat backs were against the bulkhead, stopping them from reclining even an inch, as seen within the footage.
“We got the most effective seats within the plane,” a bemused Carrallo snarks within the clip. “Nothing goes back.”
And that was just the tip of the inflight iceberg.
The soccer star then pans his phone to the remainder of the plane, revealing that they were actually “facing the cabin” as if seated in a flight attendant’s jump seat.
Social media was understandably freaked out by the claustrophobic and awkward configuration.
“The proven fact that everyone seems to be staring I can’t,” exclaimed one mortified commenter, while one other wrote, “Absolutely nothing could have prepared me for the camera flip.”
“Staring the complete plane down is crazy,” said a 3rd.
Others said their seating arrangement looked as in the event that they were conducting a Q&A session at 30,000 feet.
“There’s my absolute worst nightmare after which there’s this,” quipped one TikTok wit.
“Why do those seats even exist?!” inquired one incredulous viewer, to which Carrallo replied, “Tell me about it.”
Interestingly, aft-facing airline seats aren’t as unusual as one might think. Airlines starting from United Airlines to British Airways offer this face-to-face orientation in business class.
In keeping with the online travel site The Points Guy, many airlines go for those seats so that they can squeeze more of them into the business class cabin, effectively prioritizing space maximization over privacy.
Paradoxically, the seats also cost extra money, which is why airlines are reluctant to put in them.
They’re also safer than their backward-facing counterparts:
Richard Snyder, a former University of Michigan transportation safety researcher, told Smithsonian magazine in October 2009 that crash protection afforded by aft-facing seats is “supported by over half a century of experience.”
The article referenced a 1952 edition of Naval Aviation News, which explained that “passengers in Navy transport planes have ten-fold higher probabilities of coming out of crashes alive, due to backward-facing seats.”
While this configuration might save passenger lives, it may not do the identical for his or her dignity.
In July, an Illinois passenger detailed her mortifying experience aboard a European flight — wherein she had to sit down directly across from one other passenger in order that their knees were nearly touching.